The Union of German Cities and Municipalities is demanding additional measures against illegal migration, as and for the creation of a special working group, the so-called Task Force, to carry out more deportations. It would be right to make more efforts to return people without the right to asylum to their countries of origin, told the "Rainische Post" the chairman of the Union of Municipalities Andre Bergheder, quoted by ARD.
In his words, the creation of a working group at the national level will speed up the process and increase its efficiency. Until now, deportations are the competence of the individual provinces.
The police union in Germany is open to this idea under certain circumstances. "If this is settled legally, it will be a measure that could be supported,", the chairman of the Police Union, Andreas Roskopf, told the "Reinische Post".
The former president of the Federal Constitutional Court, Hars-Jürgen Papir, in his turn, called on the government to start returning the refugees already at the border. He mainly refers to paragraph 18 of the asylum law and defines returns already at the border as "not only possible, but even necessary". "We are surrounded by EU member states and Switzerland, i.e. secure third parties without exception. I consider the current practice inadmissible, which actually gives the right to enter Germany to anyone who utters the word "asylum", the lawyer points out.
Papier also states that exceptions to this rule, such as for humanitarian reasons, became the rule on the German external borders. "And this contradicts the meaning of the right to receive asylum."
"Migration is already coming to us more"
The government foresees this week new talks on the subject with the opposition and the provincial leaders. However, CDU Chairman Friedrich Merz defined the return of the refugees already at the border as a condition for further talks.
Meanwhile, CSU leader Markus Söder and Liberal leader Christian Lindner have called for a significant reduction in asylum applications. "Migration is already beyond our means," said Söder, and Lindner criticized the lost control.
As informed by the German public television ARD, quoting Söder, 300,000 applications for asylum were filed in Germany in a year. And people are no longer coping with the consequences of migration, Söder points out and insists that the number of applications be reduced significantly below 100,000. - we are also overloaded from a cultural point of view." According to him, in many German cities, residents no longer feel at home. "The truth is simple - migration already exceeds our capabilities."
The chairman of the CSU is also a supporter of the return of refugees already at the border. According to Söder, this measure will discourage people from heading to Germany. And the chairman of the Free Democrats, Christian Lindner, said: "We must further reduce the incentives for illegal migration in our German welfare state - and that best in terms of consensus with all parties".
Just "bread, bed and soap" for asylum applicants
"Alternative to Germany" also has an opinion on the matter, in which the emphasis is on the drastic reduction of the assistance provided to asylum seekers. According to Tino Krupala, the co-chairman of the AzG faction in the Bundestag, migration is the "mother of all problems", and he is not the first to use this formulation, notes ARD. The German public-law media recalls that already in 2018, the then leader of the CSU and Minister of the Interior, Horst Seehofer, called the migration issue "the mother of all political problems in the country".
ARD also cites the current demand of the German Democratic Party for "social benefits only for Germans", and for asylum applicants and refugees to be provided with only non-monetary benefits on the basis of "bread, bed and soap".
Author: Bilyana Mihailova (editor)