Merkel slams new fascist movement in New Year's address

[salm]

Housing situation was tolerable until the last year.

Housing situation has been intolerable for a long time. I wonder if it has ever been tolerable at all.
Here is an article about a reporter team moving into a refugee home for a month from 2012 for example.
Link

Building new houses would take time. My preferred solution is housing them in units we don't currently use...throwing money at the problem is also a bit of a raw deal considering one cannot just write blank checks. I am not sure the solution will be that easy, not with many municipalities having little extra room anyway. Housing prices are on the up all over Germany....I guess we could relocate them all to the east but there is no way the politicians there will play ball.

I think identifying where housing is relatively cheap and unused and renting them places there would be the best solution and that is the way it would be done normally.

Nobody is asking for a solution over night. It is obvious that it would take time. However, I don´t think much is going to happen because these people have no lobby, no power and there are not enough people with voting power (i.e. Germans) who give a fuck about them. In fact, a lot of people are outright hostile towards refugees, even their neighbors, so there is little incentive for politicians to act.

Now, the costs for refugees are not really that high. With about 1 billion € per year they are not a major issue. Compared to the 20 billion for Hartz 4 or the estimated 30 to 100 billion lost due to tax fraud it isn´t that much. It should be possible to vastly improve the refugees sitation without devastating the economy.
In the long run I think it would be a net gain anyway because decently integrated refugees will work and pay taxes whereas badly integrated refugees will live on wellfare for ever. But too many Germans don´t care about numbers and just think that the refugees are freeloading assholes or at least that they should be thankfull for the shitholes they get thrown into so integration is going to fail. Just like integration has allways been failing in Germany. Our society is bad at this integration thing and I don´t expect it to change.

Temporary = longer than a year. That´s more than enough time to turn a perfectly fine Syrian automechanic or chemist into a desperate small time criminal. If you add the years after approval this gets even worse.

Why? That does not follow at all. They get enough to eat and free housing. That should be enough to deter them from turning into a criminal.

It doesn´t follow for all of course. But bad housing circumstances, boredom, living in legal limbo cause frustration and make it more likely for some people to turn to crime. This is nothing unique to refugees it happens in badly designed and maintained social housing complexes all the time.

I disagree. We cannot just shorten a process that has already been streamlined in the past. Heck it has been streamlined to the point that only one single person has to agree with their story. How can you further streamline it?

I don´t know if the process can be made quicker. On the other hand, isn´t that exactly what politicians are suggesting at the moment. The CSU has wants to streamline the process according to the Swiss model for example. BWs Minister Kretschmann has been talking about it recently as well.
All of this sounds good to me but it remains to be seen if something is going to happen or if its just hollow talk to ride on the waves of opposing PEGIDA. As soon as the waves have smoothed they´ll probably just go back to the status quo.

[Thanas]

Housing situation was tolerable until the last year.

Housing situation has been intolerable for a long time. I wonder if it has ever been tolerable at all.
Here is an article about a reporter team moving into a refugee home for a month from 2012 for example.
Link

Jeesus. To be honest, I was unaware of this situation in Hessen. It certainly wasn't the situation in Bremen.

Now, the costs for refugees are not really that high. With about 1 billion € per year they are not a major issue. Compared to the 20 billion for Hartz 4 or the estimated 30 to 100 billion lost due to tax fraud it isn´t that much. It should be possible to vastly improve the refugees sitation without devastating the economy.

We got about 4-5 million of Hartz IV recipients. So if we scale that to 200k refugees it would be somewhere to 1 billion already - which is what we are already spending. So spending levels seem to be on about the same level already.

In the long run I think it would be a net gain anyway because decently integrated refugees will work and pay taxes whereas badly integrated refugees will live on wellfare for ever.

Agreed.

Our society is bad at this integration thing and I don´t expect it to change.

Agreed.

It doesn´t follow for all of course. But bad housing circumstances, boredom, living in legal limbo cause frustration and make it more likely for some people to turn to crime. This is nothing unique to refugees it happens in badly designed and maintained social housing complexes all the time.

Yes, but the problem is what to do here. Should we just accept all and hope for the best? What is the better system?

I don´t know if the process can be made quicker. On the other hand, isn´t that exactly what politicians are suggesting at the moment. The CSU has wants to streamline the process according to the Swiss model for example. BWs Minister Kretschmann has been talking about it recently as well.

The swiss model is notorious for its hard line. I don't know why you would even support it. For example, unless you can show actual state documents proving your identity and your claim, you will get nothing and be thrown out. Heck, in one famous swiss case, they actually demanded to see identity papers first, then argued that since the state had issued the guy a passport he possibly could not have been persecuted there and promptly ordered him back to his country, where he was then imprisoned and tortured. Good going there, swiss.

No wonder the cretins of the CSU want to adopt it, as it would allow them to throw out people at will.

