I’d love to hear someone else’s perspective on this: I oppose this. Vehemently. I think open borders are one of the best things the EU got us and I can’t imagine living without them. But… I’d be...
I’d love to hear someone else’s perspective on this: I oppose this. Vehemently. I think open borders are one of the best things the EU got us and I can’t imagine living without them. But… I’d be lying if I said I didn’t see a pattern of asylum seekers in the recent violent crimes. I hope to fuck that thats media bias or a coincidence, since I’m not one to judge anyone on their place of birth, but the evidence here does make me a bit worried in my position. I don’t want this to be a migration issue, especially because the alt right in Germany is just waiting for stuff like this to push their hate agendas, but… sure seems like they could make that point and not immediately lie.
While I'm sure media bias plays a large role as well, I'm honestly not surprised there's some violent crime on the part of asylum seekers, since they're treated like shit here all the time. White...
While I'm sure media bias plays a large role as well, I'm honestly not surprised there's some violent crime on the part of asylum seekers, since they're treated like shit here all the time. White Germans like to deny this, but there is a ton of racism here even in the more progressive areas, to say nothing of the states that just elected AfD, and it's noticeably getting worse. When I moved here 6 years ago, AfD posters wouldn't stay up in Berlin because people would tear them down. They stay up now. I'm a well-off white immigrant from the US, so I don't get targeted by much of this at all, and I still have occasions when I feel a deep, roiling anger in the pit of my stomach at Germany as a whole due to the way immigrants are treated and spoken about here. How much worse must that be when you have far more limited economic opportunities and people yell "Ausländer raus!" at you in the street -- or worse?
I think adding border controls like this is fucking stupid even if all the anti-asylum seeker rhetoric were true (which I don't think it is), because it completely defeats the purpose of the Schengen Agreement and pisses off all Germany's neighbors for very little gain. I also think home-grown German racism is a much bigger problem here than the highly-publicized incidents of crime committed by asylum seekers.
I would like to know how much this is due to the inefficacies of the German immigration system. Other European countries don't see a spike in immigrant knife crime so the common denominator are...
I would like to know how much this is due to the inefficacies of the German immigration system. Other European countries don't see a spike in immigrant knife crime so the common denominator are german immigrants, not immigrants in general.
The problems around the refugee centers in the Netherlands are also well documented. So this is not entirely accurate. Knife related incidents in Ter Apel are quite common. I still think at least...
The problems around the refugee centers in the Netherlands are also well documented. So this is not entirely accurate. Knife related incidents in Ter Apel are quite common.
I still think at least some part of it is indeed due to the system, and closing the borders is just to score some cheap political points, but the issue seems to not be isolated to Germany.
I understand, and somewhat approve what Germany is doing. I'm consistent with myself since I already posted my opinion a few months ago here :) . (You don't need to click, I'm putting the...
I'm left leaning, and I do not believe in the open door policy. I do believe that communities and groups of people should have the right to self-determination and the right to decide who and who isn't part of their community, and IMHO borders play a part in achieving this. As I said in the linked comment:
This doesn't mean "nobody should get in", just "regulate the flow in the fairest way".
I know that the following point is the same as the far right, and I'm aware that it's easy for me to say sitting in my comfortable arm-chair in safety in France, but I believe that we should do what we can so that people don't have to flee wars, famine, and persecution. The issue is that when the far right says it, they mean "the problem is over there, and we should give them a few cents, and ignore them", when I say it, I mean promoting economic development, democracy and mechanized agriculture by using tax-euros from Europeans. Easier a said than done, but there is a plethora of ways, from the stick (sanctions targeting corrupt ruthless country leaders) to the carrot (tax-euros subsidised training and tools for farmers, tax-euros subsidised small businesses incubators, ...)
For the record, I do believe in Schengen, because I'm a proponent of the Federal States of Europe as one nation, as it is now, without any further expansion. (Even though I think some countries should be kicked-out or pressured into reforming. Yes, you heard it Hungary)
This is what I was saying about the situation, I don't blame Germany, I blame Schengen's failure: (I changed some words to matches with my current comment)
In the 80s, European countries decided that the borders should be moved to the edge of union, thus making the EU the [community] for the borders. This was, in my opinion, a good thing.
The main issue is that the control of these borders was not handed over to this [community] (the EU) [but to part of the community]. So Germany has to control almost no border, except its airports and harbours, while Greece has to guard kilometres of land.
It's easy to blame individual members for violating the Schengen agreement, but I would argue that the Schengen agreement was never designed to be correctly enforced:
Member states have disproportionate burden when controlling external borders. (See my previous Germany vs Greece example)
Many member states have no incentives to control their borders. During the refugee crisis, Greece had to do border control for Syrian refugees headed to Germany and Scandinavia. Right now, Italy has to do all the border control for North African and Sub-Saharan migrants headed to France and Benelux. It's much cheaper to wave them through.
