Germany is preparing a shift in immigration policy in the face of the dramatic increase in immigrants and asylum seekers in the country. The federal states affected by this growing flow of people seeking help claim to be overwhelmed and have asked Chancellor Olaf Scholz to intervene with additional border control measures. The opposition calls for a national pact on migration that also reinforces deportations and limits the reception of refugees to 200,000 per year.
The debate is recurring, but on this occasion the statistics are forcing a consensus between the different political forces. In 2022, a total of about 2,666,000 entries were registered across German borders and between January and August of this year, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) has counted 220,116 asylum requests, which represents an increase 77.2% compared to the same period last year. In addition, due to the Russian war in Ukraine, more than a million people have so far sought protection in Germany. Ukrainians enter the statistics because they have immediate protection.
“Germany is committed to the right of asylum, but those who come and cannot invoke protection reasons or have committed crimes must be repatriated,” Scholz ended up accepting in the face of protests from the Länder that have to provide aid and growing pressure. of the conservatives of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Bavarian Christian Democratic Union (CSU).
One of them, the Minister President of Saxony-Anhalt, Reiner Haseloff, has warned of the serious problems that the country faces if uncontrolled immigration continues: “People who really have the right to asylum and need help can no longer be helped effectively.”
The Minister of the Interior of Brandenburg, Michael Stübgen (CDU), has also called on the Federal Minister of the Interior, Nancy Faeser, to quickly introduce fixed border controls, especially on the borders with the Czech Republic and Poland, the great gateway To Germany. “Minister Faeser has already announced many things, but she has done nothing. Unscrupulous smuggling gangs must be put to an end,” she claimed.
The leader of the CDU, Friedrich Merz, has proposed as a remedy to those who, deep down, believe only to travel to Germany to benefit from its social benefits, to apply the Danish model. There, asylum seekers only receive benefits in kind, they are housed in collective housing and those who have to leave are immediately deported.
This is something that does not happen in Germany, among other reasons because the countries of origin do not recognize them as nationals or because the Green party, the federal government and those of other federal states, oppose expulsions. The German authorities deported about 13,000 people last year, although according to the Central Register of Foreigners, 304,000 should leave the country, including 248,000 who had a tolerance permit. Those tolerated are people who are still forced to leave the country but cannot be deported for certain reasons, either because they lack identification documents, are sick, have a minor child with a residence permit or have engaged in a legal battle.
It is these expulsion figures that make Merz repeat over and over again in his proposal for a national pact on migration that if it is impossible to throw out the illegals, “let’s throw out the Greens.” Here there are “explosives for the cohesion of our society. If the problem is not resolved, there is the threat of greater radicalization of the social and political spectrum,” says Merz in a speech from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) bench. , but which has now extended to the majority of the parliamentary arc.
One of the problems with the establishment of border controls that is now being debated is economics. According to the president of the German Wholesale and Foreign Trade Association (BGA), Dirk Jandura, trade lives on the free movement of goods. “Long truck jams at the borders would be a nightmare for the supply chain, causing bottlenecks and increased costs, which would ultimately be passed on to the consumer,” Jandura warned.
The police union (GdP) also rejects permanent fixed border controls due to the personnel and technical effort they would entail. Furthermore, “for legal reasons alone”, they would not lead to a decrease in the number of asylum seekers, declared the head of the GoP, Jochen Kopelke. However, he welcomes the temporary increase in controls to more firmly pursue those behind illegal entries. “Our main goal must be to combat gang-based smuggling, which is the key to curbing illegal immigration. You can only understand gang structures and money flows by dismantling smuggling gangs, and that starts with information on temporary controls.” From January to August, border controls aborted the entry of 54,000 without papers.
Faeser, opposed in principle to border controls like many in the Social Democratic Party (SPD), is repositioning herself. Not so about the proposal of the CSU leader and Minister President of Bavaria, Markus Söder, to establish an annual maximum limit for refugees. “No limits can be established on the individual right to asylum according to the Geneva Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and the European Convention on Human Rights,” he explained. For the minister, “the only thing that will really help is a European solution, doing more in terms of distribution, preventing municipalities from being at the limit of their capacity.”
Her foreign affairs colleague, Annalena Baerbock, from the Green party, thinks the same: “The situation in German municipalities is tense, which is why we are working to achieve common regulations in Europe on asylum and refugee policy. We need clear rules so that people are finally distributed in an orderly manner in Europe.
The Common European Asylum System is currently being negotiated, which aims, among other things, to limit irregular immigration in the EU, but Scholz is already leading the way towards a more restrictive and effective immigration policy regarding deportations in Germany. “We are in a difficult situation and it may be necessary to take more measures at the borders, for example, at the Polish one,” the chancellor said this weekend at an SPD rally. The support of the Greens for a reform that seems inevitable is still veiled, but the liberal partners of the Scholz have aligned themselves with the conservative opposition. “We need a turn in migration policy like the compromise on asylum in the early 1990s,” wrote FDP leader and Finance Minister Christian Lindner in X.