Something is confusing about the refugee crisis.

I live a few minutes walk from a refugee center, where 600 - 1500 refugees are housed as long as their asylum applications are being processed. It's all been quiet, safe and peaceful here. And it's been this way for months. Not the slightest bit of embarrassment, nor anything that would worry me. My first hand experience with the refugees is 100% peaceful.

Both /r/europe and /r/worldnews are overrun by the far-right now. Stay away from their posts concerning refugees, if you want to stay a sane person. Especially /r/worldnews is full of ill-headed garbage. They need to wear their tinfoil-hats.

There is a dissence among european politicians, about how to handle the refugees now. The eastern european countries, that don't have many immigrants, and basically no muslims in their countries are very opposed to refugees. As someone put it: "You're always the most afraid of the things you don't know. Once it becomes the known, this fear vanishes." As a result of that the countries, that are least familiar with muslim immigrants, are the most opposed against refugees. You can even notice this difference within Germany. The western parts of GER are familiar with immigration, also with muslims, since the 1950's. These western parts are more than welcoming towards refugees. The former east of Germany is not familiar with muslim immigration, and way more opposed against refugees. The anti-islam movement "PEGIDA" and the far-right party "AFD" are going strong in eastern Germany, where less than 2% of the total population are muslim. THERE the people fear "the islamisation of the west", less so in the western parts of Germany, where up to 10% of the population are muslim. There is certainly a dark, chauvinistic site in eastern Germany and eastern Europe.

A country like Poland, that has more than 99% ethnical Poles and hadn't had any significant immigration in the past 70 years, even voted the populistic right party into power just recently, because so many people there are afraid of muslim refugees. That's why there is the word "phobia" in "xenophobia". This appears to many people here as a kind of bigotry or double-standards. As Polish immigrants have made a big part of immigration towards Germany for the last decades and a Pole and a Syrian are equally foreign to a German citizen.

Regarding your question, if the so called "refugee crisis" could be the end of a united europe: No, I don't think so! Yes, the EU is in its' biggest crisis yet (the euro crisis, the russians in Ukraine, the refugees, the high unemployment in southern europe, the threat from far-right and far-left parties in most european countries...), but I think the EU has all the institutions and the personnel to deal with it. People just shouldn't lose their mind and temper and shouldn't vote parties like "Le Front National", "UKIP" or "AFD" into power, then everything will be just fine. :)

/r/germany Thread