- Mar 17, 2015
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An American conservative president many loved had some things to say about walls to separate peoples from each other:
A conservative Christian Democrat German Chancellor....would know the German people better than you and me.The Berlin Wall kept people in. No one was trying to get in.
Legal immigration is the life blood of the USA.A conservative Christian Democrat German Chancellor....would know the German people better than you and me.
Consider a nation that has gone vastly faster (and really had too many come in just 1 year) than we have in admitting refugees as a % portion of the nation's population.
German chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision in 2015 to keep her country’s borders open and give shelter to hundreds of thousands of refugees was praised by commentators and leaders around the world. Her decision was also approved of by thousands of German citizens who welcomed refugees and provided clothes, food, and other support.
The term welcome culture, or Willkommenskultur, was frequently used in political debates and the media to describe the events of autumn 2015.
But a year later, the picture had changed dramatically. By the end of 2016, the public debate had shifted to focus on the so-called refugee crisis, or Flüchtlingskrise, alongside the religion of refugees and migrants, and limits to Germany’s capacity to integrate them. The change of perspective was reflected in discussions about upper limits – Obergrenzen — of the numbers of refugees that should be allowed to enter the country.
We asked Germans what they really felt after Angela Merkel opened the borders to refugees in 2015
Merkel is a Christian Democrat, conservative. And....seems to be familiar with God's way.
But there is an upper limit politically in how much a nation can tolerate all at once. We are nowhere close to what Germany did. Not close.
In America, our immigrants did not all come in 1 or 2 or 3 years. They came gradually over decades.
We know and love them. Many of us.
What has the wall that kept people prisoners got to do with securing borders and keeping a free and sovereign nation safe?An American conservative president many loved had some things to say about walls to separate peoples from each other:
The Berlin Wall kept people in. No one was trying to get in.
A conservative Christian Democrat German Chancellor....would know the German people better than you and me.
Borders are just lines on a map . There's a Dutch historian, Rutger Bregman, that believes that they will be widely recognized as an injustice hundreds of years from now.
Regarding the mistakes in German immigration policy about 4 years ago? Yes, I think the great majority of people already agreed on this about 2-3 years ago, and it was widely considered clear, without any significant dispute, that allowing in immigrants without extensive screening is a bad idea.She’s hardly in a position to judge. Whatever else one could say about Erich Honecker, it would scarcely have occurred to him to throw the borders open to whomever and what ever wanted a bite of the country’s largesse the way Merkel did. Whatever other problem’s people had in the old DDR, women weren’t being sexually assaulted on the streets en masse. More and more Germans are understanding this, which is why Merkel’s party is tanking in the polls.
It served as serious warning to us as to what would happen in our country if Hillary Clinton had been allowed into the White House.
An American conservative president many loved had some things to say about walls to separate peoples from each other:
Yes, see post #11 just above also then, about Merkel and the flood of refugees to Germany.I was in Poland as a missionary when communism collapsed there. People were prisoners in a corrupt , oppressive and run down system. Reagan, Thatcher and the pope were 3 primary actors in bringing that wall down but it was the people of Eastern Europe who suffered communism all those years and prayed for freedom through them.
People in this thread seem to be trying to draw parallels with the Trump wall with Mexico and Merkels openness to refugees from the failed Muslim states of North Africa and the Middle East but really these are entirely different cases with different kinds of motivation.
The thing I learn from the Berlin wall is that the system that built it could only keep control by making its people prisoners.
The Trump wall is about depriving people who want the opportunity of living in America from getting in.
Merkel let the walls down as an act of compassion to some very desperate and needy people and maybe also because Germany has a major demographic problem with it lack of babies.
Yes, see post #11 just above also then, about Merkel and the flood of refugees to Germany.
It's interesting you were a missionary in Poland before the iron curtain dissolved!
I remember fervently praying (as I'm sure very many people did!) for the iron curtain to fall, to be undone.
For me, the main view of it was the Berlin Wall, and with very great excitement I read every newspaper article I could in the time leading right up it that moment when citizens took pick axes and began banging on it, and the heady days right after, and the amazing sights on TV.
An American conservative president many loved had some things to say about walls to separate peoples from each other: