Is the Tide Turning in the West on Migration?

It’s too early to say that rationality has returned to the West, but at least there is a glimmer of hope. 

With the fall of Syria, the German government has taken the opportunity to reconsider its Merkel-era policy of open borders for every Syrian who wants to become a ward of the German state. 

🇩🇪 Germany has suspended the processing of all new asylum applications from Syrians. pic.twitter.com/iY5JYJ9woW

— Update NEWS (@UpdateNews724) December 9, 2024

My colleague-once-removed, the inestimable Vodkapundit Stephen Green, put the developments in Germany better than I could, or at least earlier than I did:

You can get an idea of how gobsmackingly awful the Syrian Civil War was (is?) and how stupid Germany’s immigration policy is with this one simple statistic: nearly one in 20 Syrians lives in Germany. Syria’s pre-civil war population of Syria was about 21 million people, and the latest figures show the Federal Republic serving as home to 972,460 Syrian refugees.

All that seems to have come to an end along with the Bashar al-Assad regime this weekend.

Berlin says it will “freeze asylum processing for Syrian citizens,” according to an al-Jazeera report today. “The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees told Der Spiegel news magazine on Monday that the move was taken in light of the unclear and unpredictable political situation in Syria, which would place asylum decisions ‘on shaky ground.'”

Angela Merkel, you may recall, invited into Germany (and hence Europe as a whole) every Mohammed, Abdul, and Ali who wanted not just a safer place to live but free housing, a nice welfare check, and a population waiting to be victimized. Since the beginning of the Syrian Civil War a million Syrians fled to Germany, and I freely admit that I would have been one of them if I were a Syrian. 

But Germans aren’t Syrians, and the influx of non-Western men into the country has been a disaster for the German people. And, in a masterstroke of embracing the obvious opportunity, the failing German government has seized the opportunity that the fall of the Assad government to slam the door shut on new entrants. 

As truly evil as the Assad Dynasty has been–and it is difficult to overestimate how truly evil it has been–it is doubtful that the new boss will be any better than the old boss. The current inheritor of the mantle of leadership is a former al Qaeda and then ISIS thug, whose rhetoric is all nicey nicey but who will likely turn out to be as tolerant as the Muslim Brotherhood tyrants who took over Egypt after Mubarak fell. 

But for Germans, that shouldn’t be the point unless the idea is to bring Germany down to the average level of civilization found in third-world countries. 

Civilization is not the natural state of mankind–it is something carefully built up, to be nurtured, and never sacrificed wantonly. And the truth is that countries are like Syria not only because tyrants make them so–it is because the social fabric has frayed and broken. Transplanting people in large numbers from broken societies doesn’t tend to heal the people who have escaped–it may for some if they come in small numbers–but rather spreads the rot of social distrust to where they flee. 

This is not a knock on the individual refugees, many of whom could, if they came individually or in small groups, become productive members of society. But if you import large numbers of people en masse from a failed state you threaten to turn your own civilization into one. 

So kudos to Germany for seizing this opportunity to reverse course. 

Assuming it’s not far too late to suffer even worse consequences than they have already experienced.