What Germany is proposing is undertaking a vast social and demographic experiment, with the rapid, bulk importation of Muslim immigrants into a country with an aging population.

Other European countries could be forgiven for not being so adventurous. The experience of the French banlieues, home to generations of unassimilated Muslim immigrants, hasn’t been a happy one.

Inevitably, Merkel’s policy will act as an enormous magnet to refugees and migrants. If the alternative is living anywhere outside the advanced West, even in those places not riven by civil war, who wouldn’t choose the wealthy colossus of Northern Europe and it’s generous welfare system?

Germany has actually gotten more asylum-seekers from the Balkans than from Syria this year.

Germany’s approach will also affect the rest of Europe, especially countries that are transit points. It is supposed to be EU policy that asylum-seekers must apply in the country where they arrive. In keeping migrants from getting on trains to Germany and Austria — a public-relations fiasco — Hungary was merely trying to enforce this rule.