Germany used to be the promised land for migrants. Now, it’s turning back more of them

“The reality of today’s Germany is a different one than the refugee fairytale of last summer”

Afghan asylum seeker Shakira Sarwari, 27, and her two children, Mohammed, 17 months, and Setayesh, 7, are taken off a Munich-bound train in Salzburg, Austria, by German police Anthony Faiola/The Washington Post


SALZBURG, Austria – The 5:08 p.m. to Munich pulled into Salzburg Central Station, and four German police officers boarded the train. This was a migrant sweep, and the cops moved quickly past the fair-skinned passengers, questioning a group of Saudi tourists and a Chicano from Chicago.

In the last seat of the last car, the patrol found Shakira Sarwari. Eight months on the road from war-torn Kandahar, the young Afghan mother clung tightly to her 17-month-old son. Her 7-year-old daughter huddled close, nervously eying the officers. They were now one station away from their final destination: Germany, the promised land of refugees.

But they were not there yet — and after more than a million arrivals in 2015, the German welcome is no longer so warm. In fact, a crackdown at the border is giving those migrants who make it this far the worst odds of crossing than at any point since the height of the crisis last year. It is more evidence, some say, that as Europe’s migrant crisis stokes a mounting voter backlash, even generous Germany is quietly closing its door.

“Your passport,” asked one of the officers, who now have permission from the Austrians to stop migrants on trains bound for Germany.

Sarwari replied with a pleading look, holding up an empty palm.

“Where are you going?” the officer asked slowly. Sarwari tugged nervously at her pink headscarf. In her arms, her son squirmed and whined. Her daughter, terrified, was on the verge of tears.

“To Germany,” Sarwari said. “To Germany.”

The officer shook his head.

“You’ll have to come with us,” he said.

In September 2015, as thousands of migrants a day were converging on Europe, German Chancellor Angela Merkel issued an astounding pledge. In the face of raging wars in the Middle East, she said there was “no limit” to the number of refugees Germany could accept. That promise — along with some of the most generous refugee benefits in the world — made the same country that sparked World War II an asylum seeker’s paradise.

But that has already begun to change. Since March, tougher controls in the Balkans, Greece and Turkey have sharply reduced the number of new arrivals. But hundreds of migrants each week — mostly from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Africa — are still attempting to enter Germany.

Yet the nation that took in more migrants last year than the rest of Europe combined is making it harder to get in. In August, Germany refused entry to 1,070 of the 2,300 migrants — or 46 percent — it stopped on its side of the Austrian border. In January, when arrival numbers were far higher, only 7 percent of migrants were turned back.

The smaller number of arrivals now, German officials say, has allowed them to more rigorously question migrants and apply rules meant to weed out economic migrants and opportunists. But critics say the policy is too sweeping and that there’s a good chance that people who qualify for German asylum are not being given a chance to apply. A large portion of those coming now also already have family in Germany and are trying to skirt years-long waiting periods for family reunions .

Yet the German message to migrants is clear: It’s not so easy anymore.

“The reality of today’s Germany is a different one than the refugee fairytale of last summer,” said Karl Kopp, spokesman for the migrant aid group Pro Asyl.

It happens as Germany is drowning in a backlog of hundreds of thousands of asylum requests. Last year, it paid $5.91 billion in aid and shelter, more than double the cost in 2014. A violent standoff last week between migrants and right-wing Germans became the latest sign of rising tensions. Germans are investigating 60 cases of migrants allegedly conspiring with Islamist militants.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/germany-migrants-refugees-promised-land-a7335176.html

plappville:
Poor innocent kids. Islam has made many Arabs homeless. Pathetic!

true2god:
Since the beginning of Islam, the Arabs/Muslims have always depend on the kafirs for survival. It is always looting of kafirs, asking for jizya (Quran 9:29) or going on a hijra to the land of the kafirs, all for survival of Muslims and Islam.

