Merkel Joins In

From the BBC:
"Chancellor Merkel enters 'Germans only' food bank furore"

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is the latest politician to criticise a major food bank's decision to bar foreigners from receiving free food. The charity Essener Tafel called it a temporary restriction necessary because the share of foreigners using the food bank had soared to 75% in recent years. The charity says it helps about 16,000 poor people in Essen, a city in the western industrial Ruhr region.  Vandals have sprayed "Nazis" on the charity's delivery vans.  Mrs Merkel spoke out against Essener Tafel's new rule requiring visitors to show a German passport in order to receive food.  "One shouldn't run services on the basis of such categorisations. That's not good. But it also shows the amount of pressure there is, and how many people are needy. That's why I hope they can find good solutions which do not exclude groups," she told the broadcaster RTL. An estimated 1.2 million asylum seekers entered Germany during the migrant crisis of 2015-2016, more than half from war-torn Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. The record influx boosted support for the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. Essener Tafel is part of a national food bank group called Tafel. Essen is part of Germany's old coal-and-steel hub in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) state. The far-right AfD defended the charity's policy on Facebook (in German), saying "if you fight back, you're a Nazi". Like hundreds of other German food banks, Essener Tafel collects tonnes of surplus food at or past its sell-by date, which would otherwise be thrown away. The charity's managers are holding an emergency meeting now to tackle the row over its new policy, which took effect last month. Essener Tafel head Jörg Sartor spoke angrily about the criticism. "A load of politicians are laying into us now - but they are ill-informed. They ought to reciprocate and help out here - after that they can voice an opinion, by all means." He defended his staff and said he was "sick and tired" of the criticism. "I'm almost ready to quit," he said. Earlier, he said the restriction had nothing to do with xenophobia; he said it was all about fairness, because large numbers of elderly women and single mothers had stopped coming to Essener Tafel. Data from Germany's national migration agency BAMF shows that NRW has the highest number of asylum claims among the German states.  In January NRW handled 19.9% of claims, followed by Bavaria (15.1%). Asylum claims in Germany soared to a record 745,545 in 2016, but fell back to 222,683 in 2017.  A new EU border agreement with Turkey, and new border fences, drastically cut the numbers of migrants heading to Central Europe via the Balkan route.  

^  While it is good that Merkel has joined in against this discrimination it also highlights the fact that it was Merkel who opened Germany's borders to 1.2 million asylum seekers. There seemed to be no checking or any controls over who came in and there were several terrorist attacks by some of those who entered the country. That was a big mistake by Merkel. It is one thing to allow asylum seekers into your country, but you have to have safeguards to make sure you aren't letting ISIS or other terrorists to enter. Getting back to the food bank. Merkel not only needs to get involved with stopping any discriminatory action, but the German Government also needs to do more to provide for it's own people. Germany is a complete welfare state and seems to be proud of that fact yet the welfare people receive clearly aren't enough if they need to go to these kinds of food banks. There are a whole more issues in this one case that highlight the real problems in Germany today. ^

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43210596