The Rocky Road to Globalization:

Immigration as an economic issue.  Who gets the immigrants out of their countries?  Who benefits?  How do destiny countries pay for services to immigrants in tough economic times?

Janosch Delcker writes:  After keeping a studied silence about the anti-migrant violence in eastern Germany the past week, Angela Merkel went to visit this town near Dresden on Wednesday to show her sympathy with the asylum seekers. The locals gave her a rough reception, indicating that her open-door policy on immigration is running into stern resistance.

“Politicians, lowlifes!” yelled one man among the booing crowd when the normally popular German chancellor descended from her limousine and turned to wave — from a safe distance — to locals in Heidenau.

After a spate of arson attacks this year against asylum shelters, anti-immigrant protesters last Friday clashed with police in Heidenau during a demonstration against the imminent arrival of a new batch of refugees.

The incident sparked another outpouring of angst about how to respond to a record influx of refugees, which is expected to quadruple this year to 800,000, testing the country’s liberal laws on asylum.

Overall in Germany, the population appears to support the idea of providing shelter to people fleeing persecution or violence in their homeland. In a poll by public broadcaster ZDF, 60 percent said they believed the country could cope with the arrivals.

Another right-wing party, Alternative for Germany, which was founded in 2013, has won seats in the European Parliament and German state assemblies, especially in the former communist east, mixing Euroskepticism with calls for restrictions on immigration.

Saxony and other eastern states where the far-right thrives are also redoubts of nostalgia for the days of the German Democratic Republic, when the state provided jobs, housing, health care and schooling and immigration was almost unknown.