Compassion, we need you, but don’t come alone.
That’s an entreaty to keep in mind as Middle Eastern migrants flee from terrorists, from war, from hunger and other tortures to find rescue in Europe, sometimes finding something else. Sometimes finding a sea to drown in. Sometimes finding a smuggler’s truck in which to suffocate. Sometimes finding a Hungarian camerawoman who maliciously trips a running man with a child on his back.
What’s happening is massive. Tens of thousands, mostly Muslim and something like half from buffeted and bleeding Syria, have lately been streaming across the Mediterranean and then across European borders. Not everyone is saying welcome. Hungary is putting up a fence. While Germany’s leaders have shown deep sympathy, saying they’ll bring 800,000 Syrians aboard before year’s end, even they have stepped back from where they were.
The receptive stance led to an utterly unmanageable inundation. And so Germany was recently 1 of 4 countries setting up entry-limiting border checks within the European Union that is struggling to devise a workable, acceptable overall plan. Compassion matters, but it must be accompanied by realistic, alert, informed, objective analysis that cautiously looks at a number of issues and perhaps at some point says arms should be folded instead of always open.
Some contend Europe can easily handle the numbers coming at it. But even in the short run, as columnist Peggy Noonan points out, increased unemployment and additional welfare costs are hardly the uplift Europe’s slogging economies are looking for. Newcomers with the best of intentions are unlikely to navigate these new societies with ease and will be in cultures at odds with many of their beliefs. The record of Muslim assimilation is not shiny.