Last summer I saw Germans welcoming refugees – mainly from Syria, but also from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Morocco, Libya, North Africa and even Pakistan – at their train stations, with flags, posters, and food. Those images on TV were not only a beginning of a new era but a new political debate in Germany.
Although a large majority of Germans, especially the youth, support the influx of refugees, a considerable number are vehemently against the welcoming policy enthusiastically supported by German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Her selfie with a Syrian refugee at the Munich train station last summer was seen around the world, implying that Germany is particularly determined to help the millions of displaced Syrians seeking refuge in the richer, more powerful European countries. There are now over 1.1 million refugees in the country. More than 70 percent of them are young men without families.
Most Germans – and most of my students at the University of Giessen – think it is time to show the world a friendly face that will perhaps shed the image of the Nazi Germany of the 1940s that brought about the killing of 6 million Jews.
But the proponents of open borders forget that such a policy will eventually push their own country to a colossal cultural and economic challenge, which might take a very long time to overcome.
First, taxpayer money will go into providing housing, healthcare, and child and old care to the refugees, besides the basic facilities required to maintain a certain standard of living in Germany. A lot of taxpayers do not have such humanitarian ideals, and would prefer to invest their money in setting up more kindergartens, day-care centres, all-day schools, cheaper housing, and more university spots. Without a sound command on German language, it is not realistically possible for the refugees to fill job vacancies or apprentice positions. A great deal of money needs to be invested in offering German language courses and vocational training to them. This will be a huge challenge. Ludger Woessmann, a professor of economics at the University of Munich, tells German magazine Die Zeit that 65 percent of Syrian refugees fail to meet international standards of basic reading and writing skills. Only 10 percent of the one million arrivals in the country last year have a college degree, which may force unemployment rates and demand for social welfare to rapidly go up. Half of the refugees are under the age of 25 and can still get an education, but the ability to learn to read and write quickly fades during the late teenage years. Hence, refugees are bound to struggle to complete basic learning courses to prepare for the job market.
Germany does require a workforce for its aging population with a low birth rate, but it clearly needs a highly skilled workforce – qualified workers with good communication skills. These targets are clearly difficult to meet for those who have seen only poverty and war. It is not likely that the refugees will be able to make a decent living in a short period of time that could benefit them as well as the economy at large. It will be a long and expensive undertaking.
Second, if Germany fails to keep the promise made by Chancellor Merkel – “Wir schaffen das” (We can do it) – there is a danger of creating a huge underclass that is likely to live on the peripheries because of a lack of education and language abilities required to progress in a highly competitive industrial society. This will perhaps sow seeds of dissatisfaction in the refugees. And dissatisfaction among young men is often a hothead of religious fundamentalism, whose price Britain and France have paid with terror attacks carried out in the last months and years mainly by youngsters of Asian, African and Middle Eastern origin. Entering a rich and competitive society like Germany means entering a world of competition, which has nothing to do with race or ethnicity and is all about skill and education.
This fundamental issue leads me to my third point. Opening borders to refugees will not merely pose a cultural problem or a challenge of integration as most Germans suppose. The problem is larger than that. It is about understanding the work ethics of an industrial nation that staunchly believes in working long hours and producing fruitful results. Some refugees might find it difficult to cope with such hard-core work ethics. An 18-year-old Afghan asylum seeker Asif was interviewed on a famous German TV programme Hard But Fair last week. He had given up his vocational training after working for 8 hours in a timber factory because he considered the workhours to be too long. He said he could not play football in the evenings. A foreigner who has such work ethics is very likely to fail in any working society, especially because it involves starting from scratch.
Fourth, if a large majority of refugees in Germany go into the social system because of their inability to learn the language or skills quickly, Germans will have to cope with a very big challenge of integration. Integration is not possible without actively working in a host society. Several Muslim men I have met in Germany in the last few years tend to associate integration with being un-Islamic. Instead of looking at it as cultural enrichment – having the chance to live in two cultural domains – Muslim migrants often seem to fear losing their cultural (or religious) identity in a secular country. Consequently, religious fundamentalism is on the rise among Muslim communities. Salafism is already a growing movement in Germany, whose membership has grown from 3,800 members in 2011 to 7,500 members in 2015, according to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
Nearly all identified terrorist cells in Germany came from Salafist circles. In 2015, Sigmar Gabriel, Vice-Chancellor of Germany, spoke out, saying: "We need Saudi Arabia to solve the regional conflicts, but we must at the same time make clear that the time to look away is past.” He added, “Wahhabi mosques are financed all over the world by Saudi Arabia. In Germany, many dangerous Islamists come from these communities.” There is a possibility that such movements may attract unemployed refugees who are vulnerable to radical Islamic ideologies.
At the same time, it is also going to be a challenge to educate the newcomers about equality between men and women – a norm of which Europe is absolutely proud. Unfortunately, sexual assaults on more than 120 women in the German city of Cologne at the New Year’s Eve by more than 1,000 refugees and asylum seekers of Arab and African origin changed the feelings of many German communities towards the refugees. More and more women have begun to feel unsafe in their own homeland. In February 2016, a mob of asylum seekers from Afghanistan assaulted three teenage girls at a shopping centre in the northern German city of Kiel. That is just another example of the instances of sexual violence that have sadly skyrocketed since the arrival of the refugees. Such crimes are being downplayed by the authorities, apparently to avoid fuelling anti-immigration sentiments. Not all refugees or asylum seekers are criminals or rapists, but the open-door policy is bound to attract a large number of criminals who wish to misuse the social welfare system.
A state in which a huge mass of foreigners has a very different mind-set towards work ethics, cultural assimilation and gender equality is likely to experience a divided society, in which the grand ideal of the ‘New Europeans’ is perhaps hard to realise.
Five of the wealthiest Muslim countries – Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain – have not taken in a single refugee from Syria, because of safety concerns. They argue that Islamic State terrorists could be hiding among them. But Germany refused to learn from these countries. On the contrary, reports of a youth community project having to move out to make way for an asylum seeker shelter, or a woman living in local authority housing being forced to downsize so that her flat could be used by refugees, are regularly making the headlines and stoking resentment. Such cases, along with constant new arrival of refugees in large numbers from war-torn Islamic states, have naturally created a fertile ground for right wing parties that wish to discourage immigration with the aim of preserving Western, secular ideals – which they deem to be based on universal values. The great popularity of the right-wing political party “Alternative for Germany” is on the rise, inspiring those who are disillusioned with multiculturalism and its failure.
Chancellor Merkel was declared the person of the year 2015 by the Time magazine for offering her country as a safe haven for refugees. But as the influx of refugees continues – with over 2,000 coming to Greece every day, and over 120,000 that have already arrived since January – she appears to have realised her grave mistake.
The Christian Social Union (CSU) – the Bavarian sister party to Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) – has said her decision to allow in unregistered refugees was “an unparalleled historical mistake”. Having exerted enormous pressure on the population as well as the administration of various cities, Chancellor Merkel has been trying again to have a European solution to the refugee problem, namely an even distribution of refugees among the European states.
But Hungary, Austria and other countries along the so-called West Balkans route, have already closed their borders with others EU countries, refusing to accept as many refugees as Germany. Chancellor Merkel has now reverted to Turkey to set up more camps for Syrian refugees to curb the inflow to Greece and then to Europe, and tightening the German asylum law.
These urgent measures may not redeem her mistake of giving the illusion to the incoming refugees that they would be integrated into a foreign society without any hurdles. Unfortunately, Germany will have to pay a heavy price for showing a ‘friendly face’ in the times of crisis.
