Following a series of violent attacks in Germany – two of which were linked to ISIS – German chancellor Angela Merkel doubled down on her open immigration policy, assuring the German people that “we can do it” when it comes to balancing security with the “historic task” – that is, allowing immigration – which Germany faces in the age of globalization.
But Merkel’s plan doesn’t involve a balance at all: her policy prescriptions include increasing the police force, tightening weapons laws, giving greater latitude to the German military, and improving intelligence gathering. In other words, she wants to do everything possible to solve an immigration problem except change immigration policy.
For a long time now, Chancellor Merkel has consistently refused to institute any sort of limit on immigration. Indeed, even when Bavarian officials asked that immigrants who could not prove their identity be detained for additional screening, Merkel demurred. As a result, over one million immigrants have entered Germany during the past year. And, even while many in Germany have warned of the potential security risk that such an influx poses, Chancellor Merkel has remained unconcerned, preferring instead to cite Germany’s moral imperative as part of the global world order.
Now, Merkel is openly expressing concern, to the extent that she has acknowledged that the recent violence in her country is a direct result of her immigration policy and the admission of dangerous people from within the crowd of refugees. And yet her proposed actions would do nothing to reverse the trend. She mentions tightening weapon laws: is she going to institute axe and knife control laws? After all, a refugee from Afghanistan working for ISIS found those sufficient to go on a rampage on a train and injure five people. Is this plan for improved intelligence gathering going to help keep track of the one million new immigrants to the country? It would seem that such a task would be tricky given that, a) refugees and asylum-seekers are currently allowed into the country with no documentation, and b) Merkel has in the past explicitly ruled out monitoring immigrants at all. The security risks of open immigration will not be addressed simply by more intelligence communication with the United States — policies at the back-end cannot fix what is inherently a front-end problem.
Merkel said today that the perpetrators of the terrorist attacks “mock the country that took them in.” But with Germany confronted with increased violence both from lone-wolf terrorists and broader organizations, the true mockery is when a leader refuses to admit a mistake and address the root of the problem. Band-Aid solutions may help save face, but they won’t help save much else.