Testing the Limits: How Many Refugees Can Germany Handle?

[unhappycamper]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/germany-being-tested-by-huge-refugee-influx-a-1045560.html



More Germans than ever before are at ease with themselves and their asylum-seekers. But this year the country is expecting to receive around 400,000 new refugees, a figure that raises the painful question: Can Germany's new welcoming culture handle it?

Testing the Limits: How Many Refugees Can Germany Handle?
By SPIEGEL Staff
July 30, 2015 – 11:54 PM

Anyone wondering about the state of the nation in Germany would be well advised to take a ride on the A33 highway and get off at the very last exit in Bielefeld, in northwestern Germany. The state of the nation is now encapsulated in a property in the city's Brackwede neighborhood. A few weeks ago, the name of the street would have been worth mentioning. But now it doesn't seem like a good idea.

The property is the site of a four-story addition with room for 200 asylum-seekers, complete with a dining room with floor-to-ceiling, soundproof windows and white-tiled bathrooms. Everything is state-of-the-art. The building even has the same kind of stand-up toilets made from stainless steel that are so often found in Mediterranean countries -- the kind your typical asylum-seeker from that region is accustomed to.

If ever a building epitomized Germany's architecture of goodwill or its welcoming culture for asylum-seekers, this is it. But it comes at a time when Germans' fears of that welcoming culture are also building. The new wing isn't finished yet. Completion is scheduled for Aug. 1. That's why for the past six weeks, security guards have been patrolling the construction site day and night, on the lookout for anyone trying to burn the place down before the first asylum-seekers can move in.

Jürgen Beier, the facility's manager, couldn't have imagined any of this a year ago, when the foundation was laid for the new addition to the existing refugee hostel. But today, in the summer of 2015, it's a different story with the number of people seeking asylum here rising sharply. It's not like anyone has sprayed graffiti on the walls or sent threatening letters. On the contrary, women from the local parish show up every day to play "Memory" and the beloved boardgame, "Sorry," with the refugee children.

[bemildred]

1. Probably a heck of a lot more than Greece and Italy. nt