Dr Nadia Butt is Lecturer in English at the University of Giessen in Germany. She is the author of ‘Transcultural Memory and Globalised Modernity in Contemporary Indo-English Novels’ published in 2015
Although a large majority of Germans, especially the youth, support the influx of refugees, a considerable number are vehemently against the welcoming policy enthusiastically supported by German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Her selfie with a Syrian refugee at the Munich train station last summer was seen around the world, implying that Germany is particularly determined to help the millions of displaced Syrians seeking refuge in the richer, more powerful European countries. There are now over 1.1 million refugees in the country. More than 70 percent of them are young men without families.
Most Germans – and most of my students at the University of Giessen – think it is time to show the world a friendly face that will perhaps shed the image of the Nazi Germany of the 1940s that brought about the killing of 6 million Jews.
But the proponents of open borders forget that such a policy will eventually push their own country to a colossal cultural and economic challenge, which might take a very long time to overcome.
Cases of sexual violence are being downplayed to avoid fuelling anti-immigration sentiments
First, taxpayer money will go into providing housing, healthcare, and child and old care to the refugees, besides the basic facilities required to maintain a certain standard of living in Germany. A lot of taxpayers do not have such humanitarian ideals, and would prefer to invest their money in setting up more kindergartens, day-care centres, all-day schools, cheaper housing, and more university spots. Without a sound command on German language, it is not realistically possible for the refugees to fill job vacancies or apprentice positions. A great deal of money needs to be invested in offering German language courses and vocational training to them. This will be a huge challenge. Ludger Woessmann, a professor of economics at the University of Munich, tells German magazine Die Zeit that 65 percent of Syrian refugees fail to meet international standards of basic reading and writing skills. Only 10 percent of the one million arrivals in the country last year have a college degree, which may force unemployment rates and demand for social welfare to rapidly go up. Half of the refugees are under the age of 25 and can still get an education, but the ability to learn to read and write quickly fades during the late teenage years. Hence, refugees are bound to struggle to complete basic learning courses to prepare for the job market.
Germany does require a workforce for its aging population with a low birth rate, but it clearly needs a highly skilled workforce – qualified workers with good communication skills. These targets are clearly difficult to meet for those who have seen only poverty and war. It is not likely that the refugees will be able to make a decent living in a short period of time that could benefit them as well as the economy at large. It will be a long and expensive undertaking.
Second, if Germany fails to keep the promise made by Chancellor Merkel – “Wir schaffen das” (We can do it) – there is a danger of creating a huge underclass that is likely to live on the peripheries because of a lack of education and language abilities required to progress in a highly competitive industrial society. This will perhaps sow seeds of dissatisfaction in the refugees. And dissatisfaction among young men is often a hothead of religious fundamentalism, whose price Britain and France have paid with terror attacks carried out in the last months and years mainly by youngsters of Asian, African and Middle Eastern origin. Entering a rich and competitive society like Germany means entering a world of competition, which has nothing to do with race or ethnicity and is all about skill and education.
Only 10% of the one million refugees have a college degree
This fundamental issue leads me to my third point. Opening borders to refugees will not merely pose a cultural problem or a challenge of integration as most Germans suppose. The problem is larger than that. It is about understanding the work ethics of an industrial nation that staunchly believes in working long hours and producing fruitful results. Some refugees might find it difficult to cope with such hard-core work ethics. An 18-year-old Afghan asylum seeker Asif was interviewed on a famous German TV programme Hard But Fair last week. He had given up his vocational training after working for 8 hours in a timber factory because he considered the workhours to be too long. He said he could not play football in the evenings. A foreigner who has such work ethics is very likely to fail in any working society, especially because it involves starting from scratch.
