The small German village of Sumte has approximately 100 local residents but is now slated to receive 750 refugees from Syria and other countries. How is this supposed to work? If you lived in a one bedroom apartment, would you volunteer to take in seven permanent house guests?
Andrew Higgins reports at the New York Times:
German Village of 102 Braces for 750 Asylum SeekersSUMTE, Germany — This bucolic, one-street settlement of handsome redbrick farmhouses may for the moment have many more cows than people, but next week it will become one of the fastest growing places in Europe. Not that anyone in Sumte is very excited about it.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 people interviewed in this video report don’t seem too concerned:
Eastern Europe is also overwhelmed. US News and World Report recently posted this story:
Refugees flood into Slovenia ahead of European crisis summit; EU plan slammed as ‘impossible’A day before a European summit on the migrant crisis, Slovenia’s president demanded immediate action from the EU and tempers flared at one overcrowded refugee center as thousands more asylum-seekers poured into the tiny Alpine nation.European nations have been criticized for being slow to react as hundreds of thousands of people seeking safety pour in through Greece and Italy. But a draft plan submitted to the countries coming to the Sunday summit in Brussels, sent by European Commission President Jean Claude Juncker, was already drawing strong opposition.Croatian Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic said the EU plan urges countries not to “wave” asylum-seekers across their borders without consulting with their neighbors.”That is impossible. Whoever wrote this does not understand how things work and must have just woken up from a months-long sleep,” he said Saturday.
This issue isn’t limited to Europe. Many cities in Turkey are experiencing the same thing.
The Hurriyet Daily News reports:
Number of Syrian refugees rivaling locals in 10 Turkish citiesThe number of Syrian refugees in 10 cities across Turkey now rivals the population of local residents and even outnumbers it in one city, a senior Turkish official has told the Hürriyet Daily News.“In at least 10 cities, the number of Syrian refugees now constitutes a sizable portion of the city,” the official said during a meeting with a small group of journalists on Aug. 15.The official specifically referred to the town of Kilis in the southeast near Turkey’s border with Syria, which he described as a “Syrian city” in terms of population. “The local population is 108,000 and the number of refugees is 110,000,” he said.A relatively small portion of the Syrian refugees in Turkey are in 25 camps across 10 cities. The remainder tries to make a living in cities, many in very harsh conditions.
How is this sustainable?
Featured image via YouTube.
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