Once welcoming Germany talks tougher on asylum ahead of elections

Can't expect Germany to take on all of the asylum seekers. Gotta spread them out, concentrating any population of struggling people in one area always leads to problems.

You're going to see more and more of this all over Europe. Nearly half a billion people have seen their quality of life drop in the last decade or so from the post 2008 austerity to the current post Covid inflation with governments seeming powerless to make anything better anymore, seeing their government then allow tons of new people in who need assistance, whether you understand their plight or not, rubs people the wrong way.

I know theres the argument that there's plenty of money in the system to help all these people if it wasn't being horded at the top bymillionaires and billionaires, but how we access that money is very complex and abstract and requires global cooperation that isn't going to happen any time soon.

With countries pulling back on climate policies meaning climate change will continue to pick up leading to mass migration from no longer habitable equatorial areas, I fully expect to see guns on the beaches of the Mediterranean in my life time to push boats back.

I know it's a horrible view of the future, but I don't see anyone trying to find other solutions.

I feel like a lot of the tension now is due to a failure of the system post arrival. Germany and Europe were good to open their doors to these refugees but they then failed to integrate them. There wasn’t enough support around cultural assimilation, language training, etc - they weren’t blended into our communities so much as allowed to set up parallel ones without any positive interaction. And the wound has just festered now.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

BERLIN, Oct 6 (Reuters) - At the height of Europe's migrant crisis in 2015 Germany was heralded for its open-door policy, with images broadcast worldwide of citizens welcoming asylum seekers fleeing war and deprivation in the Middle East with flowers and donations.

Eight years later, however, the mood has soured, with parties across the political spectrum rushing to outbid one another on ways to curb irregular migration - ranging from cutting benefits to capping the number of people granted asylum.

Interior Minister Nancy Faeser urged Germany's 16 states on Wednesday to provide asylum seekers with material benefits rather than cash, to reduce the country's pull factor.

"The number of refugees trying to get to Germany is too high at the moment," Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Saturday, departing from predecessor Angela Merkel, whose declaration "Wir schaffen das" ("We can do this") became a mantra.

"There's a political consideration here with elections coming up, because right-wing parties may be able to use these irregular (migrant) movements to their advantage, gaining visibility and votes," said Alberto‑Horst Neidhardt, a migration specialist at the European Policy Centre think-tank.

Berlin has sought to stem the influx of irregular migration in various ways since 2015, for example by pushing for the EU deal with Turkey whereby Ankara stops people on its soil heading to the bloc in exchange for perks like financial aid, she said.

The original article contains 891 words, the summary contains 229 words. Saved 74%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

The ad-hoc country of arrival system that has existed up to now isn't going to work much longer. With climate change headlines the way they have been the last few months how much longer before we start seeing millions of people moving from areas which are no longer inhabitable.

The present system is for someone to wait until they require asylum, then pay criminals to smuggle them to the wealthiest country they can afford to get to. It's senseless.

Greens now to the right Merkel on this. I'm making the Green-voting libs among my friends and family uncomfortable by pointing this out. The Greens have dropped every issue they ever pretended to care about. Main reason I hear for why people still want to vote for them is lesser-evil-ism or because they feel protective of them against far-right rhetoric. No matter that the Greens are also a nationalist, neoliberal, racist, imperialist, militarist, green-washed ghouls. Main difference between them and straight up conservatives is in rhetoric: the Greens will cry and moan about "having to do" this stuff, and how that's actually good for you. Except with the imperialism, they did the crying and moaning already during Kosovo, now they're on a straight up mission to spread freedom and democracy to the backwards people like they're channeling George W. Bush.