As city after city across Germany announced it had no more room for the tens of thousands of refugees pouring into the country, and the mayor of Munich warned that new arrivals would soon be sleeping in the streets, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government announced it was reimposing controls on its border with Austria.
All train services between the two countries were stopped at 5pm local time (4pm BST), and hundreds of police were on their way to secure the border.
“The aim of this measure is to limit the current flow to Germany and restore an orderly process,” Thomas de Maiziere, the German interior minister, said in a terse statement in Berlin.
Within hours, the Czech Republic announced that it was imposing similar measures on its own border with Austria.
I don’t know about the Czech border with Austria but I’ve spent some good part of the past few years running over the Czech border with Germany: just south of Dresden, running along towards Chemnitz. Yes, back in the day it was a heavily defended and controlled border. But the manpower required to do it was immense. For the region has been heavily inhabited, and with no border running through it, for centuries. Meaning there’s all sorts of paths, tracks, cycle routes, little back roads, that go over the border.
To say nothing of fields and forests that simply extend over said border. And where we are the border is the ridge line, meaning that the crossings are limited by “passes” (OK, it’s only 600 – 800 metre climb, but still). An actual secure border would be hugely difficult to achieve.
You could, obviously, reduce the flow. But seal? Not without a great deal of manpower you couldn’t.
That’s pretty rapid after announcing last week that Germany could cope with 500,000 refugees/migrants/asylum seekers every year for the foreseeable future.
Schadenfreude? Mmmmm just a tad.
Merkel has made a historic mistake. Is someone imagining that once the riots start in Austria they will beg for the German army to come in and rescue the situation? Didn’t work out too well last time, did it?
Agree you cannot possibly seal a European border, other than by Berlin-walling it (including the landmines, snipers, etc.). That is actually the point of Schengen – you have a much shorter distance that might need sealing and it doesn’t cause 30-mile tailbacks at every internal crossing. But apparently we have no effective means of doing that when it’s needed.
Incidentally, I doubt the Czech-DDR border (the one you are crossing) was heavily defended. If you want an idea of what a cold-war border crossing was like, there’s one at Duderstadt/Worbis you can visit.
And even if you do reduce the flow, these people just camp on the “wrong” side (to the annoyance of your neighbour) until they get a chance to sneak across. Vide Calais.
I’ve been to the Duderstadt one while it was still active (my school did exchange trips to the town.) On the eastern side, we could see the hundreds of yards of straight road with no cover, the huge concrete blocks, and the ploughed fields full of mines. On the western side, the border was marked by a telegraph pole blocking the road. The role of the West German border guards was to a) welcome anyone that managed to get across; and b) escort groups of teenage schoolboys up to the watchtower platforms.
Apparently, most of those that managed to escape communism were East German border guards.
That’s pretty rapid after announcing last week that Germany could cope with 500,000 refugees/migrants/asylum seekers every year for the foreseeable future.
This.
An actual secure border would be hugely difficult to achieve.
No it wouldn’t. It just needs robust enforcement. These welfare shoppers know that if they get across, they will get free goodies and all the blond 12 year olds they like. What the Germans need is to be able to identify and jail them. Lucky for them, there is an obvious, visible racial difference between most Germans and these invaders. So the police should have no problems.
Once the word gets out that turning up in Leipzig won’t get you a school-uniform-wearing haus fraulein and a free apartment, but a prison term instead, then they will stop coming and the border will magically become secure.
@SMFS,
(1) You can’t jail 800,000 people a year. Even the USA couldn’t (relative to population size) manage that.
(2) Plenty of Syrians look entirely indistinguishable from Aryans. Not to mention the Germans (like yours truly) who look more like Syrians than Germans. “Your papers please” went out of fashion some decades ago.
(3) There are no school uniforms in Germany.
(4) Nevertheless, the basic premise, that Merkel has promised to give German welfare to unlimited numbers of people we don’t know, and is blaming our neighbours for that, and now we have more people arriving than even German organisation can cope with, stands.
Merkel should have checked her plan with C&A: if you announce you’ll import 800,000 migrants in a year, you’ll get a big pulse rather than a nice steady 15,000 a week. For the same reason retailers’ grand sales peak in the first days – customers expect the discounted stock to run out.
Still, it’s nice to know the German political elite is even thicker than our own.
You can’t jail 800,000 people a year.
You don’t need to. You jail the first 500 with harsh 12-year sentences, and the rest will stop coming. I know Russia’s border is pretty porous with its Central Asian neighbours, but you’d not want to risk crossing it illegally nonetheless.
Bloke in Germany – “(1) You can’t jail 800,000 people a year. Even the USA couldn’t (relative to population size) manage that.”
I think it is doable myself. People used to make money out of prisoners after all. Still, perhaps it is not advisable. Building something out of barbed wire in Kenya. Remove the first few thousand to sunny climes. Watch the rest remove themselves promptly.
“(2) Plenty of Syrians look entirely indistinguishable from Aryans. Not to mention the Germans (like yours truly) who look more like Syrians than Germans. “Your papers please” went out of fashion some decades ago.”
No they do not. You will have to put up with being asked for your papers. People get asked for their papers all the time. Every time the police do a stop and search or a traffic stop, they can ask for some proof of Germanness. It did work in New Mexico.
“(3) There are no school uniforms in Germany.”
They will be so disappointed.
“(4) Nevertheless, the basic premise, that Merkel has promised to give German welfare to unlimited numbers of people we don’t know, and is blaming our neighbours for that, and now we have more people arriving than even German organisation can cope with, stands.”
Indeed. But border enforcement is what states do. The German state needs to get to it. They can either enforce their own border or they can become a persecuted minority in their own homeland. Their choice.
@Tim,
Also you can’t do that with people claiming asylum – there’s various treaties and UN rules that asylum seekers are allowed to cross borders “illegally” and can’t be punished for it.
Still, I suspect Russia has just the one asylum seeker at the moment.
SMFS & BiG
I agree with BiG: most German men are dark haired and sallow – my grandfather claimed that’s because his lot shot all the blondies.
However German women tend to be orange.
But since only a small percentage of the migrants are women, that doesn’t help very much.
Thus the Germans are buggered.
Bloke in Germany – “Also you can’t do that with people claiming asylum – there’s various treaties and UN rules that asylum seekers are allowed to cross borders “illegally” and can’t be punished for it.”
They are not asylum seekers. They are not fleeing any sort of persecution or danger. They are crossing from southern Europe. And crossing borders is illegal.
They have to be stopped from arriving. If it costs us big money to create nice, safe, secure camps over there so what. Cancel the toy train set. It will cost us big money and a Godawful set of circumstances if they get here. Tens of thousands of 18-30 yobs in a country with an already useless police force that will wink at anything less than murder cos their PC masters tell them to?
@SMFS, yes they are asylum seekers. To a man they are seeking asylum. You can seek asylum without being entitled to asylum. And having sought asylum you can not be punished for crossing a border without fulfilling the (in the case of Austria to Germany minimal, entirely technical, and for some years never enforced) requirements to make that crossing legal.
I have crossed the DE-AT border during Schengen suspensions and it is barely different to normal times – they just have cops waving down every 100th car. The continent would literally sieze up if Schengen was suspended universally and indefinitely.
JeremyT:
“Still, it’s nice to know the German political elite is even thicker than our own.”
Even after yesterday’s Labour leadership & shadow cabinet announcements?
Bloke in Germany said: “Also you can’t do that with people claiming asylum – there’s various treaties and UN rules that asylum seekers are allowed to cross borders “illegally” and can’t be punished for it.”
In practice this has been interpreted (by the UK for example) to mean that an offence has still been committed but that asylum seekers will not get prosecuted for it while they are seeking asylum and once that refugee status has been approved. However, if their application fails and they also cannot be deported they can still be prosecuted for the illegal entry.
@Gareth,
And what, precisely, does that achieve? Someone who is going to stay but whose productive capacity is reduced by the criminal record. Win-win!
I’m surprised it started to unravel so fast, I thought it would take months, maybe weeks, but not days.
Bloke in Germany – “To a man they are seeking asylum. You can seek asylum without being entitled to asylum.”
They are not valid asylum seekers then .
“And having sought asylum you can not be punished for crossing a border without fulfilling the (in the case of Austria to Germany minimal, entirely technical, and for some years never enforced) requirements to make that crossing legal.”
Yes you can. Although most governments would look stupid punishing them if they were genuine. But there is a need to deter. Either they get deported or they get lynched. Not a pretty choice in sight. The European publics will not accept this. Nor should they.
“I have crossed the DE-AT border during Schengen suspensions and it is barely different to normal times – they just have cops waving down every 100th car. The continent would literally sieze up if Schengen was suspended universally and indefinitely.”
Somehow Europe managed before Schengen. I am sure they will manage after. The police need to wave down every car carrying swarthy people of Middle Eastern appearance. It is not hard to pick on a visible minority. After all, the Middle East has been driving out its minorities for three generations and those aren’t even visible.
Er, many of them are valid refugees. You need to sort those with a valid claim to asylum from those without – which isn’t ever going to be done (in Germany) by bureaucratic kangaroo courts and no leave to appeal.
Europe managed before Schengen mostly by having only sporadic border checks. Chiasso rail station for example was a dead easy place to cross from Italy to Switzerland (and back) without the “correct” documentation, prior to CH joining Schengen. SoE used to get in and out of Italy that way during bloody world war 2. I have done it (as a swarthy-looking type) dozens of times myself, though it did involve a protracted conversation on the day (as I later found out) that one of the 21/7 attackers (being the other swarthy-looking British citizen resident in Italy) was heading to Italy by rail.
Methinks you have little experience of travelling around Europe, and little experience of “persons of middle-eastern appearance”, whatever that is.
Bloke in Germany – “Er, many of them are valid refugees.”
At best some of them *were* valid refugees. Right up to the point they stepped into Lebanon and ceased to have any genuine fear of persecution. A place so safe they are happy to leave their wives and children there. They are not by any meaningful definition refugees.
Not that it matters one little bit. Germany should reject every single one even if it turns out they are.
“You need to sort those with a valid claim to asylum from those without – which isn’t ever going to be done (in Germany) by bureaucratic kangaroo courts and no leave to appeal.”
No you do not. You need to say that Germany and the Germans have an inalienable right to continue to exist in their historic homelands and they will defend that right by force if necessary. Australia keeps people on islands just so that they cannot access Australian courts. They ask the UN Commission for Refugees to evaluate the refugees’ claims. So some kangaroo courts do work.
This is what the hangover feels like when you got smashed on Progressive Spirit the night before and did/said something without thinking stuff through.
A wee bit late for Merkel to try to walk back the cat. Them economical refugee have been given the green light to come, and come they will. Nothing else that comes out of her mouth will advert that. Now the countries between Near East and Northern Africa will bear the brunt of this invasion.
Meanwhile over here in the State, we’re in the same boat, albeit with a different sets if invaders.
Europeans, next time, perhaps you should butt out of OUR election and stick to yours.
BigFire, your invaders (your word) are largely friendly people coming from a friendly country. There is no cultural or religious gulf like Europe has with its new arrivals. There aren’t terrorists hiding among them. They’re coming looking for work, not freely-flowing milk and honey. They have no right of asylum and can therefore be sent back with minimal fuss if they cause problems.
tldr: the issues couldn’t be more different!