Here\u2019s the latest news: \u00a0two items from the Washington Post, as I blow through my monthly allotment.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome refugees in Germany get Zumba classes, but others sleep on the streets<\/a>\u201d \u2014 the headline wants to suggest that Germany is treating its refugees unequally, but the article itself makes it clear that Germany is facing a major problem. \u00a0The article repeats prior statements of 800,000 arrivals this year; other sources now say that\u2019s been revised to 1.5 million \u2013 and still Europe is being called hard-hearted, at least by Americans who don\u2019t recognize the chaos Germany is now experiencing. \u00a0And this article, like so many others, describes scenes in which young men, having left unpleasant but not life-threatening situations not just in Syria but all over the Middle East, with the expectation that Germany would be the economic Promised Land, are now pretty p***ed off that Germany is not, in fact, meeting their expectations of jobs, apartments, and cash.<\/p>\n \u201cI read about how industrious and successful the Germans are,\u201d said\u00a0[27 year-old\u00a0Ahmed]\u00a0<\/span>Hamadich, who worked as a lab technician in Damascus. \u201cBut this,\u201d he said, using both hands to indicate the refugees bundling up for another night on the sidewalk, \u201cis not working.\u201d . . ..<\/p>\n In an interview with The Washington Post last week, Interior Minister Thomas de Maizi\u00e8re said Germany is managing, \u201cbut with difficulties.\u201d He noted that the country had to roll out a huge operation to shelter asylum seekers \u201cwithin weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n He blamed the problems in Berlin on refugees who come to the capital even though many should instead be registering in smaller cities and towns.<\/p>\n \u201cIn a way, they cannot complain that they are queuing here when they don\u2019t want to go other places,\u201d he said. . . .<\/p>\n Monika Hebbinghaus, a city spokeswoman, acknowledged that some refugees were sleeping on the streets and blamed the chaos on the surging numbers. At one point, she said, frustrated refugees attempted to storm the processing center.<\/p>\n She also said asylum seekers were not following instructions. They are supposed to wait at shelters for word that it is their turn to come back in for processing. But instead, she said, they are simply showing up every day and waiting. Because refugees are constantly moving around, she said, it has become difficult to locate them in shelters when it is time for their appointment.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And, \u201cAs Europe makes room for refugees, some in Japan ask: Why not us<\/a>?\u201d \u2014 which describes emerging discussion in Japan on accepting more refugees (they currently accept refugees in the single digits<\/strong> per year), though the article makes much of very small numbers of voices proposing a greater openness, and editorializes:<\/p>\n But Japan also faces a demographic time bomb \u2013 one that could be significantly eased by an influx of new people. With its rapidly aging population and paltry birth rate, Japan is getting smaller and grayer by the year.<\/p>\n Japan\u2019s government estimates that the country\u2019s population will shrink from the current 127 million to 95 million by 2050, and by that stage, 40 percent of Japanese will be over the age of 65. Who\u2019s going to pay for their retirement and their health care?<\/p>\n And it\u2019s not as if Japan doesn\u2019t have the space. The New York Times recently reported that there are 8 million \u201cghost homes\u201d in Japan already, as the population shrinks and people move to the cities. This phenomenon prompted one real estate expert to warn: \u201cTokyo could end up being surrounded by Detroits.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Of course, this follows on criticism of the rich Gulf States for their closed-door policies, though the motivation is rather different \u2014 in the case of the Gulf States, they are culturally very similar to the Syrians, but opening the doors means taking the fixed \u201cpie\u201d of oil wealth and dividing it into more, and smaller pieces. \u00a0In the case of Japan, though, the motivations are very different.<\/p>\n Japan is actually doing much to help refugees, but this is via funding and staffing refugee camps, rather than via resettlement in their own countries.<\/p>\n But Japan\u2019s culture is an insular one. \u00a0All this fluff about \u201ceveryone\u2019s basically all the same\u201d? \u00a0No. \u00a0Remember when I told you about Shutting Out the Sun<\/a>? \u00a0Their culture is simply not our culture, in ways far deeper than the food they eat or their music and dance traditions. \u00a0Without commenting on whether their cults \u201cbad\u201d or \u201cgood\u201d, it is clear that it is very different, and it is reasonable of the Japanese to expect that if they open their country up to refugee resettlement, or to large-scale immigration of any kind (there are guest workers there currently \u2014 so, yes, even now, \u201cit\u2019s complicated,\u201d as they say), they will necessarily be obliged to change their culture. \u00a0They have made the decision that they want to keep their culture, thank-y0u-very-much, and have, so far as I understand, accepted that this means that their population will shrink, and are looking to robotics as a partial solution.<\/p>\n