Story highlights
- Germany has set $6 billion aside to care for 800,000 refugees this year
- The government says it may take in another 500,000 for years to come
- Many Germans have opened their homes to refugees -- but some aren't so sure
Berlin (CNN)One morning, as we set up to broadcast live in front of the Munich train station, we watched as a group of new arrivals stepped off the train from Budapest to register as refugees.
There were several families from Syria, a clutch of young men from Pakistan and a couple from Afghanistan. They passed through the medical tents, looking dazed from their long journey.
A few meters away, a crowd of local residents gathered to watch the new arrivals, spontaneously applauding as one refugee after another came through the medical screening. A young man held up a cardboard sign, decorated with sunflowers, that said "Welcome to Germany." A middle-aged woman came with a bag of toys and candy, offering them to every refugee child that came through.
But not everyone was so welcoming.
"Soon, it will be millions coming in!" grumbled one retiree as he watched the refugees trickling in. "Millions! And how will we pay for all of them?" he asked rhetorically to the young couple who waited patiently beside him.
Merkel calls for volunteers to help house refugees 02:13
German Chancellor Angela Merkel had an answer for him that day: More than 6 billion euros ($6.8 billion) will now be set aside to house and care for 800,000 new refugee applicants this year. And Germany may even take in another 500,000 for several years to come.
It's a staggering number for any nation to take. For Germany, it represents 1% of the population.
"This crisis will change our nation," Merkel said in a national address. "But I think we are up for the challenge."
The benefits
Germany needs more people. It has the lowest birthrate in the world, 8.2 births for every 1,000 people, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy.
At the same, time life expectancy is soaring -- 84 for women and 88 for men -- and Germany is desperate for workers to boost its aging and shrinking population.
Which explains why Assad Baloch, a former human rights activist from Pakistan, is busy learning how to build a deadbolt lock from scratch.
We met him at a metal workshop in Berlin, part of a city government project to match refugees with employers desperate to find work. Their motto: "'Refugee' is not a career."
"Electricians -- everyone needs electricians and plumbers and roofers," says project manager Anton Schunemann.
The idea is to give refugees a jump-start in the job market. There are German language lessons and also a crash course in German work culture. Every two weeks, participants sign up to learn a new skill, anything from baking to roofing.
"They have to work here every day for eight hours," explains Schunemann. "They have to be here at 8 o'clock. In some countries it's different. You work for two or three days for 20 hours and then you have three weeks off. They have to know about a lot of the rules. You have to know about job interviews. In a lot of countries, they don't have that."
The costs
Still, programs like this cost money. Merkel has promised that she will not raise taxes to cover the 6 billion-euro cost expected as a result of the refugee crisis. But her political allies aren't happy with her decision to lay out the welcome mat.
"We cannot take in all the refugees coming from all the different countries of the world," said Horst Seehofer, president of the Christian Social Union, the sister party to Merkel's Christian Democrats. "No society can withstand this permanently -- we can help, but we need to be fair."
Despite the overwhelmingly warm welcome to refugees from many Germans, there is also an undeniable segment of society that is fearful and angry about the influx.
A woman cries after being rescued in the Mediterranean Sea about 15 miles north of Sabratha, Libya, on July 25, 2017. More than 6,600 migrants and refugees entered Europe by sea in January 2018, according to the UN migration agency, and more than 240 people died on the Mediterranean Sea during that month.
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Refugees and migrants get off a fishing boat at the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean Sea from Turkey in October 2015.
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Migrants step over dead bodies while being rescued in the Mediterranean Sea, off the coast of Libya in October 2016. Agence France-Presse photographer Aris Messinis was on a Spanish rescue boat that encountered several crowded migrant boats. Messinis said the rescuers counted 29 dead bodies -- 10 men and 19 women, all between 20 and 30 years old. "I've (seen) in my career a lot of death," he said. "I cover war zones, conflict and everything. I see a lot of death and suffering, but this is something different. Completely different."
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Authorities stand near the body of 2-year-old Alan Kurdi on the shore of Bodrum, Turkey, in September 2015. Alan, his brother and their mother drowned while fleeing Syria. This photo was shared around the world, often with a Turkish hashtag that means "Flotsam of Humanity."
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Migrants board a train at Keleti station in Budapest, Hungary, after the station was reopened in September 2015.
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Children cry as migrants in Greece try to break through a police cordon to cross into Macedonia in August 2015. Thousands of migrants -- most of them fleeing Syria's bitter conflict -- were stranded in a no-man's land on the border.
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The Kusadasi Ilgun, a sunken 20-foot boat, lies in waters off the Greek island of Samos in November 2016.
