Germany’s road to redemption

MUNICH: Of the 4 million Syrian men, women, and children who have fled their country, the Obama administration wants the US to take in 10,000 over the next year. Britain has promised that it will revise its policy and resettle up to 20,000 over the next five years. And then there is Germany, where an es-timated 800,000 asylum-seekers will arrive this year alone -- more than in all of Europe in 2014.

You would think that German generosity would spur other countries to emulate, or at the least, thank and praise it. Not quite. Some European politicians have been quick to criticize Germany for violating European Union rules, for creating a magnet that will attract more refugees, and for increasing the risk of jihadi infiltration. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban says, “The problem is not a European prob-lem; the problem is a German problem.” Marine Le Pen, France’s populist leader, said at a meeting of her party that “Germany probably thinks its population is moribund, and it is probably seeking to lower wages and continue to recruit slaves through mass immigration.” It was almost certainly a deliberate, sly reference to the Nazi policy of forced labor during World War II.