From Reuters:

Merkel defends open borders for migrants amid German rift

… By John O’Donnell

FRANKFURT, Feb 28 German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday defended her open-door policy for migrants, rejecting any limit on the number of refugees allowed into her country despite divisions within her government.

Merkel said there was no ‘Plan B’ for her aim of reducing the flow of migrants through cooperation with Turkey, efforts she said could unravel were Germany to cap the number of refugees it accepts.

“Sometimes, I also despair. Some things go too slow. There are many conflicting interests in Europe,” Merkel told state broadcaster ARD. “But it is my damn duty to do everything I can so that Europe finds a collective way.”

Merkel spelled out her motivation to keep Germany’s borders open without limits on refugees, a goal many in her own country and coalition government openly disagree with….

The migrants question has not only divided Europe. There is also strong dissent within Germany and the governing coalition.

Politicians from the state of Bavaria’s Christian Social Union, the sister party to Merkel’s CDU, have been critical of her stance.

They want a limit on the number of migrants, similar to that imposed in Austria. So too does the majority of Germans in the ARD survey.

Austria, the last stop on the way to Germany for hundreds of thousands of migrants, recently imposed restrictions on its borders, setting off a domino effect in Europe in limiting the flow of people, and leaving hundreds stranded in Greece.

Merkel dismissed such a “rigid limit”, saying: “There is no point in believing that I can solve the problem through the unilateral closure of borders.”

… “The international financial crisis was a big challenge. We managed that well. The euro crisis was a huge challenge,” said Merkel.

“This crisis is different because people are coming to us, people with a different cultural background … where people ask what is this doing to our country.”

She said, however, that she saw nothing that would prompt her to change course. Commenting on her plan, Merkel, a trained scientist, said: “It’s all well thought through. It’s logical.”

To me, Europe suddenly got very interesting around January 3, 2015 with word of the imminent publication of Houellebecq’s novel Submission. Within a week, Houellebecq was on the cover of Charlie Hebdo and much of the staff was murdered. The Camp of the Saints built all spring, with Hillary-wrecked Libya as the prime leak. Then, suddenly in late summer, came Dr. Merkel’s own goal against the German people. More memorable incidents followed in Paris and Cologne.

The endurance of the Trump Phenomenon has something to do with the one car crash of the Anti-Trump, Dr. Merkel: experienced, boring, time-tested … and yet suddenly she turned viciously on her own people and was praised for it by everybody respectable until Paris and Cologne.