Relax, Europe: many of the refugees will not stay for long

In the current cacophony around the European refugee crisis, one big aspect gets almost no audience.

The aspect is: many refugees will not stay in Northern Europe.

The nickname of the apartment complex back in the last city in the U.S. the blogster called home was "the United Nations".

People from around the world lived there, it was the first "pied a terre", foothold, for many new immigrants. The last batch the blogster distinctly recalls were people from Bosnia.

Many of them didn't like Germany.

Because the Germans kicked them out of the country in those mid to late 1990s when the thinly veiled xenophobia of German right leaning politicians was not temporarily covered by the citizens' open "Refugees Welcome".

So, those lucky enough to get a US visa, left Germany for the wide open spaces beyond the Atlantic.

Others returned to their home country when the war was over. Again others went to this or that EU country.

If and when the Middle East becomes more livable again, hundreds of thousands of those who made their way to the cold North will return home. Granted, the Middle East is more fucked up - no apology for strong language - than the Balkans.

The known statistical figures may not apply. In the post Half-life of migrants in Germany from June 2013, we tried to look at the then numbers and the duration of residence.

Refugees made up a much smaller proportion of the figures from two years ago, but this does not change the fact modern day immigration is very different from the historical concept.

Despite the now well covered fact that Europe's population is shrinking so much that they could really need all the immigrants they can get, repeat after me: many hundreds of thousands are unlikely to stay.

This, in turn, also makes some of the utterly condescending demands on refugees pretty ridiculous.

The German media have been buzzing with "you need to learn German fast" as well as the "you need to live by our values" mantra. We'll talk about the latter at some point, but the repeated "learn German fast" should be toned down a bit.

Yes, it helps. No, it is not a good idea to make this a condition for treating people well.

Though we reiterate a point made in another post: You have to be a US citizen in order to vote. Yet, there are counties in the United States where voting ballots are made available in other languages, for example Korean.

This is unimaginable in Germany.

Okay, in today's Germany, you can do your written test for a driver's license in English, which is serious progress. 

But the blogster won't hold its* breath regarding ballots or many other areas of life.

We'll check the numbers a few years down the road to see how many refugees stayed around.

* After some initial hesitation, the blogster likes gender neutrality. It also annoys the right people.