In 2015 when Angela Merkel, the former center-right chancellor of Germany, declined to shut her country’s doors to asylum seekers coming into Europe, she garnered bouquets from liberals, but also hoots from the far right and grumbling from European neighbors miffed that Germany was unilaterally taking the high ground without taking their interests into account.
Nine years later, the tables have turned. In September, the government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, a center-left Social Democrat, ordered border controls along Germany’s wide-open western and northern borders to catch undocumented immigrants. The controls were already in force along the eastern and southern borders with Poland, the Czech Republic, Austria and Switzerland, but as of Sept. 16 they were extended to the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Denmark and France.
Again, the neighbors fumed. Here was Germany once again breaking European solidarity — this time along the low road — when the whole of the European Union was feeling overwhelmed by a rising tide of immigrants from the Middle East, Africa and, most recently, Ukraine.
Germany was the country that had declared they should all be let in — “Wir schaffen das” (“We can do this”) was Ms. Merkel’s grand promise in 2015. But now that immigration had become an acute political problem for Berlin, the Germans were pushing unwanted refugees back into neighboring countries that had just as little interest, and no greater responsibility, for taking them in.
The mass migration of people seeking refuge from war and poverty in prosperous democracies has become a major challenge of the 21st century. While it has posed differing and often real problems in different parts of North America and Europe, a common repercussion has been the rise of far-right movements, which feed popular — and often misguided — fears of invading alien tribes stealing jobs and benefits, spreading terrorism and crime and diluting national cultures and identities. The far right recently scored big in elections to the European Parliament and in France, and immigration is a primary weapon in Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
Germany, Europe’s economic powerhouse and a state with generous social services, has been a prime destination for refugees. Their number reached a record 3.48 million refugees and others fleeing conflict, including Ukrainians, as of the end of June, by far the most of any European state. The public has reacted accordingly. A recent poll in Germany found that 44 percent of respondents said migration and refugees are the country’s most pressing problem, and about 77 percent said Germany needed a change in its policies.
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