All of this sounds good to me

The swiss model sounds fucking horrible to me. Much more horrible than what we have now.

but it remains to be seen if something is going to happen or if its just hollow talk to ride on the waves of opposing PEGIDA. As soon as the waves have smoothed they´ll probably just go back to the status quo.

Hopefully not.

[Thanas]

@Broomstick: The problem with the US is not the principle, it is the execution. I highly suggest you read all of this.

[Broomstick]

It doesn´t follow for all of course. But bad housing circumstances, boredom, living in legal limbo cause frustration and make it more likely for some people to turn to crime. This is nothing unique to refugees it happens in badly designed and maintained social housing complexes all the time.

Yes, but the problem is what to do here. Should we just accept all and hope for the best? What is the better system?

I think integration is something every nation struggles with. We certainly do over here in the US.

Refugees are, of course, people and like everyone else there are bad guys and good guys in every group. The ability to adapt, to learn to a new language and customs, varies from one person to another. This can be really frustrating to the sort of person who wants a one-size-fits-all approach to social problems.

For every success story over here, like the Lost Boys of the Sudan who, generally, have done well in this country, we have less successful groups like the Hmong, whose first generation had so many problems that some of the men were literally dropping dead from the stress (those born and raised here have done better). Certainly, we've learned that different sorts of refugees need different sorts of support. We have a great resource in the form of former refugees and their descendants to help newcomers, not sure Germany has that sort of cultural resource which takes a couple generations to build up.

Fact is, what an adult refugee from, say, Soviet Russia needed is vastly different than that needed by a Sudanese minor. It certainly involves more than simply a roof overhead and food to eat. (For the Sudanese it started with "This is a light switch. Here is how it works." Seriously, they had to be taught how to operate a normal house. This isn't a problem with refugees from most other parts of the world.)

It's not always a matter of cultural distance, either - South Korea lavishes quit a bit on North Korean refugees but, despite having a shared language and a shared history prior to 1950 North Korean refugees struggle in South Korea and have a great deal of trouble integrating.

I don't think Europe (collectively, not just Germany) does as well as the New World at accepting newcomers, but then, the nations of the New World have had several centuries of people dumped on their shores, people fleeing from elsewhere, etc. They're all patchwork quilts, melting pots, chopped fruit salads, whatever metaphor you care to name. The countries over here have been forced to adapt to newcomers. Europe hasn't done much of that until recently. Sure, you had people moving to Europe from elsewhere but in nowhere near the numbers Europeans are trying to take in over the recent decades. I'd like everyone to do a better job at it, to be honest, but even if there are serious flaws in a nation's system I can still recognize that some progress has been made.

[Patroklos]

Take refugees from Afghanistan. Germany has taken in over 31 thousand. The US has taken in about 1000. Even Russia has taken in more Afghani refugees than we have. Asylum seekers from Afghanistan. 130 for the US, over 15 thousand in Germany. From Syria, we have taken in 1400 refugees and 367 asylum seekers. Germany has taken in 18000 and 6000 respectively.

Yeah, just a cursory google search shows just your Afghan numbers are off by many times. Where did you get that number? The below article reports over 5,000 visas issued to Afghans under the SIV process this past October alone.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ ... story.html

[Broomstick]

Given that the US was at war with Afghanistan many Afghanis may not have wanted to come to the US. Germany might have been seen as a relatively safe haven, and if the Germans were willing so much the better. I wouldn't be surprised if that accounts for some of the numbers.

[Patroklos]

It’s also easier for them to physically show up there and claim asylum. Not easy mind you, just easier.

[salm]

The swiss model is notorious for its hard line. I don't know why you would even support it. For example, unless you can show actual state documents proving your identity and your claim, you will get nothing and be thrown out. Heck, in one famous swiss case, they actually demanded to see identity papers first, then argued that since the state had issued the guy a passport he possibly could not have been persecuted there and promptly ordered him back to his country, where he was then imprisoned and tortured. Good going there, swiss.

No wonder the cretins of the CSU want to adopt it, as it would allow them to throw out people at will.

Ah, yes, I have to admit that I don´t know anything about the Swiss model. It sounds reasonable that the CSU idiots would support a "tough" approach.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Take refugees from Afghanistan. Germany has taken in over 31 thousand. The US has taken in about 1000. Even Russia has taken in more Afghani refugees than we have. Asylum seekers from Afghanistan. 130 for the US, over 15 thousand in Germany. From Syria, we have taken in 1400 refugees and 367 asylum seekers. Germany has taken in 18000 and 6000 respectively.

Yeah, just a cursory google search shows just your Afghan numbers are off by many times. Where did you get that number? The below article reports over 5,000 visas issued to Afghans under the SIV process this past October alone.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ ... story.html

http://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs ... estination

That data is as of 2012, with a new SIV program, I do expect the number has gone up.