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The gravity of the news that Germany will take an estimated 800,000 ‘refugees’ (in fact, migrants) this year must be given a context in order to be understood. First, one must appreciate that Germany has the lowest fertility rate in Europe and one of the lowest fertility rates in the world, persistently hovering around 1.2 – 1.4 children per woman. For comparison, the average fertility rate in Middle East and North Africa is 3.7 children per woman. Germany’s ‘birth dearth’ is also not a new phenomenon but one that has persisted for over two decades. The effect of this is that Germany’s population (if we factor out immigration) is now declining with each passing year, leaving a worker-retiree ratio that is economically unsustainable.

This context goes some way to explain Chancellor Merkel’s bizarre eagerness in accepting a massive injection of working-age migrants. In Syria – the homeland of most of the coming influx of ‘refugees’ – the fertility rate is 2.8 children per woman, more than double the fertility rate of native Germans. This injection of blood is therefore likely to bear much fruit over the coming decades, leading ultimately to a boost in Germany’s overall fertility rate and an improvement in its worker-retiree ratio. Economically (if only economically), one can make a case for this. It is hugely important that Germany – an industrious economic power and the engine of Europe – avoids becoming a depopulated wilderness. It will be remembered that Japan, although now getting back on its feet, suffered enormously from mass infertility in previous decades. The cost to an economy of a rapidly diminishing labour force can run into the hundreds of billions.

But a nation, it has been said many times before, is more than an economy. Culture, faith, social type and regional character are equally vital to its continued prosperity. A strong market index is hard to appreciate if the country hosting it has been fragmented into a thousand warring hatreds. And with this policy Germany is running just that risk.

The 800,000 Syrians will quickly reproduce into millions, leaving Germany’s bio-cultural make-up eternally altered. Towns and cities across the country will be partly or fully Islamised, their valued eccentricities painted over with state-sponsored ‘harmony’ initiatives and equality workshops. Islamic conversions – in the playgrounds, the prisons and street – will blur the boundary of the native and the alien, in turn threatening the concept of ‘Germany’ itself (a notion already bruised from 100 years of political upheaval).

And then there is crime. My girlfriend, Anja, derives from and still resides in Dortmund, Rhine-Westphalia. She has told me many times (usually in a sunken and maudlin tone of voice) about the link between immigration and crime in Germany, and how it is understood and lamented by every ordinary citizen. How diminutive will her past concerns seem a year from now?

In case the objection is raised, I am fully aware that not every Muslim is a rapist/terrorist/mugger/vandal. But this is only in the same way I understand that not every Romani is a thief. Despite the exceptions, in both cases we have good reasons to fear exactly these crimes from exactly these quarters. And when we consider the scale of the new migration, thousands if not millions of ordinary Germans are being placed in grave and needless danger.

Merkel’s humanitarianism, just like her economics, is hopelessly warped. Doubtless some members of the new German-Syrian community will be grateful to Germany and work in gas stations, supermarkets or healthcare, abiding by the law and paying taxes. But others will blow up trains, shoot civilians and rape innocent women. Does any government have the right to decide this is a pill worth swallowing?

D, LDN.

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