I think our chancellor had gambled on shaming the other EU countries into action. That didn't work.

I've had first-hand experience with refugees since my office shares a building with a make-shift local branch of the federal refugee office. They don't deal with the people themselves, only the forms they send in. Nevertheless refugees come here since the address is on the letterhead and they want to talk somebody. I'm a smoker, so I quite often stand at the entrance, puffing away.

My encounters so far:

1) A family of 4 arrives. Syrians. From Damascus. So they are fleeing Assad and Putin and Iranian soldiers, not ISIS. Oldest daughter(about 8 year old) speaks passable German. Mother heavily pregnant. Father is at a different shelter than the rest of his family. They have been waiting to get back together for weeks. On top of that the mother is worried where she will give birth as she understandably wants to be at a hospital. People at the federal refugee office can't help here since they have no say in that and thusly sent them away without hearing them out. So there is this crying family sitting at my smoking spot and me being me went to them and talked to them. Couldn't help them, either. But at least I could assure the mother that she will give birth at a hospital since that's how this country rolls. So, that was fun. They also had tales of the Turkish border police I will not utter here. Fuck those guys with batons covered with barbed wire. And I'm not coming up with this at random.

2) A couple of times people came because they didn't understand the legalese in the official letters they got from those paper pushers. One encounter stands out. Two guys came. One was here for a bit longer than his friend because he talked to me in German. His friend got a letter that confused him. I told him that it said that he has, as of now, been granted asylum in Germany. He didn't quite grasp the magnitude of it. So I shook his hands, gave him a cigarette and congratulated him. Took some time to sink in since he had waited for 11 months. His next step is to look for jobs, a flat, you name it. His life was on hold for nearly a year. He got to live again.

3) The third encounter was at the gardening shop I go to when I need to replace a houseplant that died through no fault of mine. Nearby is a refugee shelter. There was a father(he had the 1000 yard stare I never want to see in a human being again...like ever) and his little daughter. Just about four or five years old. She clutched a pink bunny like it was the most important thing in her life. I assumed that they wandered into the shop because, frankly, it was November and it was a nice place with pets and flowers and beautiful things. Near the cashing area there is a stand with little plastic animals the daughter eyed. They didn't quite look like they had the money. So I paraded the animals for the daughter. I had assumed she preferred the horse but she picked(after much hesitation) the sea turtle. I bought it and got patted on my back by the other customers for it. Such a small thing. Outside there was a pair of old women bitching about "those dirty refugees". I could have punched them in a way that would have sent their dentures flying and might have messed up their expensive hairdo.

People in this thread argue with numbers, preconceptions and stereotypes. These are people. Millions of them. All with their different stories and different goals and different personalities. The mind boggles if you take these three encounters I told and multiplied them accordingly.

So no. No respect given for Facebook philosophers, amateur statisticians and fans of demagogues. Seriously, fuck those guys. Also, fuck all countries who are not willing to even provide a manger for a pregnant woman while they each and every year have a passion play about how awesome that is. That Christian culture that needs to be defended against Muslim invaders doesn't seem to be worth jack squat when an unorganized agnostic feels this way without God on his back.