1/ This comment from a therapist who works with mentally ill Afghans makes an important point: The EU's de facto open-borders asylum policy -- and Germany's decision to allow applications from people without ID papers -- negatively selects for the most feckless/unstable migrants.
https://twitter.com/WollJule/status/1891770749473444013
2/ She is currently treating four Afghan migrants. with schizophrenia. What she's learned from her interactions with this community is that there are two goals these young males have in Germany -- as they themselves confirm.
3/ For Random Afghan Hamid, Goal number 1 is to get on welfare ASAP and send a few dozen Euros back home every month. €40 is a nice lunch in Germany, but it's a sizable sum in Afghanistan.
Goal number 2, of course, is to get as much of Hamid's family as possible to Germany.
Goal number 2, of course, is to get as much of Hamid's family as possible to Germany.
4/ Neither of these goals requires any particular intelligence or initiative -- Germany's legions of paid and volunteer "refugee helpers" will get you set up with welfare from the get-go. The second goal (family) is more long-term, and may require Hamid to wait
5/ out some deadlines and improve his integration somewhat. Other than gradually putting down roots in Germany -- every day that goes by reduces your chance of ever actually being deported -- Hamid has nothing to do.
6/ So the question for Hamid's family is: Who do you send to that amazing far-off country which pays any human being from anywhere money every month *merely for continuing to exist*? Do you send your devout, practically-minded son who already knows the family business?
7/ Do you send your especially bright son who might qualify for admission into a legitimate college? Or do you send cousin Hamid, the not-quite-right product of a line of consanguineous matches? Hamid is very effeminate and he makes passes at men.
8/ He sometimes touches himself in public. His behavior is erratic in general, and sometimes he goes on about things which make no sense. Girls in the village find him frightening. Yet he's just smart enough to follow simple instructions.
9/ You get the picture: Hamid is trouble waiting to happen. He's almost certainly possessed by a jinn. Even worse, he's begun saying he's possessed by a jinn, which can be code for "blame him, not me, for what I'm about to do".
10/ Sending Hamid off to Germany kills two birds with one stone: Hamid and his jinn are now off your hands, and he will soon start sending you enough money to double your income! This (with elaborations) is what the therapist reports - families send their most-troubled members.
11/ Various interviews with German security officials back this up -- when they get around to doing background checks on these men (if they ever do), they usually find it's the younger "second" sons who are sent off to try to reach Germany.
12/ So (setting aside the question of "should") can these people be helped by therapy in Germany. Basically, no. Mental health therapy as a concept does not exist in the parts of Afghanistan these people come from. They know nothing about psychology.
13/ They view the exercises and thought experiments they are expected to do as "shameful", and the effect is compounded by the fact that therapy has to take place through interpreters of widely varying quality. They don't understand what the pills are for
14/ and often stop taking them more or less at will. So, to sum up, Germany's current migration policy brings in a disproportionate share of troubled young males, therapy is not going to make them better, and every one of them gets to stay forever, at least under current policy.
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