This Chancellor Merkel comment over multiculturalism 'failing'? She made the speech in the last couple of weeks to a youth contingent of the CDU Party, via a party conference in Potsdam. It was lightly covered in German public news, but often stated via international news networks.
It was a carefully worded statement....not to slam immigrants/migrants themselves, or the Bundestag, or even herself. She even hinted....the leadership didn't really believe that the migrants would come, and stay (note the combination in the wording). Then she kinda ended her speech with the comment that better assimilation needs to occur.
So, a reality check? I would offer these eight observations:
1. One of the parts of her speech tied into something that the former German President (Wulff) had said....that Islam was 'part' of Germany, in the same way as Judaism or Christianity was.
I might go and suggest that religions in any western nation (doesn't matter what type you use)....has to revolve around the state existing, a constitutional commitment of the general public, and overall respect for fellow members of the nation (not necessary the religion itself). Without the state....without the Constitutional respect, and without public trust....there is no freedom (particularly of religion).
2. There were two distinctive paths requiring the government to facilitate entry and a granted visa: wartime refugees (which the Syrians and Iraqis easily fitted into), and economic migrants (virtually everyone else). The German bureaucracy failed to grasp that, and began to allow secondary categories to exist with the wartime refugees (persecuted Afghans/Pakistanis).
Unlike the normal review and visa-issue rules before 2012......where you had to apply in your home-country and providing a regular ID/passport, now it was a secondary thing with the guy, gal, or family actually sitting in Germany itself, and often winking at the guy to profess that you didn't have an ID or passport.
In some ways, without thinking much about it....Germany made itself into a third-world republic, and the bureaucrats were simply juvenile kids pretending to be officials.
3. Blaming the crime situation upon those who came after 2013? That has been a rather stupid and childish way of handing the situation.
You could go and blame various crime clans/gangs now existing on various groups (Lebanese, Serbs, Russians, Albanians, Italians, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, and Romanian).
Suggesting integration on their part? No, they had crime agendas and political chatter has zero effect upon them.
4. The fact that an enormous number of new migrants simply disappeared into large metropolitan regions (Berlin, Frankfurt, Dusseldorf, Hamburg, etc)?
They found cluster groups to mingle with, and integration can be said...in simple fashion....as 'hit and miss'. You find some towns that absorbed 300 migrants over the past five years and 90-percent became integrated. You can find other cities where the programs were doomed from the start, and maybe only half of the migrants lifted themselves into an accepted level of integration.
5. The north African failed path? The pass-visa rates for most North Africans (mostly all men) back in 2016 was around 5-to-10 percent. The other 90-percent failed. Getting them to accept this reality and return to the homeland? That's made the whole process into a child-like game.
Without much hope on an appeal and change of visa....these people usually drift over to crime, disappear into urbanized communities or just move onto another EU country.
6. The idea of all migrants happy with fellow migrants? Oh please....that's such a joke. You can walk into a situation where Kurds are on one side of the room and Turks on the other....they won't mingle or accept either in 'trust'. You have various groups which can't function in a team-situation.
7. If you mingle in the public, Germans would like to go and 'fire' someone.....blame someone....for all of the incompetence demonstrated. They can't fire Merkel. They can seem to fire any Bundestag member. So the public belief is that you need to send a signal.....so they vote for the AfD Party.
All this hostility by CDU members, SPD folks, the Green Party, and journalists.....over the AfD? All you have to do is find the party guilty of the problems, and fire several members of their group, with them taking public shame (like the Japanese often do). But since no one wants that.....well, the AfD is the next best thing.
Here's the sad thing....I don't think the AfD Party has yet to peak out....which means there's still some hostile feeling brewing in the public.
8. Finally....a great deal of public negative sentiment goes back to the Koln New Year's Eve business of 2015. The city police leadership didn't want to admit the police reports turned in (1,000-plus for the evening), the involvement of so many North African young men, etc. Journalists from public TV (ARD and ZDF) didn't want to tell the story....up until the moment that the public said 'we lost respect for your brand of journalism'.
That next sixty days changed the whole prospective of accepting migrants and suggested that public safety was no longer a guaranteed thing.
The removal of the police chief? That was about as far as anyone was willing to go. The mayor and state premier all stayed around. Everyone just hoped that the public would forget the evening.
In some ways, I think that both Merkel and the coalition (the CDU and SPD) need to go away, and some massive political change needs to occur (avoiding the AfD dilemma). But with the national election in 2021, and political 'slant' as it is presently, it just leaves you shaking your head. There is no exit path....it's just more winding roads, and public discontent.
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