Residents of Sumte attended a meeting on Wednesday to discuss the plan to move migrants from Africa and the Middle East to their village. Credit Gordon Welters for The New York Times
NYT: German Village of 102 Braces for 750 Asylum Seekers
SUMTE, Germany — This bucolic, one-street settlement of handsome redbrick farmhouses may for the moment have many more cows than people, but next week it will become one of the fastest growing places in Europe. Not that anyone in Sumte is very excited about it.
In early October, the district government informed Sumte’s mayor, Christian Fabel, by email that his village of 102 people just over the border in what was once Communist East Germany would take in 1,000 asylum seekers.
His wife, the mayor said, assured him it must be a hoax. “It certainly can’t be true” that such a small, isolated place would be asked to accommodate nearly 10 times as many migrants as it had residents, she told him. “She thought it was a joke,” he said.
WNU Editor: When the whole community shows up at a local hall looking shell shocked (see the above pic) .... you know that this is not going to end well. This reminds me of what happened in my own community 5 years ago (LaSalle, Quebec/Canada). The local and federal authorities wanted to convert a school into a housing complex that would house a few hundred immigrant families/refugees .... and primarily from Haiti (this was right after the Haitian earthquake). I live far away from the propose project, but a friend of mine wanted me to come with him to City Hall for a town meeting ... so off I went. I have never seen anything like it .... the place was packed with hundreds of primarily middle aged white French Quebecers who were beyond angry that the politicians would want to do this in their own community. The mayor who was an avid supporter of the plan fled the place, but the Federal MP stayed and argued with everyone on why they should accept this plan. Needless to say ... within a year both politicians were voted out overwhelmingly, and the plan was dropped. This ... I predict .... is what is going to happen to German Chancellor Merkel and her allies when they face the voters in the coming years. Politics is always local .... and the EU migration crisis is now impacting the local communities ... especially those who are now realizing that they are in no position to accommodate the desires of a politician who does not live in the community, nor cares about what they may be facing.
3 comments:
Yes Merkel and her people may well get voted out but then what are they going to do with the immigrants that are already there?
Ah, the problem with democratic elections - it is always someone else's problem to clean up.
"The local and federal authorities"
Maybe that should read "the local and feudal authorities"
Elections mean less and less. It takes a surge to overcome vote fixing.
Even when you surge and upset the arty set up the parties seem to be somewhat in collusion. It has been described as "the combine" or "2 card monte"
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