The International Freedom Battalion responds to Erdoğan’s absurd claims that the people fighting against Daesh & building a true democracy in Rojava are “terrorists.” Fuck that guy.
Refugee children pose another challenge. Statistics from KMK, the
national body representing education ministers from the 16 federal
states, indicate that 325,000 refugee children and adolescents were
integrated into the German school system in 2014 and 2015. They now
comprise 2 percent of all schoolchildren nationwide. To address their
needs, schools need additional teachers and social workers trained to
work with traumatized children.
An informal SPIEGEL ONLINE poll of officials in the German states in
the spring, found that 12,000 new teachers had already been hired. But
GEW, a union representing educators and scientists, estimates that more
than 20,000 teachers are still needed. Some state education ministries
have already written to retirees asking them to return to work,
indicating a lack of applicants for the new positions.
In its current report on education, KMK also assumes that up to
58,000 additional daycare spots are needed for the children who arrived
in Germany in 2015 alone. To provide adequate care, up to 9,400
additional daycare professionals are needed.
Federal Environment and Building Minister Barbara Hendricks, a member of
the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), has tripled funding for
the construction of subsidized housing to 1.5 billion euros ($1.68
billion) for 2018. Hendricks is also pushing for the repeal of a
constitutional amendment that went into effect in 2006, that shifts
responsibility for construction of social housing entirely to the state
level. Under those rules, the federal government is only authorized to
provide the states with financial assistance for subsidized house until
2019. But Hendricks has argued that Germany is suffering from an acute
shortage of social housing and that the problem is too large for the
states to handle on their own….
Germans were alarmed by the New Year’s Eve assaults in Cologne. Had
Germany introduced a crime problem by allowing the refugees into the
country? Of course, the normal statistical probability also applies to
refugees. In any group of a million people, there are bound to be those
who do not abide by the law.
But the statistics compiled by the authorities also show that the
probability is no higher among refugees than in the domestic population.
According to police crime statistics, the number of criminal acts
increased by about 4 percent in 2015 over the previous year. The
increase was mainly attributable to a rise in asylum- and visa-related
offences. If these offences are factored out of the equation, the number
of criminal acts remained virtually constant, even though the number of
people in the country had increased by hundreds of thousands.
In one respect, the refugee crisis has led to an increase in crime
statistics. But in this case the migrants are the victims, not the
perpetrators. This year, the BKA has already recorded 665 assaults on
refugee accommodations. There were 1,031 such assaults in 2015, or five
times as many as in the previous year.
it’s a good thing we’ll never have all the hardships of inviting a million refugees to live with us in north america
Germany, after taking in more than a million refugees in a short span of time, has had to spend money creating thousands of jobs & social housing, when that money could have been used to give tax cuts to capitalist oligarchs & the 1%! And now all those thousands of newly-hired teachers, social workers, and civil servants will spend their paycheques in their towns and cities, boosting the local economy, when that money could have gone into some billionaire’s offshore bank account. WHAT A DISASTER FOR GERMANY!
As the refugees learn the language, get jobs, & start their own businesses, you can expect that they’ll be paying into the German tax system far more than any costs associated with hosting & integrating them, which has been the case in virtually any Western country that has taken in refugees. OH PEGIDA - WHY DID WE NOT LISTEN TO YOUR MYOPIC, RACIST NONSENSE???
Alerta Alerta Dutch Antifascists! Summer vacation is almost over, and the fascists are back from their vacations on the beaches of turkey and spain and france, and so are planning a new PEGIDA rally to tell people foreigners aren’t welcome.
The fascists will be holding a demonstration on September 11th in Den Haag against refugees and muslims. After being so well-protected by the cops last time they protested in the Hague they want to return there again, so it’s especially important to show up in great numbers to show them racists and fascists are not welcome in the Hague!
Keep an eye on the [event page] for updates and specifics as the date comes closer.
This is coming sunday! Apparently Pegida are planning to have this event as the first of a series of monthly racist demonstrations in Den Haag, so it’s important to make sure it does not go smoothly for them!