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germans

Germany has become a focal point for the immigration debate in Europe.

The European nation has opened its doors to asylum-seekers and refugees looking for a safe haven. Recently, Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed to accept 10,000 U.N. refugees into the country; between January and July 2017, Germany reportedly accepted approximately 117,000 asylum seekers.

What happens to asylum seekers who are turned away? Unfortunately, if they appeal the decision regarding their rejected asylum applications and are denied, they risk deportation. According to Germany's Office of Immigration and Refugees, the country has rejected 210,000 asylum seekers.

But several German pilots have been preventing asylum seekers from being deported in a truly "Hail Mary" fashion.

Throughout all of 2017, these pilots refused to fly planes set to deport 222 Afghan asylum seekers. The stand down from these flights comes from a controversial European Union decision to designate Afghanistan as a "safe country of origin." The designation resulted in many Afghan nationals losing their asylum status.

Out of all the flights that refused to take off, 85 were operated by Lufthansa (or its subsidiary Eurowing). Most of these flights were scheduled to take off in Frankfurt and Düsseldorf, where, according to Quartz, the #WelcomeUnited campaign often holds their pro-refugee protests.

Photo by Daniel Leal-Olivias/AFP/Getty Images.

These pilots risk being punished with disciplinary measures for refusing to fly on moral grounds. However, it should be noted that some had other reasons for refusing to take off. For instance, they could cite "security reasons" for not flying a plane. "If [a pilot] has the impression that flight safety could be affected, he must refuse the transport of a passenger," Lufthansa spokesperson Michael Lamberty said in a statement to the German press.

Unlike the U.S., Germany's federal government is barred from conducting and enforcing deportation, meaning that deportation is the responsibility of the local and state governments. Therefore, these protests add more obstacles to the successful deportation of asylum seekers.

Pilots refusing to fly deportation flights are just one example of activists and airline companies pushing back against deportations.

In July, Swedish activist Elin Errson made headlines for live-streaming her refusal to sit down because an Afghan man on the flight was about to be deported.

"I want him to get off the plane because he is not safe in Afghanistan," Errson said in her live-stream. "I am trying to change my country's rules. I don't like them. It is not right to send people to hell."

— (@)

In 2013, immigration activists chained themselves to courthouses to prevent jail sentences for undocumented immigrants. More recently, others have chained themselves to tires to physically block buses from carrying out deportations.

Airline companies are also taking part. For example, in June 2018, Virgin Atlantic Airlines announced they will no longer help deport immigrants. American Airlines, Frontier Airlines, and United Airlines have also publicly announced their refusal to deport immigrant children in response to President Trump's family separation policy. In addition to these, Southwest Airlines, Spirit Airlines, and Alaskan Airlines all have released public statements criticizing the U.S. immigration policy.

Let's hope other airlines take notice and join the good fight.

Heroes

How screwy climate problems may have brought Trump's grandfather to America.

Since the 18th century, over 7 million Germans have moved to North America, gifting countries like the United States with their language and culture.

Participants in New York City's annual German-American Steuben Parade back in 2002. Photo by Graham Morrison/Getty Images.

We can still see their influence in our love of Oktoberfest, the accordions found in Tejano music, and the many people who bear German names. For instance, the Pfizer pharmaceutical company that makes Advil was founded by a German immigrant, and the grandson of another is now the president of the United States.

The conventional story behind why so many Germans came to North America is that back in the 1800s, Germany — and all of Europe, really — was going through a pretty tumultuous time. Revolutions, wars, the birth of empires: Back then, Europe was a complicated place to try and make a living.

But a new study suggests that's not the whole picture. Because the weather itself may have also been conspiring against them.

"Overall, we found that climate indirectly explains up to 20% to 30% of migration from Southwest Germany to North America in the 19th century," said Rüdiger Glaser, a professor at the University of Freiburg in Germany.

Using a complicated analysis of 1800s population numbers, weather data, and food prices, Glaser and his colleagues were able to illuminate how a changing climate played a hand in bringing immigrants from southwestern Germany to America.

Those food prices were really the heart of the problem. At the time, German farmers depended on stable, reliable weather to grow their crops. But as droughts, cold snaps, and floods wracked the region, stable weather could be in short supply.

"The chain of effects is clearly visible: Poor climate conditions lead to low crop yields, rising cereal prices and finally emigration," said Glaser.

Glaser and his team were even able to pinpoint specific events and changes. For instance, they saw a big wave of emigration right after the bitterly cold and rainy Year Without a Summer in 1816. A series of droughts caused another wave around the mid-1840s.

The changing weather patterns don't explain everything about migration — there were still wars, still revolutions, after all — but they did appear to play a role.

Today, we're seeing our climate and weather patterns change again.

While the events that caused immigration back in the 1800s were not necessarily the same type of climate change we're seeing today (the Year Without a Summer was due to a volcano, after all, not carbon emissions), rising sea levels and more extreme weather events are still forcing people to move. In fact, the U.N. estimated that in 2008, climate change displaced 20 million people worldwide.

Glaser's team hopes that by looking to the past, we can better understand the connection between human migration and our climate.

So if your last name happens to be Schmidt or Weber or Fischer, it might be worth double-checking when your grandparents or great-grandparents arrived in the United States. You might be in for a surprise.

Glaser and his colleagues' paper appeared in the scientific journal Climate of the Past.

germans

These German pilots stopped the deportation of over 200 asylum seekers on their flights.

Germany has become a focal point for the immigration debate in Europe.

But several German pilots have been preventing asylum seekers from being deported in a truly "Hail Mary" fashion.

Pilots refusing to fly deportation flights are just one example of activists and airline companies pushing back against deportations.

How screwy climate problems may have brought Trump's grandfather to America.

Since the 18th century, over 7 million Germans have moved to North America, gifting countries like the United States with their language and culture.

But a new study suggests that's not the whole picture. Because the weather itself may have also been conspiring against them.

Today, we're seeing our climate and weather patterns change again.

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