Fourth, if a large majority of refugees in Germany go into the social system because of their inability to learn the language or skills quickly, Germans will have to cope with a very big challenge of integration. Integration is not possible without actively working in a host society. Several Muslim men I have met in Germany in the last few years tend to associate integration with being un-Islamic. Instead of looking at it as cultural enrichment – having the chance to live in two cultural domains – Muslim migrants often seem to fear losing their cultural (or religious) identity in a secular country. Consequently, religious fundamentalism is on the rise among Muslim communities. Salafism is already a growing movement in Germany, whose membership has grown from 3,800 members in 2011 to 7,500 members in 2015, according to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
Nearly all identified terrorist cells in Germany came from Salafist circles. In 2015, Sigmar Gabriel, Vice-Chancellor of Germany, spoke out, saying: "We need Saudi Arabia to solve the regional conflicts, but we must at the same time make clear that the time to look away is past.” He added, “Wahhabi mosques are financed all over the world by Saudi Arabia. In Germany, many dangerous Islamists come from these communities.” There is a possibility that such movements may attract unemployed refugees who are vulnerable to radical Islamic ideologies.
At the same time, it is also going to be a challenge to educate the newcomers about equality between men and women – a norm of which Europe is absolutely proud. Unfortunately, sexual assaults on more than 120 women in the German city of Cologne at the New Year’s Eve by more than 1,000 refugees and asylum seekers of Arab and African origin changed the feelings of many German communities towards the refugees. More and more women have begun to feel unsafe in their own homeland. In February 2016, a mob of asylum seekers from Afghanistan assaulted three teenage girls at a shopping centre in the northern German city of Kiel. That is just another example of the instances of sexual violence that have sadly skyrocketed since the arrival of the refugees. Such crimes are being downplayed by the authorities, apparently to avoid fuelling anti-immigration sentiments. Not all refugees or asylum seekers are criminals or rapists, but the open-door policy is bound to attract a large number of criminals who wish to misuse the social welfare system.
A state in which a huge mass of foreigners has a very different mind-set towards work ethics, cultural assimilation and gender equality is likely to experience a divided society, in which the grand ideal of the ‘New Europeans’ is perhaps hard to realise.
Five of the wealthiest Muslim countries – Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain – have not taken in a single refugee from Syria, because of safety concerns. They argue that Islamic State terrorists could be hiding among them. But Germany refused to learn from these countries. On the contrary, reports of a youth community project having to move out to make way for an asylum seeker shelter, or a woman living in local authority housing being forced to downsize so that her flat could be used by refugees, are regularly making the headlines and stoking resentment. Such cases, along with constant new arrival of refugees in large numbers from war-torn Islamic states, have naturally created a fertile ground for right wing parties that wish to discourage immigration with the aim of preserving Western, secular ideals – which they deem to be based on universal values. The great popularity of the right-wing political party “Alternative for Germany” is on the rise, inspiring those who are disillusioned with multiculturalism and its failure.
Chancellor Merkel was declared the person of the year 2015 by the Time magazine for offering her country as a safe haven for refugees. But as the influx of refugees continues – with over 2,000 coming to Greece every day, and over 120,000 that have already arrived since January – she appears to have realised her grave mistake.
The Christian Social Union (CSU) – the Bavarian sister party to Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) – has said her decision to allow in unregistered refugees was “an unparalleled historical mistake”. Having exerted enormous pressure on the population as well as the administration of various cities, Chancellor Merkel has been trying again to have a European solution to the refugee problem, namely an even distribution of refugees among the European states.
But Hungary, Austria and other countries along the so-called West Balkans route, have already closed their borders with others EU countries, refusing to accept as many refugees as Germany. Chancellor Merkel has now reverted to Turkey to set up more camps for Syrian refugees to curb the inflow to Greece and then to Europe, and tightening the German asylum law.
These urgent measures may not redeem her mistake of giving the illusion to the incoming refugees that they would be integrated into a foreign society without any hurdles. Unfortunately, Germany will have to pay a heavy price for showing a ‘friendly face’ in the times of crisis.
Dr Nadia Butt is Lecturer in English at the University of Giessen in Germany. She is the author of ‘Transcultural Memory and Globalised Modernity in Contemporary Indo-English Novels’ published in 2015