01/01/2015
In my most recent report on the
Pegida phenomenon, I noted that the mainstream politicians seemed to have dived for cover. It was at the time very difficult to find any response from the likes of Merkel or her close associates to the latest round of demonstrations.
At least, though, Merkel has
remedied this in her New Year's address, branding the Pegida group "pinstripe Nazis", with leaders "rooted in prejudice, coldness, and hatred". Dismissing the group's slogan, "We are the people", she claimed it actually meant: "You're not one of us - because of your skin colour or your religion".
In her wide-ranging speech, Merkel touched on crises such as West Africa's Ebola outbreak and the conflicts in Ukraine and Iraq and Syria, where the Islamic State group "brutally murders all those people who refuse to submit to its rule".
"One consequence of these wars and crises", she added, "is that worldwide there are more refugees than we have seen since the second world war. Many literally escaped death".
Then, in an obvious rebuke to Pegida, she declared that: "It goes without saying that we help them and take in people who seek refuge with us", referring to the estimated 200,000-odd asylum seekers who have come this year to Europe's biggest economy to ask for a safe haven.
Asserting that immigration was "a gain for all of us", she then mentioned a recent case of a Kurdish refugee who had settled in Germany, saying that it is "perhaps the biggest compliment" for the country to call it a place "where the children of the persecuted can grow up without fear".
Thus we have as clear a statement as can be made on what was the issue of the year for the UK, and climbing rapidly up the political agenda in Germany as well â immigration.
And what amounts to an open declaration of war against Pegida, Merkel has drawn a clear, uncompromising political line, which has had AfD
come out in defence of the movement.
"She looks down and condemns people she doesn't know anything about", complains Alexander Gauland, AfD Group Chairman in the Brandenburg State Parliament, warning that the Chancellor's criticism will bring the group "even more popularity" than it has previously enjoyed.
With a speech that was finalised some days ago and leaked to the press well in advance, though, one wonders whether her response might have been different had the Blue Sky M" incident happened a few days earlier.
This is the Moldovan-flagged cargo ship, outbound from Korfez, Turkey, a small port town just east of Istanbul, its declared destination Croatia, but with an undeclared manifest comprising nearly 1,000 migrants, many of them from war-torn Syria.
In what is a brazen challenge to the European migration system, what appear to have been people traffickers navigated the ship to the vicinity of Corfu and, while the ship was still in Greek waters, set a course for Italy and abandoned ship.
Once in Italian waters, the hard-pressed Italian coastguards found a ship with the engine-room locked and the autopilot set to ram the ship onshore in the Puglia region, heedless of the safety of its passengers. The coastguards took control of the ship and brought it safely to the port of Gallipoli, on the "heel" of Italy.
Four dead were initially reported, but this seems to have been an error. The passengers, numbering approximately 970, have been disembarked and taken to an empty school in the town, as asylum seekers, making over 2,5000 of such who have sought asylum since Christmas day and topping 160,000 for the year.
The point here is that no system can cope with this sort of influx. For all Merkel's preening, in the first half of 2014, the German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees
granted refugee status to only 11,828 asylum seekers, out of 60,000 requests, with (then) 112,000 requests still to process.
With an estimated 200,000 applications by the year end, only a fraction of those will be approved but,
as it stands, the backlog is over 100,000 and it is taking over seven months to process individual applications.
Meanwhile, there are reports that Germany's infrastructure for housing asylum seekers is showing signs of buckling under the pressure, with conditions deteriorating at overcrowded refugee shelters.
New asylum seekers are required to live in a short-term shelter for up to three months after they file their asylum applications. Afterwards, they are supposed to be moved into longer-term accommodation or, in some states, a private apartment, but the shortage of such housing is resulting in longer stays at increasingly over-stretched temporary shelters.
At a Hamburg shelter on Schnackenburgallee, which currently houses about 1,200 asylum seekers, just over 300 were living in tents as of mid-October. Most of the others were forced to live in shipping containers converted into small living spaces with four or five beds.
And if Germany is struggling, there is plenty of evidence that Italy, a smaller and less wealthy country, has long ceased to cope. As a first receiving country under the EU's "Dublin III" regulations, Italy is responsible for processing the asylum seekers that land on its territory.
The country, however, appear to be implementing policies which have the effect of undermining the regulations. Camps set up to receive asylum seekers prior to processing are reported to be primitive, and the treatment of migrants
is described as "appalling".
There are
suggestions that security is lax and there is little to prevent them escaping and travelling to other countries. In fact, "escape"
seems to be encouraged, with some asylum seekers being given food and water and allowed to travel to destinations of their choice.
Some of these find their way to Calais and thence to the UK where they are then housed in temporary accommodation under what is known as the "
Compass" scheme.
But even in the UK there is little room for complacency or even any sense opf superiority. With nearly 20,000 refugees in long-term accommodation, reports abound of
sub-standard conditions, and of
illegality and abuse.
For all that, asylum seekers â despite their high profile and visibility â are a smaller part of the overall immigration surge. For instance, in the year ending
June 2014, 54,000 non-EU nationals immigrated to the UK to accompany or join family members already in the country. The largest proportion came from Pakistan. In addition, there were also 37,315 grants of extension [to permission to stay] for family-related reasons.
Furthermore, there is more trouble waiting in the wings. Under European law, EEA nationals do not need to obtain documentation confirming their right of residence in the UK.
However, if they want to support an application for a residence card by any of their family members who are not EEA nationals, they must demonstrate that they are residing in the UK in accordance with the Immigration (European Economic Area) Regulations 2006 and are "exercising Treaty rights" in the UK.
In 2013, there were 102,006 decisions on applications for EEA residence documents, 22 percent (18,362) more than in 2012. Grants of permanent residence cards have shown a generally rising trend between 2007 (7,623) and 2013 (22,463).
Thus, we continue into the New Year with the immigration issue already a high profile and which, in an election year, can only intensify. The big question is which of the political parties will be most damaged by the issue, and which will actually gain.
With that, I wish all our readers, friends, allies and supporters, a Happy and prosperous New Year, and end this piece with a promise that we will continue to cover relevant events in detail, and provide information and analysis to support the ongoing political debate.
Best wishes to you all.
