Germany Feels Backlash for Welcoming Migrants. Domestic, international criticism follows open-arms policy.

Germany Feels Backlash for Welcoming Migrants

Domestic, international criticism follows open-arms policy

By BERTRAND BENOIT in Berlin and  NICHOLAS WINNING in London

Sept. 6, 2015 11:24 a.m. ET / http://www.wsj.com/articles/germany-feels-backlash-for-welcoming-migrants-1441553068?mod=e2fb

Praise for Germany’s handling of the thousands of refugees pouring into the country is giving way to domestic and international criticism of Berlin’s open-arms policy.

The criticism, though still muted, could spell trouble for German Chancellor Angela Merkel once the outpouring of sympathy that has greeted the migrants since late last week subsides and Berlin resumes its push to distribute them more broadly across Europe.

The chancellor’s decision on Friday night to let thousands of migrants traveling through Hungary into the country “sends a completely wrong signal in Europe,” Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann told public television Saturday. “This must be corrected.”

Leaders of the Christian Social Union, Bavaria’s ruling party and an ally of Ms. Merkel’s Christian Democrats, unanimously criticized the decision as wrongheaded during a telephone conference on Saturday, Andreas Scheuer, the party’s secretary-general said.

Anti-immigration politicians in Germany, France and the U.K. also assailed the policy, saying that it was pulling even more refugees toward the continent and that German plans to divert some to other countries in Europe should be resisted. By Sunday afternoon, some 13,000 migrants had crossed from Hungary into Austria in the 36 hours since German and Austrian authorities bowed to pressure to grant entry to the crowds of asylum seekers stranded in Hungary.

“A welcoming culture is an expression of naive and illusory thinking,” a spokesman for Alfa, a recently founded opposition party in Germany, said Sunday. “What we need, instead, is realism and a sense of proportion. We shouldn’t go beyond providing the basics for asylum seekers, like food and shelter, because it will attract more people.”

In France, far-right National Front leader Marine Le Pen, speaking at her party’s annual gathering in Marseille on Sunday, said: “Germany has a heavy responsibility for inciting at the level of the European Union a passive acceptance of this crisis. Germany is probably thinking about its declining demography. It is probably looking to lower salaries again and recruit slaves through mass immigration.”

Germany, where federal police said they expected a total 17,000 migrants to arrive from Hungary over the weekend, was working to distribute them across the country. Officials said about 7,000 migrants arrived in Munich on Saturday, followed by another 6,000 people by Sunday afternoon. He said he expected an additional 4,000 people to arrive by day’s end. In addition, some trains carrying migrants have been redirected to other German cities.

Berlin has repeatedly said the decision to let the migrants in was a one-off move after the Hungarian government gave up on containing thousands of migrants headed on foot to the Austrian border. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Saturday that EU asylum rules, which mandate that refugees should be registered and sheltered in their first port of entry in the bloc, still applied.

But Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban last week blamed Germany’s immigration policies and generous welfare system for emboldening more migrants to come to Western Europe—an opinion shared by several Central and Eastern European governments. Europe’s migrant crisis was “a German problem,” he said.

Hungary has been particularly critical of Germany’s announcement two weeks ago that, for practical and humanitarian reasons, it would no longer deport Syrians who had entered the EU via another country, as mandated by EU law.

If such views gain ground in Western Europe, where popular right-wing opposition parties are pressing governments to act tougher on immigration, it could undermine Berlin’s push for refugees to be distributed more equitably across the EU, leaving Germany alone to absorb what could be close to a million migrants this year, many of whom with no intention to leave.

Opinion polls published last week showed an overwhelming majority of Germans supported helping those fleeing war and persecution—and many have already been doing so. But the comments from the CSU suggest such openness may not endure as the emergency situation gives way to the trickier task of providing the migrants with a long-term prospect.

Ms. Merkel and French President François Hollande called last week for quotas to spread migrants more equitably across the 28-nation bloc. EU diplomats have said the plan, vehemently opposed by mainly Central and Eastern European members, could redistribute at least 160,000 migrants throughout the bloc, with larger, wealthier countries required to accept more.

Nigel Farage, leader of the euroskeptic U.K. Independence Party, said Friday that Ms. Merkel had emboldened people to come to the EU and that some of the scenes in Hungary recently looked as if the migration was becoming a “stampede.”

“Given that Europe, and Germany in particular, has now given huge incentives for people to come to the European Union by whatever means, I’m sorry to say that the shocking image that we saw of that young boy and the deaths in those lorries actually become more likely,” he said, alluding to two high-profile incidents of migrants perishing on their way to Europe.

“If the European Union wants to help genuine refugees it needs to establish offshore centers and process people correctly rather than inviting what has now turned into a headlong rush,” he said at a campaign event.

Mr. Farage has warned that the EU’s asylum rules would lead to an exodus of biblical proportions and noted that the radical Islamic State jihadist group in Syria and Iraq has said it would use the migrant crisis to flood Europe with jihadists.

—Nick Kostov in Paris and Neetha Mahadevan in Frankfurt contributed to this article.

Write to Bertrand Benoit at bertrand.benoit@wsj.com and Nick Winning at nick.winning@wsj.com