The real issue here is that the Schengen agreement is broken. And member states are just doing what they can do. (re-establish de-facto borders) The agreement can't be fixed. Countries with external borders don't want to handover border control to the EU, because their right-wing governments were elected on the premise of controlling their own borders. Countries without external borders don't want to pay for controlling other countries' border, because they already removed border control from their budget.
I know this is not a popular opinion in amongst left or left-leaning people like me. But I'm always open to discuss, even though I most likely heard many of the counter points already :P
Just to put that into context, Denmark has had like seven years of "temporary" border controls (I have experienced them myself basically every time I've been traveling from Germany to Denmark by...
According to the EU, member states are allowed to temporarily reintroduce controls at the EU’s so-called internal borders in case of a serious threat, such as one to internal security. But it also says border controls should be applied as a last resort in exceptional situations, and must be time-limited.
Just to put that into context, Denmark has had like seven years of "temporary" border controls (I have experienced them myself basically every time I've been traveling from Germany to Denmark by train). Sweden, France, Austria (and, like already mentioned in the AP article, Germany) are among the other countries which had similar "temporary" border controls in place for quite a while now. (Source in Danish)
In late 2023 to early 2024, I've also been using a regional train line which starts in Austria, and this train line already had regular delays due to German border controls.
It might also be useful to look at statistics like the absolute and relative distributions of first-time asylum applications within the EU (but there might be more suitable statistics):
Germany accounted for 31.4 % of all first-time asylum applicants in the EU, with 329 035 applicants registered in 2023. It was followed by Spain (160 460, or 15.3 %), France (145 095, or 13.8 %) and Italy (130 565, or 12.4 %)
Compared with the population of each EU country, the highest number of first-time asylum applicants in 2023 was registered in Cyprus (13 first-time asylum applicants per thousand people), ahead of Austria and Greece (6 each). Less than one first-time asylum applicant per thousand people was registered in Croatia, Denmark, Portugal, Poland, Lithuania, Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary.
Among EU countries, the number of first-time asylum applicants increased in 13 countries in 2023. The largest relative increases, compared with the previous year, were in Latvia (+198.2 %, or 1 080 more first-time asylum seekers in 2023 than in 2022), Greece (+98.8 %, or 28 770 more), Italy (+69.1 %, or 53 365 more) and Germany (+51.1 %, or 111 300 more). The largest decreases were observed in Austria (-49.3 %, or 54 170 less first-time asylum seekers in 2023 than in 2022), Denmark (-47.4 %, or 2 120 less), Malta (-46.4 %, or 425 less), Cyprus (-46.0 %, or 9 930 less) and Lithuania (-43.6 %, or 395 less).
According to this graphic (same source), Poland had fewer first-time asylum applicants in 2022 and 2023 than countries such as Sweden, Romania, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Ireland, and Switzerland, despite having a larger population than all of those. I don't think most of the people who fled Ukraine and who are under temporary protection are counted in that statistic, though, so those numbers might be pretty misleading in a way (maybe someone could find other statistics):
The ratio of temporary protection beneficiaries from Ukraine relative to the EU population was 9.2 per thousand people at the end of July 2024. Czechia (33.9), ahead of Lithuania (27.4) and Poland (26.7), had the highest ratios.
On a related note, the German government is already trying to use the (perceived) threats and incidents mentioned in the Associated Press article to encroach upon civil rights (the government now proposes legislation which would allow police to run biometric surveillance tech (such as facial recognition) on social media platforms and would expand "no knife zones" where police can check and frisk innocent people (in practice especially those who look foreign) without cause). (Source in German)
If a government of social democrats, green party, and libertarians plans to pass this legislation (on top of the additional border controls mentioned in the AP article) in such a hasty manner, I am really not looking forward to what the right-wing anti-EU extremists and conservative christ-democrats have up their sleeves.
The German government says it is cracking down on irregular migration and crime following recent extremist attacks, and plans to extend temporary border controls to all nine of its frontiers next week.
Last month, a deadly knife attack by a Syrian asylum-seeker in Soligen killed three people. The perpetrator claimed to be inspired by the Islamic State group. In June, a knife attack by an Afghan immigrant left a police officer dead and four other people wounded.
The border closures are set to last six months and are threatening to test European unity. Most of Germany’s neighbors are fellow members of the European Union, a 27-country bloc based on the principles of free trade and travel. And Germany — the EU’s economic motor in the heart of Europe — shares more borders with other countries than any other member state.
The Polish prime minister on Tuesday denounced the closures as “unacceptable” and Austria said it won’t accept migrants rejected by Germany.
