Over the weekend, Chancellor Merkel's coalition group (CDU, CSU, and SPD) met and had a long discussion. An agreement was ironed out over the refugee kids in Greece (mostly Syrian and Iraqi).
The deal in the works (signed off apparently, says ARD, German public TV)....says that up to around 1,500 kids who fit the profile of being in extremely ill health, or without parents....will be brought into Germany. It's stipulated in the agreement that they have to be below 14 years old.
Along with this.....125 million Euro is to be shipped over to Greece, to cover camp costs.
So this will end the refugee discussions? No, not really. Will parents with the sick kids agree to split up the family? Maybe in some cases.
The cost of the health care to be provided? Not mentioned but it'll be a government-funded situation.
Opposition to the deal? Some pro-migration groups will say it was marginally a step forward, and many additional steps need to be taken. Some anti-migration groups will say that it'll be repeated again in three or four months.
Here's the thing....in a normal year, there's 250,000 folks who are taken into Germany via various immigrant, refugee or asylum programs. You can go back over thirty years and find the number usually stays in that range. So another 1,500 isn't that big of a deal. There might be complaints over the added cost of supervision (round-the-clock monitors for these kids), and the cost level might shock some people.
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