Syrian refugees streaming into Europe refuse to be put in camps and are boarding trains for Germany where the government has pledged billions of euros to support them.
Germany expects 800,000 refugees this year, up from 200,000 last year. More than 4 million more wait to enter Europe from camps in Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon.
On September 1 German Labor Minister Andrea Nahles said German tax payers will pay 1.8 billion to 3.3 billion euros ($2 billion to $3.7 billion) to cover the cost of social benefits, language courses and refugee integration into the labor market.
In 2016, the German government expects and additional 240,000 to 460,000 people to be eligible for benefits. The figure is expected to exceed a million by 2019.
On Sunday German Chancellor Angela Merkel called on other European Union countries to accept more refugees.
“If Europe has solidarity and we have also shown solidarity towards others, then we need to show solidarity now,” she said. “Everything must move quickly.”
In June, Merkel criticized Germans who protested the influx of Arab refugees.
Dad throws his family onto rail tracks after finding out he was going to a refugee camp http://t.co/4zYGc7lEYZ pic.twitter.com/95aKaK710p
— Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) September 3, 2015
According to Eurostat, most refugees are seeking asylum in Sweden, Hungary, Germany, Italy, France, the United Kingdom, Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania and Slovakia.
In August Slovakia refused to accept the European Union plan to settle the largely Muslim refugees and said it will only accept Christian refugees.
Poles have also rejected the EU plan. A University of Warsaw survey found that a majority believe that immigrants take work away from Poles and that their presence is detrimental for the economy, The Guardian reported.
“Everything which is now taking place before our eyes threatens to have explosive consequences for the whole of Europe,” the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, wrote recently in Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. “Europe’s response is madness. We must acknowledge that the European Union’s misguided immigration policy is responsible for this situation.”
“Those arriving have been raised in another religion, and represent a radically different culture. Most of them are not Christians, but Muslims,” Orbán said. “This is an important question, because Europe and European identity is rooted in Christianity.”
Most of the refugees are Sunni Muslims, and yet wealthy Sunni Muslim countries — Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain — have refused to take in refugees.
The unfolding humanitarian crisis in Europe, the largest since the Second World War, is a direct result of the effort by the United States and the Gulf Emirates to overthrow the Syrian government.
Many refugees arriving in Europe are from other conflict stricken areas in the Middle East, including Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, all countries invaded by the United States.
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