I’d love to hear someone else’s perspective on this: I oppose this. Vehemently. I think open borders are one of the best things the EU got us and I can’t imagine living without them. But… I’d be lying if I said I didn’t see a pattern of asylum seekers in the recent violent crimes. I hope to fuck that thats media bias or a coincidence, since I’m not one to judge anyone on their place of birth, but the evidence here does make me a bit worried in my position. I don’t want this to be a migration issue, especially because the alt right in Germany is just waiting for stuff like this to push their hate agendas, but… sure seems like they could make that point and not immediately lie.
While I'm sure media bias plays a large role as well, I'm honestly not surprised there's some violent crime on the part of asylum seekers, since they're treated like shit here all the time. White Germans like to deny this, but there is a ton of racism here even in the more progressive areas, to say nothing of the states that just elected AfD, and it's noticeably getting worse. When I moved here 6 years ago, AfD posters wouldn't stay up in Berlin because people would tear them down. They stay up now. I'm a well-off white immigrant from the US, so I don't get targeted by much of this at all, and I still have occasions when I feel a deep, roiling anger in the pit of my stomach at Germany as a whole due to the way immigrants are treated and spoken about here. How much worse must that be when you have far more limited economic opportunities and people yell "Ausländer raus!" at you in the street -- or worse?
I think adding border controls like this is fucking stupid even if all the anti-asylum seeker rhetoric were true (which I don't think it is), because it completely defeats the purpose of the Schengen Agreement and pisses off all Germany's neighbors for very little gain. I also think home-grown German racism is a much bigger problem here than the highly-publicized incidents of crime committed by asylum seekers.
I would like to know how much this is due to the inefficacies of the German immigration system. Other European countries don't see a spike in immigrant knife crime so the common denominator are german immigrants, not immigrants in general.
The problems around the refugee centers in the Netherlands are also well documented. So this is not entirely accurate. Knife related incidents in Ter Apel are quite common.
I still think at least some part of it is indeed due to the system, and closing the borders is just to score some cheap political points, but the issue seems to not be isolated to Germany.
I understand, and somewhat approve what Germany is doing. I'm consistent with myself since I already posted my opinion a few months ago here :) . (You don't need to click, I'm putting the highlights further down in this comment)
I'm left leaning, and I do not believe in the open door policy. I do believe that communities and groups of people should have the right to self-determination and the right to decide who and who isn't part of their community, and IMHO borders play a part in achieving this. As I said in the linked comment:
I know that the following point is the same as the far right, and I'm aware that it's easy for me to say sitting in my comfortable arm-chair in safety in France, but I believe that we should do what we can so that people don't have to flee wars, famine, and persecution. The issue is that when the far right says it, they mean "the problem is over there, and we should give them a few cents, and ignore them", when I say it, I mean promoting economic development, democracy and mechanized agriculture by using tax-euros from Europeans. Easier a said than done, but there is a plethora of ways, from the stick (sanctions targeting corrupt ruthless country leaders) to the carrot (tax-euros subsidised training and tools for farmers, tax-euros subsidised small businesses incubators, ...)
For the record, I do believe in Schengen, because I'm a proponent of the Federal States of Europe as one nation, as it is now, without any further expansion. (Even though I think some countries should be kicked-out or pressured into reforming. Yes, you heard it Hungary)
This is what I was saying about the situation, I don't blame Germany, I blame Schengen's failure: (I changed some words to matches with my current comment)
I know this is not a popular opinion in amongst left or left-leaning people like me. But I'm always open to discuss, even though I most likely heard many of the counter points already :P
Just to put that into context, Denmark has had like seven years of "temporary" border controls (I have experienced them myself basically every time I've been traveling from Germany to Denmark by train). Sweden, France, Austria (and, like already mentioned in the AP article, Germany) are among the other countries which had similar "temporary" border controls in place for quite a while now.
(Source in Danish)
In late 2023 to early 2024, I've also been using a regional train line which starts in Austria, and this train line already had regular delays due to German border controls.
It might also be useful to look at statistics like the absolute and relative distributions of first-time asylum applications within the EU (but there might be more suitable statistics):
(Source of the European Commission)
According to this graphic (same source), Poland had fewer first-time asylum applicants in 2022 and 2023 than countries such as Sweden, Romania, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Ireland, and Switzerland, despite having a larger population than all of those. I don't think most of the people who fled Ukraine and who are under temporary protection are counted in that statistic, though, so those numbers might be pretty misleading in a way (maybe someone could find other statistics):
(source)
On a related note, the German government is already trying to use the (perceived) threats and incidents mentioned in the Associated Press article to encroach upon civil rights (the government now proposes legislation which would allow police to run biometric surveillance tech (such as facial recognition) on social media platforms and would expand "no knife zones" where police can check and frisk innocent people (in practice especially those who look foreign) without cause). (Source in German)
If a government of social democrats, green party, and libertarians plans to pass this legislation (on top of the additional border controls mentioned in the AP article) in such a hasty manner, I am really not looking forward to what the right-wing anti-EU extremists and conservative christ-democrats have up their sleeves.
From the article: