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Can Germany’s Arab immigrants be fixed?

Can Germany’s Arab immigrants be fixed?

Last updated on: January 15, 2016 at 11:49 am by Jane the Actuary

Can Germany’s Arab immigrants be fixed? 2016-01-15T11:49:49-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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They’re flawed in all manner of ways.

They are, it turns out, rather uneducated, on the whole, with low levels of overall seat time, and, even for those who have completed secondary schooling or more, the quality of the instruction in their home countries is much lower than in Germany. And that’s a problem in a country where there are few jobs for the uneducated and unskilled. (See this article on Politico.)

They come from countries with high levels of mistreatment of women — from harassment on the streets, to domestic violence, to honor killings. They believe that women are obliged to cover themselves/stay at home and are “fair game” if they don’t. (See my post on this the other day.)

They expect Germany to be able take care of them, provide them jobs and/or cash benefits, and, to an unknown degree, are more interested in gaining advantage than integration. (Here’s a list of incidents reported by the Gatestone Institute, cherry picked, perhaps, but not invented out of whole cloth.)

Can they be fixed? And, if so, at what cost?

Let’s get a few items out of the way: it matters not, for this purpose, whether Islam is an irredeemably-flawed religion, or whether the flaw is more narrowly, or broadly, in Arab culture, or Middle East/North African culture, or the culture specifically of villagers/the poor in these areas. It likewise matters not whether men in the Middle Ages or Early Modern times in Europe likewise behaved badly; we’re talking about Arab culture now, and Germany now. And it likewise matters not whether there are many well-intentioned new arrivals happy to jump into training programs — so long as these instances keep piling up, such as the latest report, that a public swimming pool near Bonn banned male refugees because “an increasing number of visitors and employees had complained about sexual harassment by men from a nearby asylum seeker residence” — and a town near Cologne had to cancel its Mardi Gras parade out of fear of migrant behavior. Or another one, that even back in November, asylum-claiming men groped women at a “welcome” party, and organizers did and said nothing, with no reporting until victims came forward after the Silversternacht attacks. (This comes from Express via Gateway Pundit; the original German report here.)

Second, Germany, at least as its system exists currently, can’t readily deport those found ineligible for asylum. According to Deutsche Welle, about half of asylum applications are rejected, but

Around 80 percent of asylum seekers arrive in Germany with fake papers, or no papers at all. That’s especially true for migrants from countries where there is no war or persecution. Aid organizations say that many people opt for fake papers because there are no legal means to enter Germany. But it’s not possible to deport a person without any papers once their application for asylum has been rejected. Even once the country of origin has been established, many states refuse to take their citizens back.

What’s more,

Until recently, it was the case that, once an applicant had exhausted all legal means to be granted asylum, the authorities would assign a date for deportation. But in many cases, the person could no longer be found on that day. Now, the system has changed so that asylum seekers are no longer told on which day they are to be deported. In some cases, families hide one of their children with friends or relatives in order to delay deportation. Following verdicts from the European Court for Human Rights, taking people into custody prior to deportation is no longer allowed.

So, what can Germany do?

I can think of a number of actions, but they’re largely, most likely, unimplementable.

Can Germany try to “convert” these new arrivals to, if not Christianity or secularism, then at least a moderate version of Islam? Consider that individuals convicted of DUI in the U.S. are ordered into 12-Step programs. What of a 12-Step program here? And, no, I’m not talking about these reports of “classes” to “teach” Arab men about proper behavior, as if all that’s needed is a bit of instruction because surely they simply didn’t know otherwise, and only needed to be taught, to change their behavior.

I’m talking about imams sitting in front of a room of Arab men, telling them, repeatedly, day after day, that they will go to hell if they harass a woman. That they will go to hell if they hit their wives. That they will go to the deepest level of hell if they rape a woman.

The problem, of course, is two-fold. It’s not clear to me that German imams would be willing to do so; reports are there aren’t enough of them who fit this “moderate” description, who believe (per my earlier post) that Muhammed basically preached equality, and any bits of the Qur’an that appear to suggest otherwise were a short-term accomodation for his backward society. And, even if there were (and weren’t doing so with a wink and a nod to their hearers), there are extremist Muslims who are all to eager to recruit, and will give the counter-message that what they’re hearing at their classes is a pack of lies. So you’d need to clamp down on these groups — and not just those who openly provide material support for ISIS but those who preach any form of intolerance. You’d need all imams to preach true integration with one voice. And how you get to that point without violating freedom of religion and freedom of assembly and freedom of speech, I don’t know.

Alternatively —

Can Germany change its laws? Can they say, “if you speak Arabic with an accent that indicates you’re from X, regardless of whether you’ve destroyed your identity document and are claiming to by Syrian, you will be sent back”? Can they say “if you’re Syrian, but so much as lay your hand on a woman in an unwelcome manner, we’ll send you back to a refugee camp if you can’t go back to your hometown”? And can they add the requisite number of staffers to implement deportations?

Or do they need to change its laws around crime, and institute harsh sentences for public groping, and catch perps by having plainclothes female police officers in short skirts ply refugee-frequented areas? Even then, can these men be caught? Could a lone woman, even a policewoman with a concealed weapon, take men into custody in such situations, or document their identity?

It’s not easy. And Fasching/Karneval is less than a month away.

UPDATE: in response to harassment at swimming pools, there are now reports of the Swimming Pool Rules being promoted in places such as Munich. (English report here, direct Link here, PDF here) The key “rules” are #4, “Regardless of what bathing suit a woman wears, she is to be respected,” and #12, “Do not verbally or physically sexually harass women, regardless of what they’re wearing” (the image above). It seems delusional to imagine that all that’s needed is a simple pronouncement of rules to repair the situation.

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