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Migrants bathe outside near a makeshift shelter in an abandoned warehouse in Subotica, Serbia, in January 2017.
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A police officer in Calais, France, tries to prevent migrants from heading for the Channel Tunnel to England in June 2015.
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A migrant walks past a burning shack in the southern part of the "Jungle" migrant camp in Calais, France, in March 2016. Part of the camp was being demolished -- and the inhabitants relocated -- in response to unsanitary conditions at the site.
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Migrants stumble as they cross a river north of Idomeni, Greece, attempting to reach Macedonia on a route that would bypass the border-control fence in March 2016.
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In September 2015, an excavator dumps life vests that were previously used by migrants on the Greek island of Lesbos.
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The Turkish coast guard helps refugees near Aydin, Turkey, after their boat toppled en route to Greece in January 2016.
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A woman sits with children around a fire at the northern Greek border point of Idomeni in March 2016.
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A column of migrants moves along a path between farm fields in Rigonce, Slovenia, in October 2015.
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A ship crowded with migrants flips onto its side in May 2016 as an Italian navy ship approaches off the coast of Libya. Passengers had rushed to the port side, a shift in weight that proved too much. Five people died and more than 500 were rescued.
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Refugees break through a barbed-wire fence on the Greece-Macedonia border in February 2016, as tensions boiled over regarding new travel restrictions into Europe.
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Policemen try to disperse hundreds of migrants by spraying them with fire extinguishers during a registration procedure in Kos, Greece, in August 2015.
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A member of the humanitarian organization Sea-Watch holds a migrant baby who drowned following the capsizing of a boat off Libya in May 2016.
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A migrant in Gevgelija, Macedonia, tries to sneak onto a train bound for Serbia in August 2015.
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Migrants, most of them from Eritrea, jump into the Mediterranean from a crowded wooden boat during a rescue operation about 13 miles north of Sabratha, Libya, in August 2016.
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Refugees rescued off the Libyan coast get their first sight of Sardinia as they sail in the Mediterranean Sea toward Cagliari, Italy, in September 2015.
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Local residents and rescue workers help migrants from the sea after a boat carrying them sank off the island of Rhodes, Greece, in April 2015.
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Investigators in Burgenland, Austria, inspect an abandoned truck that contained the bodies of refugees who died of suffocation in August 2015. The 71 victims -- most likely fleeing war-ravaged Syria -- were 60 men, eight women and three children.
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Syrian refugees sleep on the floor of a train car taking them from Macedonia to the Serbian border in August 2015. How to help the ongoing migrant crisis
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On the day that Merkel announced her plan to tackle the crisis, a fire burned down a shelter housing 80 refugees near Stuttgart. The blaze started at around 2 a.m. and took more than 100 firefighters to get under control. Five refugees were brought to the hospital for smoke inhalation, and the entire building is now uninhabitable.
Police believe the fire was probably started by right-wing extremists. The number of anti-immigrant attacks has more than doubled this year. Police have recorded more than 340 hate crime incidents since January, from anti-refugee graffiti on shelters to arson attacks.
At one shelter we visited, the German manager was happy to talk to news media but did not want his full name used for fear of violent attacks by extremists.
A warm welcome
That specter of violence casts a shadow over what is otherwise a national outpouring of support for refugees.
Hundreds have donated money, clothing and blankets. Aid groups are inundated with volunteers wanting to help, and private citizens are now offering their homes to refugees.
One woman we spoke to decided to volunteer a room in her home to a Syrian refugee through a local church group.
"I just decided: Why not a refugee?" she said. "I prefer to give a room to a responsible adult who is working hard to make a new life there than, for an example, an American student who's here to learn German."
Germans open homes to refugees 03:39
Over a cup of freshly brewed coffee, she happily chatted with her new housemate Hazem, a 30-year old from Homs, Syria, about the basics of life here -- from the complexities of Germany's recycling laws and transportation systems to which German sausages contain pork.
But while Hazem was happy to be quoted, the woman hosting him did not want her name published or her home identified for fear of attacks by right-wing extremists.
Hazem seems unfazed by this, however. He paid people-smugglers more than $7,000, trying multiple times to cross the Mediterranean into Europe, before finally rowing a boat from Turkey to Greece and swimming across a river to Macedonia. He hopes to bring his wife and two children to Germany, if his request for asylum is granted.
Learning a new language, he says, is the most difficult part of adjusting to his new life.
"All I could hear was 'ich, ich, ich,'" he said. "Everyone sounded so angry. But now I can understand a little, I think the language is really beautiful. I am happy here -- very happy."
