The Unequal Burden on Cities in Germany's Refugee Crisis

Recent events in Germany have placed Angela Merkel in pretty hot water. After state elections in Berlin on Sunday saw the extreme-right AfD party gain 14 percent of the vote in Germany’s capital, Germany’s chancellor has expressed regret over her handling of the country’s influx of refugees from Syria and other war-torn countries since summer 2015. Her actual words, which have been widely misreported as regret at opening Germany’s borders at all, are telling. In a speech Monday, she said that:

It is specifically her own and Germany’s lack of preparation that Merkel regrets, and she may be right. A new report from the Brookings Institution published this week argues that, faced with an abrupt migrant influx, Germany’s cities have taken a disproportionate share of the refugee burden.