Germany Begins to Feel Backlash Over Migrant Policies

Well, news reports yesterday were talking about how the migrants were welcomed with "open arms."

Maybe those arms aren't so open after all.

At WSJ, "Germany Feels Backlash for Welcoming Migrants":

Praise for Germany’s handling of the thousands of refugees pouring into the country is giving way to domestic and international criticism of Berlin’s open-arms policy.

The criticism, though still muted, could spell trouble for German Chancellor Angela Merkel once the outpouring of sympathy that has greeted the migrants since late last week subsides and Berlin resumes its push to distribute them more broadly across Europe.

The chancellor’s decision on Friday night to let thousands of migrants traveling through Hungary into the country “sends a completely wrong signal in Europe,” Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann told public television Saturday. “This must be corrected.”

Leaders of the Christian Social Union, Bavaria’s ruling party and an ally of Ms. Merkel’s Christian Democrats, unanimously criticized the decision as wrongheaded during a telephone conference on Saturday, Andreas Scheuer, the party’s secretary-general said.

Anti-immigration politicians in Germany, France and the U.K. also assailed the policy, saying that it was pulling even more refugees toward the continent and that German plans to divert some to other countries in Europe should be resisted. By Sunday afternoon, some 13,000 migrants had crossed from Hungary into Austria in the 36 hours since German and Austrian authorities bowed to pressure to grant entry to the crowds of asylum seekers stranded in Hungary.

“A welcoming culture is an expression of naive and illusory thinking,” a spokesman for Alfa, a recently founded opposition party in Germany, said Sunday. “What we need, instead, is realism and a sense of proportion. We shouldn’t go beyond providing the basics for asylum seekers, like food and shelter, because it will attract more people.”

In France, far-right National Front leader Marine Le Pen, speaking at her party’s annual gathering in Marseille on Sunday, said: “Germany has a heavy responsibility for inciting at the level of the European Union a passive acceptance of this crisis. Germany is probably thinking about its declining demography. It is probably looking to lower salaries again and recruit slaves through mass immigration.”

Germany, where federal police said they expected a total 17,000 migrants to arrive from Hungary over the weekend, was working to distribute them across the country. Officials said about 7,000 migrants arrived in Munich on Saturday, followed by another 6,000 people by Sunday afternoon. He said he expected an additional 4,000 people to arrive by day’s end. In addition, some trains carrying migrants have been redirected to other German cities...

To be fair, German culture has changed. But this migrant episode is indeed a test of how far Germany's come from the nightmare of the World War II years.

Still more.