Angela Merkel Refugees Quotes

Every person who comes is a human being and has the right to be treated as such.

On 17 July 2015 the German chancellor Angela Merkel was confronted by a teenage Palestinian refugee girl from Lebanon, whose family was seeking asylum in Germany but faced imminent deportation. The girl, Reem, told Merkel in fluent German that ‘It’s really very hard to watch how other people can enjoy life and you yourself can’t. I don’t know what my future will bring.’ Merkel replied that ‘politics can be tough’ and explained that there are hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, and Germany cannot absorb them all. Stunned by this no-nonsense reply, Reem burst into tears. Merkel proceeded to stroke the desperate girl on the back, but stuck to her guns.

For a long time I couldn’t imagine writing such a book. That first changed in 2015, at least a little. Back then, in the night between September 4 and 5, I had decided not to turn away the refugees coming from Hungary at the German–Austrian border.

EUROPE’S TIPPING POINT By the mid-2010s, Europe, like the United States, had reached a tipping point. In 2015, Europe recorded over a million irregular migrants—migrants who came through illegal means. This was twice as many as over the preceding five years combined. The bulk came from the greater Middle East, with many fleeing ISIS in war-torn Iraq and Syria. A Syrian boy named Alan Kurdi came to symbolize the plight of these desperate refugees after his family attempted the treacherous journey across the Mediterranean and his dead body washed ashore in Turkey. Europe seemed to rise to the challenge of accepting so many migrants. “We can do this!” said German Chancellor Angela Merkel, reflecting the spirit of the times. Germany took in an astonishing 2.14 million migrants in 2015, a record high.