Germany open to 500,000 refugees each year

as crisis grows on continent

More than 332,000 people have reached Europe so far this year.

By Griff Witte, Michael Birnbaum and Anthony Faiola-September 8

BUDAPEST The collision of exasperated migrants with overwhelmed authorities

created chaotic scenes Tuesday at choke points up and down the route being traveled
by tens of thousands of people seeking refuge in Western Europe.
From the idyllic Greek islands to the fertile plains of southern Hungary, a pileup of
people impatient to cross seas and borders produced tense standoffs and desperate
flights as migrants sought to bypass registration systems that have broken down amid
the crush of new arrivals.
As police looked on at the Serbian-Hungarian border, hundreds of people dashed into
a cornfield rather than sleep another night on the patch of dirt where they had been
confined while they waited to be registered.
Nashat Murad, a 28-year-old lawyer from Damascus, evaded police altogether by
slipping over coils of razor wire, leaving his fingers covered in bright red puncture

wounds.
Just let us cross to Germany, he said as he jostled with other migrants to board a
westbound train at the Budapest station. Weve already suffered a lot.

The refugee crisis spiraled as European leaders prepared to wrangle over a plan that
observers say will almost surely fall short.
On Wednesday, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker is set to
propose a quota system for relocating 120,000 asylum seekers from the front-line
nations of Greece, Italy and Hungary and spreading them across Europe, according to

European accounts of the draft plans.

With Germany promising to make room for up to 500,000 new refugees a year,
Chancellor Angela Merkel urged neighbors Tuesday to expand havens for desperate
asylum seekers even as Europe remains divided over the crisis.
Germanys increasingly open-door policies reflect just one side of the struggle to
handle the latest waves of migrants, including many from violence-battered Iraq and
Syria. Other nations have moved in the other direction, seeking to block borders or
push migrants ahead to the next country.
The escalating humanitarian crisis has sharply tested European cooperation and
fundamental policies such as open frontiers and tolerance for the mainly Muslim
newcomers.
Speaking in Berlin, Merkel and Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lfven backed the
quota system for asylum seekers to be shared among the 28 nations of the European
Union.

Object 1

German Chancellor Angela Merkel says Europe must implement a joint

system for dealing with migrants and agree to quotas. (Reuters)
[Gallery: Images almost the migrant trail]
But several nations remain deeply opposed to a quota and have blamed countries
such Germany and Sweden for generous asylum policies they claim entice migrants to
make the risky trips to reach European shores.
A joint statement last week by the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland
called the quota proposal unacceptable. On Tuesday, Polands president, Andrzej
Duda, claimed some European leaders were locked in a closed circle by seeking
stopgap solutions rather than plotting long-term strategies to ease the migrant flow.
Germany, Europes top economic power, is taking in the largest number of asylum

seekers, with smaller Sweden taking in the largest per capita.

We should be clear and to the point, Merkel said. I am deeply convinced that this is
task that will decide whether we maintain our European values. The entire world is
watching us.
Merkels comments came after her vice chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel, braced Germans
for what could be half a million refugees a year for several years.
I believe we could surely deal with something on the order of half a million for several
years, Gabriel told broadcaster ZDF late Monday night.
The crush of migrants, meanwhile, showed no signs of easing.
A ship crammed with thousands of migrants docked in the Greek port of Piraeus near
Athens. Greek authorities also rushed to send help to the island of Lesbos off the
Turkish coast, where 20,000 migrants have been growing increasingly frustrated by
the long wait in squalid conditions for a ferry to the mainland.
[For six migrants, Europe offers last hope ]
Further up the route traveled by the majority of migrants entering the continent, a
record 7,000 Syrians reached the Greek border with Macedonia, the U.N. refugee
agency reported Tuesday. Greek television broadcast chaotic scenes as migrants
struggled to cross.
And on the border between Hungary and Serbia, migrants slept in an open field after
clashing with police the day before. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who
ousted his defense minister late Monday over a missed deadline for building a border
fence, told the newspaper Magyar Idok that the government would speed up
construction.
Gabriel said other European nations need to do more to address the crisis, even as
Britain and France two nations criticized for not doing enough pledged to take in
tens of thousands of asylum seekers.
Germany the nation taking in the lions share, an estimated 800,000 by years end
has continued to lead the way. The government pledged Monday to hire 3,000 more
police officers and spend $6.7 billion more to address the crisis, including emergency
housing for 150,000 people.
[Watch: Migrants versus police on the Hungarian border]
Germany responded to the criticism Monday by announcing a reduction in cash
handouts for asylum seekers during their initial months of processing, instead saying it
would offer them more food stamps and in-kind aid.
Berlin also said it would push to have western Balkan countries such as Kosovo
declared safe in a bid to weed out the many thousands of migrants now claiming
asylum from countries not at war.
The German maneuvers reflected the complex nature of Europes migrant crisis, in

which desperate Syrians and Iraqis are searching for sanctuary in the wealthy
countries of Europes core along with a host of economic migrants pouring in from
countries as far-flung as Pakistan and Bangladesh.
We want to reduce the number of pull factors, and I think its a big step forward that
we have consensus in our government to reduce the monetary benefits for those
seeking asylum, said Stephan Mayer, a German national lawmaker and home affairs
spokesman for the Christian Social Union, part of Merkels ruling coalition.
In the crowded refugee centers across this nation of 81 million people, asylum seekers
have conceded that they have come to Germany because it is doing more to help than
other nations in the region.
Mohammed Mazher Alkilany, 28, a former public relations consultant for the Damascus
tourism board who is living in a temporary shelter in east Berlin, said his family of three
is living on 233 euros ($260) a month provided by the government a sum he
described as too little to cover the cost of warm clothes and blankets for the coming
winter.
[Far from crisis, Japanese ponder whether to make room for migrants]
But they are also living in free temporary housing in a building outfitted with a
playground and rooms with shared kitchens, bathrooms and washing machines. He
insisted, though, that he did not come to Germany simply for its generous benefits.
I came here because Germany is safe; there is no war, he said. Germany is the
best in Europe. France is no good. You cannot get language classes there. But in
Germany you can learn the language for free.
Although Sweden is offering similar aid, he said it was too far away, it is very cold,
and it is always night there.
A few European nations have been willing to set up operations to legally and safely
bring, for example, Syrian refugees directly from bordering nations such as Turkey and
Lebanon. But they have put strict limits on numbers, with all 28 E.U. nations offering
just over 53,000 such spots since 2013, according to U.N. figures. That is a drop in the
ocean compared with the more than 4 million Syrian refugees.
Instead, European nations have preferred to deal with asylum seekers only at the
point when they are politically forced to after the refugees physically cross their
borders. Analysts say accepting asylum seekers directly from their home or bordering
countries would reduce the impetus to make the perilous voyage to Europes shores
but that there is little political support for this approach.
British Prime Minister David Cameron announced Monday that Britain would resettle
20,000 Syrian refugees directly from the Middle East over the next five years a
figure equal to the number of asylum seekers Germany took in over the weekend.
Cameron, however, said Britain was nevertheless acting with head and heart by
accepting refugees only from camps around the Syrian border, while seemingly taking

a jab at nations such as Germany for encouraging illegal trips by accepting so many.
We want to encourage people not to make that dangerous crossing in the first place,
Cameron said.
Up to now, Britain has resettled only 216 Syrian refugees through its government
program.
The scant opportunities to obtain visas on the ground near the Syrian conflict were
dramatized by the drowning death last week of 3-year-old Aylan Kurdi, who had family
in Canada but whose parents had been unable to get family reunification visas that
would have given them a legal route out of Turkey. Instead, they tried to reach Greece
by boat, with tragic consequences.
We would prefer that no refugee would have to take that dangerous journey to have
to reach safety in Europe, said Melissa Fleming, a spokeswoman for the U.N. High
Commissioner for Refugees.
Under a European Commission proposal to be released Wednesday, reception camps
would be set up in Italy, Greece and Hungary to route new arrivals to other European
countries. That could eliminate most of the risky overland legs of the journey. But the
incentives to set sail from Turkey, Libya or Egypt would remain.
Birnbaum reported from Brussels and Faiola reported from Berlin. Stephanie Kirchner
in Berlin and Karla Adam in London contributed to this report.

Posted by Thavam