re: #247 HappyWarrior

Yep it’s the same thing. I was really bummed that my brother was too exhausted in Germany to visit a concentration camp site but he did have a moment where he witnessed casual racism towards the Romani that I think he’s thought about and maybe made him a little more aware of prejudice.

Germany has taken on record numbers of refugees, which I find to be an admirable act. If they made any mistake in doing so, it was in not pressuring the rest of Europe to do take more; as it is those other nations really took undue advantage of Germany.

I would have found it reasonable for Germany to insist that the refugee issue be approached as an EU issue to be dealt with jointly by all member states, and agreed to take a maximum percentage based on their share of the population and/or GDP, which would still have left them with the biggest share.

Unfortunately, they did not and it has led to a bit of a backlash and contributed to the right-wing nationalist anti-immigrant AfD getting 13% of the vote and seats in Parliament.

A common complaint heard here is “We don’t have money for our own homeless and poor, how come we are taking on all these refugees?” to which a German leftist politician answered, “Even without refugees, we still wouldn’t find enough money for our poor and homeless!”