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''' MAMA MERKEL '''
[ !WOW! -the World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless expresses its profound grief, at the great tragedy that befell the pilgrims in Saudi Arabia.]
THE REFUGEES MAKING life threatening journeys across the Mediterranean and through Europe have a new hero:
German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
While Europe has largely flailed in the face of the greatest such crisis since since the end of World War II, Merkel has provided rare leadership.
Germany -the most powerful country in Europe expects to take expects to take in 800,000 people this year, four times as many as it did in 2014. Instead of tightening border controls and insisting the country has no room for refugees- as some governments have done-
The German government has made it clear that it will welcome large numbers of the people fleeing the conflict in Syria and other troubled parts of the Middle-East, Africa and South Asia.
Asylum seekers have taken to calling this great German leader ''Mama Merkel''.
The chancellor's most significant move in the crisis was her government's announcement on Aug 24 that it would no longer apply the Dublin protocol to Syrian refugees.
Under the protocol, refugees are tested to see if they entered the European Union via another member state. If officials determine that to be the case, they can return the asylum seekers to that state.
Germany also cancelled all planned deportations of Syrians. The move was welcomed by the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, as an ''act of European Solidarity.''
Two factors are shaping her response to the refugee crisis, say those know her. The first is Germany's and Merkel's considerable experience over the past 70 years of benefitting from the kindness of strangers.
After the war, the United States and other former foes of Germany contributed huge financial and practical resources to help the country recover economically
and politically.
More recently, East Germans -including Merkel, who was born in West Germany but grew up in East Germany after her Lutheran father accepted a pastorate in the Soviet protectorate -were embraced by their West German neighbours after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
''Angela Merkel shows a lot of understanding for people who flee from war and despair,'' says Stefan Kornelius, author of Angela Merkel: The Authorized Biography. ''There is no moral questioning of her motives.''
The second factor motivating Merkel has little to do with generosity.
Accepting skilled and educated refugees like many of the displaced Syrians is in Germany's economic self-interest. The German population is falling rapidly, in part because of low birth rates, and the German economic machines needs new workers.
Merkel's openness to the refugees will likely have a significant impact on Europe's broader response to the crisis. ''Germany has rediscovered leadership,'' says Mark Leonard, director of the European Council on Foreign Relations think tank-
''Germany is the critical power on the biggest issues facing many other countries in the E.U.''
The country has an unusual ability to link disparate issues, says Leonard. ''Germany can say, for example, that it will show solidarity with Eastern Europe on Russia because it is a good European.
But Germany will also say that those countries need in turn to be good Europeans on the migration issue.''
The intensifying human and political drama of the crisis each day makes it even more evident that Europe's system for dealing with refugees and broken.
In July alone, 107,500 people were detected at the E.U. borders, more than three times as many as in July, 2014, according to Frontex the E.U. border agency.
More than 2,000 people per day are crossing the border from Serbia to Hungary to enter the Schengen Area of visa-free travel, say Hungarian officials, a total of more than 150,000 this year.
Ahmed, 28, a Syrian lawyer, who was among thousands of refugees stranded in Budapest's Keleti station sums up best:
As others marooned at the station chanted ''GERMANY, Germany, Germany,'' Ahmed showed a handful of train tickets to Munich:
''I want to live in a country that will give me security, freedom and a future for my family.''
But then, who wouldn't like to?!
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''' Students' Conscience '''
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SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless
