Germany and Greece now

Greece is becoming a “human skip” into which the EU is happy to dump countless refugees. It is like a giant Gaza Strip, teeming with people who want to move, but are not allowed to. And what is the cause of Greece’s problems? German policy over which the Greeks and the rest of the EU have no influence.

Germany wants the rest of the EU to take it's “fair share” of what many EU countries see as Germany’s migrants. Germany invited them in, so many European countries are saying: “You deal with them, they’re your problem.” This division is particularly stark between the central European, former communist countries and Germany.

Immigrants, by definition, compete with the poorest local people in the job market, in the housing market and for access to health and schools. This is a fact. Economists tend to miss the central point. While the economy might get workers, society gets people.

But for the relatively wealthy, immigration is a boon. There are more taxi drivers, more cleaners, more shop assistants, more nannies; in short, the service economy, the one that services the relative wealthy, booms. The relatively wealthy don’t have to worry about immigrants pushing up rents because the immigrants can’t afford to live in posh areas, so they compete for housing not with the relatively wealthy, but with the relatively poor.

Immigration is a class issue, and the richer you are, the greater the luxury you have to pontificate about immigration because either you are not affected; or if you are, you are affected positively. It is completely unclear how the experiment will end that the German chancellor has forced upon the European Continent.