The easy spin here for fans of open borders is that this isn’t so much a problem of assimilation as institutionalization. Just as criminals organize themselves into gangs by race in prison to protect themselves from dangerous strangers in close quarters, so too do refugees. Everything will be fine once they’re settled somewhere and have time to acclimate to their new country.

We’ll see in due time. But increasingly I’ve got a crazy hunch that no matter how bad Obama’s legacy ends up being, Angela Merkel’s will be worse.

Germany’s police union Tuesday called for refugees to be separated by religion — especially between Christians and Muslims — and by country of origin, to minimise the potential for conflict.

Groups banding together by ethnicity, creed or clan were “attacking each other with knives and homemade weapons,” said union chief Rainer Wendt, calling for special protection for Christians, women and minors.

Critics argued segregating migrants sends the wrong signal as Germany seeks to integrate them into a pluralistic society, and that portraying refugee centres as powder kegs fed the arguments of far-right agitators.

One riot started in the city of Suhl when a refugee tore some pages out of a Koran and flushed them down a toilet. Six cops and 11 refugees were injured in the resulting melee and another 15 people were charged with attempted manslaughter. Another riot, this one in the city of Kassel, was less religious than ethnic: 70 Pakistanis squared off with 300 Albanians in a fight that featured sticks and pepper spray. Oddly enough, there’s no refugee crisis in either of those countries. What are those “refugees” doing in Germany?

This isn’t a problem of overcrowding, says the leader of a German group devoted to resettling Middle Eastern Christians. This is a cultural problem. When you import a great mass of people from a different culture, they don’t check their grievances at the gate:

“I’ve heard so many reports from Christian refugees who were attacked by conservative Muslims,” said Simon Jacob, of the Central Council for Oriental Christians (ZOCD).

But that’s only the tip of the iceberg, the ZOCD board member told DW: “The number of unreported cases is much higher.”…

Overcrowding isn’t the main issue anyway, Jacob argued – it’s merely the trigger: “People bring with them the conflicts that exist in their native countries, Christians and Muslims, Kurds and extremists, Shiites and Sunnis – they don’t leave them behind at the border.” These conflicts erupt when the refugees – often traumatized – are forced to live close together, he added.

Yet another riot at a refugee center in Berlin reportedly involved Chechen Muslims attacking Syrian Christians. The German media’s begun to turn on Merkel too as the initial euphoria over purging part of Germany’s Nazi legacy with its new image as a haven for victims of war sinks beneath the reality of somehow having to house and feed 10,000 new arrivals each day. Here’s a recent video report about the messiness of the process. I wonder when we’ll hear the first rumblings that Merkel’s reign as Chancellor is ending. Over/under is Thanksgiving.