The enthusiasm with which some commentators have applauded an Angela Merkel "u-turn" on migration has more to do with wishful thinking and I-told-you-so cynicism than with the post-Cologne German reality.
But there is nothing incompatible in balancing a generous open-door policy with one that says abusers of the privilege will be promptly expelled, specifically those convicted of serious offences.
The policies are not mutually opposed, but the one a necessary corollary of the other. "We have to consider when someone forfeits their right to our hospitality," the Chancellor argues with some justice. Germany still expects to take in another million refugees this year, although there will be some tightening of controls.
However, the New Year’s Eve sexual violence in Cologne and cities from Frankfurt to Hamburg has certainly challenged and complicated Merkel’s task and undermined the credibility of the German police. And it has provided plenty of fuel to feed racist and Islamophobic fires.
To date, more than 600 women have filed criminal complaints over the attacks in Cologne and Hamburg alone, with 40 per cent alleging sexual assaults, and many identifying attackers as men of Arab or North African origin. Of the initial 32 people seen by police as suspects, some 22 are reported to be asylum seekers. The Minister for Justice has also suggested there is evidence attacks were pre-planned and coordinated.
Part of the narrative undoubtedly lies in the reality that many of these young men come to Europe with what one writer describes euphemistically as "unreconstructed attitudes towards women", a deep culturally-based misogynism, fuelled no doubt by the extraordinary circumstances in which they find themselves. Many have been torn from the sort of social networks of family, Mosque and close community which normally circumscribe their ability to express such attitudes in practice.
Their violence is an inchoate, brutal attempt, little to do with sex, to assert themselves over a group they see as having even less power than they do. There are also other examples of similar mass street violence against women like the notorious attacks in Cairo’s Tahrir Square during Egypt’s Arab Spring. Or in the random violence that Indian women face in the street and public transport every day.
No-one ever said that every refugee would be a model citizen. How could they be when they have been through what they have? But the worthy ideals of "cultural coexistence" and Germany's own Willkommenskultur (welcome culture) do not have to mean accommodating the prejudices and violence of a small minority who have horrified, disgusted and – probably – jeopardised the vast majority of their fellow refugees. It is to be hoped that next week's Cologne festival will be properly policed.