Why I Love To Blog -- Reason #325,684 -- July 13, 2015

On July 7, 2015, I posted:

In case folks forget, Greece is still part of the EU. Free, unfettered travel is allowed between and among all EU countries. We won't see streams of Greeks storming the barriers trying to flee to Germany, they will simply drive up the road. It is all agreed that regardless of how this plays out, Greece will not exit the EU in less than two years; it will take that long for the process to play out. A lot can happen in two years.

It won't be just the Greeks streaming to Germany. The AP is reporting:

The number of people applying for asylum in Germany more than doubled to almost 180,000 in the first half of the year, officials said Monday, acknowledging that police are struggling to keep tabs on everyone who enters the country.

Official figures showed that 179,037 asylum applications were filed in the first six months of 2015, the vast majority of them first-time requests. Last year, 77,109 applications were filed during the January-June period.

Many Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans who arrive on Europe's shores by boat try to continue their journey to Germany or Scandinavia. In the past, Germany has criticized countries such as Italy for failing to properly register refugees as EU rules require.

But German weekly Der Spiegel reported at the weekend that border police in parts of Bavaria had given up trying to take the fingerprints of all refugees. Quoting a senior police union official, it reported that police in Passau - on the border with Austria - are letting between 250 and 300 people enter the country each day without proper registration. 

Border police chief Dieter Romann told reporters in Berlin that his officers aren't always able to fingerprint all new arrivals within the 48-hour maximum time limit allowed by law. The migrants are told to report to the next reception center, where they can be processed, but there is no way of verifying that they do.