NYT: German Village of 102 Braces for 750 Asylum Seekers

The New York Times (NYT), as well as the Times (of London) have both reported in the past 24 hours about the German village of Sumte, with its population of 100, which is due to accept up to 1000 migrants much to the chagrin of locals.

The story, originally covered by Breitbart London on October 14th, brings to light the overwhelming nature of Mrs. Merkel’s immigration policy.

The NYT reports:

In early October, the district government informed Sumte’s mayor, Christian Fabel, by email that his village of 102 people just over the border in what was once Communist East Germany would take in 1,000 asylum seekers.

His wife, the mayor said, assured him it must be a hoax. “It certainly can’t be true” that such a small, isolated place would be asked to accommodate nearly 10 times as many migrants as it had residents, she told him. “She thought it was a joke,” he said.

But it was not. Sumte has become a showcase of the extreme pressures bearing down on Germany as it scrambles to find shelter for what, by the end of the year, could be well over a million people seeking refuge from poverty or wars in Africa, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

The Times reports:

The village in Lower Saxony finds itself a focal point for deepening unease about Angela Merkel’s generous welcome to the mass of humanity that has headed towards Europe this year. It has been predicted that more than a million people could come to Germany. All 16 German states have been told to press disused buildings into service and abandoned offices on the edge of Sumte have been earmarked for an emergency reception centre to process asylum applications.

The policy has strained relations with Mrs Merkel’s coalition allies in the Bavarian Conservative party to the point of open rebellion. Emergency talks yesterday between her Christian Democratic Union, the Bavaria Christian Social Union and the Social Democratic party failed to mend the rifts.

Early last month the government of Lower Saxony told Christian Fabel, the mayor of Sumte, that the village would be taking in 1,000 asylum seekers. In response to local objections and an assessment that the sewerage system would be unable to cope, that number has since been cut to 750.

The decision has been seen as a gift to the far right, which has grown in strength and militancy this year.

“The closest supermarket is in Neuhaus, that is four kilometres away,” Mr Fabel said. The bus runs to Neuhaus three times a day and to Neu Bleckede five times a day.

As reported by Breitbart London:

Some 450,000 migrants have arrived in Germany already this year. The country is expecting at least 1.5 million in 2015, by far the most across the 28-nation European Union. What is happening in Sumte is symptomatic of events all over Germany as Angela Merkel’s policy-on-the-run meets the people who will have to live with the consequences.

In Lower Saxony, the pressure to find accommodation is strong, the Interior Ministry explained to the meeting. Last year, almost 19,000 asylum applications were received, in 2015 there were already more than 75,000. Homes had to be found and the tenor of the meeting was that anyone who opposed that flow was xenophobic.

“Thousand are just too many”, resident Dirk Hammer told the meeting. His family has lived for 400 years in the village. He wants as many as a “reasonable solution” would allow to “minimize disruption” but ultimately the feelings expressed were that residents were not consulted and now they were being forced to accommodated over 1,000 people in a village that has never been home to more than 100.