One person was missing, however, in order to give this inhuman campaign pastoral approval and prepare the population for the implementation of a savage anti-refugee policy: the German president and former clergyman Joachim Gauck. In September Bavaria welcomes 135,000 migrants – Nieheim: Germans are evicted because they have to make way for “refugees“.
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Germany expects to take in up to one million migrants altogether this year.
A few days later, under pressure from her own conservative bloc, Germany introduced border controls.
Horst Seehofer, leader of her Bavarian sister party the CSU, was the first to criticise, vociferously, her suspension of the Dublin protocol.
Klaus Peter Willsch, an MP from Mrs Merkel’s Christian Democrat Union, recently told a newspaper “it’s time for uncomfortable truths”.
Modi and Merkel will be chairing the India-Germany Intergovernmental Consultation in New Delhi next week.
“Let me stress that when dealing with a humanitarian catastrophe as horrifying as the one in Syria – we are all neighbors”, said Steinmeier, “That is what we must all remind ourselves of, and crawl out of our diplomatic trenches”.
“Our hearts are wide open”, he said, “but our capabilities are finite”. Such rhetoric is uncharacteristically emotional for the chancellor and it has not gone unnoticed among commentators.
Göring-Eckhardt accused Julia Klöckner, a Merkel deputy bidding for the regional premier’s job in the state of Rhineland Palatinate next year, of directing “cheap” sweeping remarks at Muslims. “She grew up and came into politics as a young woman in East Germany and she’s sensitized, in a way many others in Germany aren’t, from the experiences of 1949, when many refugees from the eastern areas of pre-war Germany migrated westward”, explained David Cameron, director of European Union studies at Yale University.
“She’s taking a mother role – and that to an extent protects her from criticism”, he says.
She also said asylum seekers were not following instructions.
The bill pledges “additional” funding for local bodies hosting refugees and German language and induction courses for applicants with “good” prospects of being granted asylum so that they can be integrated as “rapidly as possible” into German society and its workforce.
Just weeks after politicians from Germany’s mainstream parties embraced Angela Merkel’s unusually warm welcome for refugees, the tone has turned sober, reflecting growing fears about the scale of looming problems.
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Angela Merkel promises Germans that “we will manage” (“wir schaffen es”). “Bavaria won’t condone attacks on asylum-seekers, and that includes conflicts among the refugees”, said Emilia Müller, the state’s Minister for Social Affairs. At closing time on a recent afternoon, hundreds of asylum seekers were left empty-handed, including Ahmed Hamadich, 27, who walked toward his blanket for another night outdoors. CDU lawmaker and talkshow regular Wolfgang Bosbach said people “are entitled” to having doubts about how Germany can cope, adding “I urgently warn against labeling all skeptics as xenophobes”.
