Straddling the picturesque Dreisam River in the southeast German state of Baden-Württemberg is the small and quaint university city of Freiburg. On the night of October 16, 19-year-old medical student Maria Ladenburger was brutally raped and drowned in the Dreisam River.
After a thorough investigation, amid much public outcry, the suspect was determined to be a 17-year-old Afghan migrant who had entered Germany illegally and applied for asylum. Despite a previous record of assault, he was allowed to stay in the country.
Local authorities are now investigating the similar rape and murder of a 27-year-old woman in the nearby town of Endingen. Both of these horrific cases are part of a growing collection of tragedies that have been occurring across Europe in the wake of this unprecedented migrant crisis.
The public outcry at Ladenburger’s murder has reignited the debate in Germany over the merits of Angela Merkel’s immigration policies, which initially came under fire after the public learned details of the mass rape of women during the 2016 New Year’s celebrations in Cologne.
Germany has been unique in its steadfast commitment to Merkel’s open door policy. Germany remains the biggest destination for migrants entering Europe. The real numbers are hard to know, but in a few short years the figure is hovering a little over 2 million, according to Germany’s Federal Statistical Office, Destatis.
Before this mass migration, places like Germany and Sweden were known for their relatively low crime rates. Now both countries have some of the fastest rising rape and murder rates on the continent, with new levels of anti-Semitic fervor not seen since before World War II.
Across Europe many of these migrants refuse to assimilate or adapt. They instead seclude themselves into separate neighborhoods that operate effectively as semi-autonomous fiefdoms. Here, in these so-called “no-go zones,” radicalism is bred and welfare checks flow.
People Are Not Objects Like Corn
So despite all of this, why do some cling to the failed dream of open immigration? Well, over the years, a variety of arguments have been put forth to support open borders.
On one side, you have the economic rationale for open immigration. Those who support this view argue that the free flow of labor is in no way different from the free flow of commodities and other goods. They view the issue as no different than the argument over free trade. In their mind, bushels of grain are the same thing as entire families, in their strictly quantitative and economic analysis. They commoditize millions of individuals into nothing more than a nondescript bundle known as “labor.”
On the other end of the spectrum, you have the emotional pleas. This line of thought argues that we must open the borders to all in order to provide migrants a better life. Such a life simply could not be achieved in their home countries and thus, must be achieved by bringing them in and supporting them generously with taxpayer-funded handouts.
This is nothing more than a grand attempt at virtue signaling rather than actually caring about the individuals affected. Its proponents ignore their fellow poor and impoverished citizens in favor of the poor and impoverished of other countries. They ignore that allowing mass migrations will not solve the underlying issues that drive people away from their home countries in the first place.
The main issue with any argument in favor of open immigration is that it always ignores one key facet: the culture. It is one thing to accept millions of immigrants coming from countries that largely embrace your values, something that the United States experienced in the early twentieth century with its scores of Irish, German, Italian, and Polish immigrants settling here. It is a completely different phenomenon when you are importing millions of unemployable young men from the Third World into a modern welfare state.
One of These Cultures Is Not Like the Other
Now, the arguments and slogans Germany’s open immigration crowd puts forth are quite different from the two more conventional lines of thought just outlined. In Germany, the rallying cry of the leftist open-door radicals has been “Kulturelle Anreicherung,” or “Cultural Enrichment.”
“Kulturelle Anreicherung” is not an economic argument for open borders, nor an argument that seeks to relieve migrants’ plight. It is an argument based entirely on self-loathing of not only German culture, but a wider disdain for European and Western values. They believe that a culture that has given the world Kant, Nietzsche, Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven needs to be “enriched” by millions of third world migrants who believe in the beautiful fourth-century ideas of stoning women to death and honor killings. Quite the “enrichment.”
Now it seems that the German media and politicians are far more concerned with not offending migrants’ sensibilities than the welfare of their own citizens. They stifle free speech by cracking down on German citizens for posting anything on social media that can be construed as critical of the current refugee policy, labeling such dissenting opinions as “offensive.” They take it even further by lecturing native German women on how to act, behave, and dress around migrants rather than putting an end to this failed multicultural madness.
Instead of trying to dissipate Western Civilization and values with the regressive and backwardness of radical Islamic societies, the nations of Europe should find their collective backbone and stand up for their own culture, unless they want more horrific incidents of “Cultural Enrichment” to happen to another innocent, like Maria.
