The German coalition partners agreed to let in “only” 220,000 migrants per year. The folllowing is an original translation of a sarcastic op-ed at Achse des Guten:

Grand Coalition imports welfare city – each year

Katharina Szabo
January 15, 2018

One of the „killer“ obstacles, that was now cleared out-of-the-way in the exploratory negotiations of the old and new government was the question of migration to Germany. The refugee crisis was over, they let it be known today, the government regained control. A situation like 2015 would not repeat, SPD and Union [CDU + CSU] promised.

And they can. The right-wing-populist hellholes Hungary and Austria will, just like in previous years, see to that. At the most, so the reassuring message, from now on no more than 220,000 migrants per year may enter, to forever settle in our social security system.

How did they arrive at this number? Why 220,000 people, one might ask, why exactly this number? „We agree that our society’s capability to integrate should not be overstrained“, declared the future coalition partners the set maximum limit. So this means that our society can integrate this number of migrants each year, without being overstrained. We are a people of roughly 83 million people, so 220,000 more per year should carry no weight. We can do this, can’t we?

Regensburg has about 150,000 inhabitants. Erfurt a bit more than 200,000. Freiburg has got about 230,000 inhabitants. This seems about right.

You can rely on Merkel, Schulz and Seehofer
So, in order to keep up the current status quo regarding inner safety, administration, public transport, housing, education, health care, roads, etc., and to be able to easily integrate 220,000 migrants per year and not only integrate them, but also house them, school them, feed them, and care for them in case of illness, we will only have to do the following:

Each year, we will build a new city, of the size of Freiburg, supply it with housing, hospitals, schools, public transport, police offices, kindergartens, recreational parks, sports areas, social welfare offices and the corresponding staff. We can do this. Our future government will surely have thoroughly thought this through, it can’t be that they made the number up from thin air.

Some naysayers and xenophobes might feel doubts at this point. A city of the size of Freiburg? Inhabited by welfare recipients? Each year? Is that possible? Of course it is. Merkel, Schulz and Seehofer did the maths. How else would they say that the limit of what is possible was exactly 220,000 new arrivals per year, without any sort of overstraining resulting from it?

To claim that the number of 220,000 came about because this was about the number of people who come anyway, with a little bit of room, and that Merkel, Schulz and Seehofer weren’t doing anything while they pretend they were busy –
and to claim that no one had thought it through if it was possible to get a welfare Freiburg straight each year, without having your hut on fire in about 10 years – to say so, even to think so, would be just a malicious assumption. Seriously.

PS: if it stays the envisaged 220,000. The European Parliament wants to change the Dublin rule: family reunification is to be prioritized.

“Wir schaffen das”, we can do this, is a sentence that Angela Merkel famously said on the Federal Press Conference on August 31., 2015, regarding the refugee crisis and the intake of migrants. The sentence, which she repeated a few times since, has become the icon of German “Willkommenskultur”, welcome culture.