No Arab nation is conducive for living, except the gulf states who the kafirs are paying heavily for their oil and gas (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Iran, Iraq). Without oil, Muslim-arabs will kill and loot each other for survival. That's the nature of the Arabs in the desert before and after Islam.

annunaki2:
It's really so sad, the damage Islam as done and continues to do to this world is unfathomable innocent children are suffering and dying all because of a savage that lived in the 7th century who claimed to be a prophet.

plappville:


.

hopefulLandlord:


Saddam and Qaddafi were NOT terrorists

look beyond the propaganda spread by the west

both of those guys were painted in bad light because of their wanting to dump US Dollars by creating a new currency which would've helped oil producing nations to leave the dictator claws of the west

where were the weapons of mass destructions the US said was the main reason for their invading Iraq?

how is Libya faring now that Qaddafi is dead?

hopefulLandlord:


Saddam and Qaddafi were NOT terrorists

look beyond the propaganda spread by the west

both of those guys were painted in bad light because of their wanting to dump US Dollars by creating a new currency which would've helped oil producing nations to leave the dictator claws of the west

where were the weapons of mass destructions the US said was the main reason for their invading Iraq?

how is Libya faring now that Qaddafi is dead?

hopefulLandlord:


Saddam and Qaddafi were NOT terrorists

look beyond the propaganda spread by the west

both of those guys were painted in bad light because of their wanting to dump US Dollars by creating a new currency which would've helped oil producing nations to leave the dictator claws of the west

where were the weapons of mass destructions the US said was the main reason for their invading Iraq?

how is Libya faring now that Qaddafi is dead?

plappville:


As for Saddam, I think he is a terrorist too. A leader who uses Chemical weapons against his own people should be considered a terrorist. This man used nerve and mustard agents to start an ethnic cleansing (genocide) against the Kurds. Approx. 5,000 women and children were killed in this event.

He once convened his parliament and had a bunch of his ministers taken outside one at a time and shot. He taught his 12 year old sons how to kill prisoners with a pistol and made them do it.

He also committed many other war crimes. Hussein was comparable to Hitler, and perhaps worse. He can't be left from the list.

CoolUsername:


They weren't terrorists but Saddam Hussein committed war crimes in Kuwait and Gaddafi was a bloody dictator, Libya would benefit from his death in the long run.

hopefulLandlord:


war crimes happen all over the world, when it comes to power in the strictest sense of the word, Anything goes

lol! benefit from it on the long run?

Libya is getting worse

motivation for killing both was simply OIL!

OIL is the goal and the Americans have it

they control everything there now because whoever controls oil in oil producing nations control the nation

CoolUsername:


Now George Bush said that God told him that Saddam had WMDs and we all know how that turned out. But we shouldn't try to paint Saddam as a victim.

Besides, most of America's oil congress from Canada and Latin America.

http://www.npr.org/2012/04/11/150444802/where-does-america-get-oil-you-may-be-surprised

hopefulLandlord:


Hahahahahahahahaha

propaganda is the name

let me make something clear here

almost everyone in power would do ANYTHING to keep it

by ANYTHING I mean ANYTHING

You wanna know those that carry out war crimes the most in the world? The Americans

those Americans would call every other country's leaders "terrorists" while they are the worst, they're playing god; a kind of "absolute morality"

no doubt, Saddam had his bad sides, but that's what OBTAINS; almost any dictator is always on his toes because many people are after your throne, you need to squash uprisings, coup before it happens even if it means killing 5000 or 500,000; that's how things work

why were the nuclear warheads not found?
civilians were killed, starved, displaced, POWs were raped in cells, got tortured in cells for what? for nonexistent nuclear warheads?

what does that make the USA and the allied forces?

are they not terrorists too?

let me be clear on something here before people get the wrong idea, I'm not a Muslim, I'm an atheist

Muafrika2:
Now Gadhaffi is a terrorist?

Too much CNN.