OPINION:
The chaos of men, women and children fleeing the horror of the Middle East continues to deepen. With Germany serving as enabler, hundreds of thousands and perhaps soon a million Syrians, Iraqis and others are trying to get to haven in Europe. Germany first said it was willing to take in 800,000 of the dispossessed, and suggested that another 500,000 might be allowed to follow. Like President Obama’s announcement that the United States would not turn away the thousands of “children” crossing the U.S.-Mexico border last year, the German announcement was taken as a green light. The multitudes have been flooding the zone since.
The term “refugee” for the masses breaking down the gates of Europe is not quite accurate. Some are indeed refugees fleeing persecution; Syrian Christians face death by the Islamic State, or ISIS, and so, too, those who have stood up to the barbarians. They have been marked for death, or worse. They are fleeing and only churls and knaves cannot sympathize.
Others, however, aren’t refugees, but migrants. They’re seeking a better life and Europe is more magnet than refuge. Their determination to leave misery and disease is understandable, but they have no claim on the moral obligation felt in the West.
This week Germany tightened border security in the face of projections that a million people might arrive by the end of the year. Hungary, the Netherlands and Denmark are determined to do what they can to turn away the horde of new arrivals. The Hungarians built a temporary fence of razor wire on its border, and said it would dispatch the army if necessary to keep out the seekers of refuge. Danes continued to publish advertisements in Middle Eastern newspapers warning would-be refugees that they weren’t welcome in Denmark.
Germany wants the European Union to impose mandatory quotas so that nations less friendly to refugees must, as a condition of EU membership, open their borders and share the burden of resettling. That suggestion was not welcome, either, in nations suffering high domestic unemployment, sluggish economic growth and living with fear that the EU is a threat to their territorial and cultural identity.
President Obama wants to open this nation’s borders, too, and the first of the refugees and migrants are arriving. Two-dozen Syrians appeared in Baltimore, where they will get jobs and houses to help them get started as prospective Americans. The Obama administration hasn’t done much to enable those already trapped in the city to find work, but is confident it can absorb these new residents. They have come to Baltimore, as a spokesman for the International Rescue Committee told a television reporter, because “they are desperate to seek safety.” Did the authorities check the city’s crime and murder statistics before sending them to Baltimore? The authorities didn’t say.
Events this year in Charm City have put it among the most dangerous of all American cities and finding a job in Baltimore is exceedingly difficult. Minority unemployment is bumping 20 percent, and among young blacks it is higher than that. Black and white alike have been fleeing the city for years, the public schools are in disorder and Baltimore is more hospitable to drug dealers, thugs and gangs than to its police and average folk. The new arrivals from war-torn, dysfunctional and Balkanized places like Syria will feel right at home.
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