It was a mistake for Germany to take in 1million migrants.

My opponent begins this debate by giving 27 (!) sources supposed to portray refugee delinquency in Germany. She thus opens with a Gish Gallop, that is a torrent of small arguments impossible to answer to any satisfactory degree within the bounds of a/ this debate. We can see this in the form she presents some of them: “Here are some examples of migrant violence in Germany” (then proceeds to list two separate articles) If I wanted to answer all of them individually, I would have less than 400 characters per article, not taking into account that I might want to present an argument myself. To put this into perspective, the above bit alone contains more characters than that. Therefore, I will briefly deal with some of them at the same time and focus on more important points in greater detail. Her sources are numbered chronologically with 1)-27). 1. Reasons for migrating 3) Gender statistics are irrelevant. There is nothing inherently bad about 72% of refugees being male. Germany’s Federal Agency for Migration and Refugees makes it pretty clear that the great majority of requests are issued by people from Syria, Afghanistan and Iran. Here are this years numbers (1): Syria: 51.7% Iraq: 14.2% Afghanistan: 10.6% Unsure: 5.4% Iran: 2.3% Albania: 2.1% Pakistan: 1.4% Eritrea: 1.3% No Nationality: 1% Serbia: 0.9% Other: 9.1% The political situation in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and Eritrea is such that it permits Section 16a GG of the German Basic Law, which states any politically persecuted person is entitled to political asylum (2), to come into effect. That is 81.5% not 40%. Of course there are some from the Baltic States requesting asylum. However, since these countries among others have been classified as “safe countries” the chance of these requests being accepted is close to zero. The Daily Mail is not exactly known for accurate reports. 2. Education My opponent is not hesitant to cite more than a dozen anecdotes of violence, but when it comes to hard facts, like some policy or actual numbers, the citations are nowhere to be found. Syria’s literacy rate from many years ago hardly matters at it is now that we are dealing with Syrian refugees. UNESCO reported that Syria’s literacy rate was at 86.4% in 2015, not 21% (3). Concerning the issue of lower education standards, what many newspapers seem to ignore in their reports is the emphasis on this proposal’s improvised and short-lived nature. Nobody is planning to keep it that way. Further, until now it is not clear how this reduction will look like. In Germany there are generally 3 kinds of schools you can visit after elementary school, each with a different level of education. Since this policy’s aim only is to bring people faster in a position where they can get a job, it is not at all unreasonable to assume the highest and perhaps even the second highest tier of school graduation will be unaffected by this. 3. Culture She has not justified this point in any way and “other European countries” are not Germany. My experience of everyday life has not changed in the slightest and my personal testimony is just as good as the testimony some of her sources got from Facebook (like source number 14)). Even as a German, it is not clear to me what exactly this “German culture” is supposed to be. 4. Standards of living The survey my opponent relies on was conducted by asking people on the street, not empirical data. Surveys like this are grossly inaccurate. For example, when people in France and Great Britain were asked how many Muslims live in their countries, the French said 31%, the British 21%. The actual numbers are 8% and 5% respectively (4). My opponent is not presenting any hard evidence here. 5. Crime Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway are not Germany. What happens there is irrelevant to this debate unless my opponent can demonstrate the relation. 8) and 9) alone contain a total of 12 points and that’s just 2 of my opponents 27 sources. This debating style is ridiculous. Concerning 13), the mayor of Ellwangen allegedly ordered the police to not arrest refugees. What is the source of this claim? A Facebook post. I researched this claim in both English and German, but could not find anything to support it. But there is something very important to note about sources like this, especially 8)-27): all of them present merely anecdotal evidence. More than a million people came to Germany, it would truly be a miracle if there were no criminals among them. To turn any of these reports into support for an argument, Pro has to show, not that more people commit more crimes (that should be obvious to anyone), but that the criminality among these people is significantly higher than among Germans. Say she lists 10,000 crimes committed by refugees. That may sound like a lot, but divided by a million people, that’s still just 1%. In other words, what she needs to do is deliver percentages not absolute numbers and the great majority of her sources don’t do that. But I won’t deny that none of her sources talk about percentages, so let’s look at some of them in greater detail. Supposedly 90% of refugees are “unpleasant, liars and threaten to behead people” (5). That sounds horrible. But where does this number come from? They come from one social worker. Yes, a single one. No statistics, no empirical data, just what a single person testified he experiences. Supposedly 70% of refugees engage in drug abuse, theft and violence. That sounds horrible. Where does this number come from? Again, a single non-authoritative person. No statistics, no empirical data, just, once again, a single person testifying his experience. Surprisingly, Pro cites the Feb. 2016 report of Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Agency in support of her position. Let’s see what the report concludes (6) (7) (8): Since the beginning of 2015 the amount of refugees has increased by 440%, the amount of crimes merely by 78%. Most crimes do not involve violence. 32% of all crimes committed by refugees involve usage of public transport without a correct license and the like. Only 18% out of 208.000 crimes do involved violence. Dividing this number by 1,1 million and assuming each individual committed only one crime (which was not the case), we can see that in the worst case scenario only 3.4% of refugees have committed a violent crime. Thus we can quite confidently say that Germany is not just opening its borders to violence. And last but not least, the BKA found that the “vast majority of asylum-seekers [commit] no offenses” 6. Terrorism She claims taking in so many refugees would increase the risk of terrorism, but does not justify this in any way. In all of history there have been a total of two people killed due to Islamist attacks (9), both of which were Americans. Compared to the death tolls of German right wing terrorism, that’s nothing. I won’t deny Germany’s high risk of being the target of a terrorist attack, but this risk has been high since long before the Syrian civil war. Sources (1) https://www.bamf.de... (2) https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de... (3) http://data.uis.unesco.org... (4) http://www.euro-islam.info... (5) http://www.breitbart.com... (6) http://www.focus.de... (7) http://www.dw.com... (8) http://www.n-tv.de... (10)http://www.bbc.com...