2023-08-21 15:59:52
Politicians from the SPD and Greens criticize the proposal by CDU presidium member Jens Spahn to reduce immigration to Germany by closing Europe’s external borders. The SPD domestic politician Sebastian Hartmann told the newspaper “Welt” that national isolation and unregulated conditions at the EU’s external borders were not an alternative.
The Green domestic politician Lamya Kaddor countered Spahn that it “could not be a solution to suspend human rights in order to limit migration”. Against the background of a sharp increase in the number of asylum seekers, Spahn had pleaded in the newspaper “Bild am Sonntag” for a “clear signal at the EU’s external border” that nobody would continue on this path. Instead, the United Nations refugee agency should take in and distribute 300,000 to 500,000 refugees a year.
Sigmar Gabriel promotes “clever new refugee policy”
Former SPD chairman Sigmar Gabriel, who now chairs the Atlantic Bridge, also got involved in the debate about the right way to go in migration policy. In the newspapers of the editorial network Germany, he called for a turnaround in asylum policy: “Our rules from the 20th century do not match the challenges of the 21st century.” Germany must, following the example of Denmark, “look for new ways across parties”. In the long run, “a clever new refugee policy could even be morally superior to the old one if it helps those who are truly in need more on the spot.”
His own party has criticized Gabriel’s initiative. Lower Saxony’s Prime Minister Stephan Weil (SPD) rejected the idea as unhelpful. More than three quarters of the people who come to Germany enjoy protection rights and cannot be deported at all, he told the “Nordwest-Zeitung”. “With the others, there are many people whose identity we cannot clarify or who are not taken back by the countries of origin.” Weil said there were “significantly more deportations” in the first half of the year.
A comment by Philip Eppelsheim Published/Updated: Recommendations: 148 Published/Updated: Published/Updated: Recommendations: 53
Gabriel, on the other hand, gets approval from the Union faction. The First Parliamentary Secretary, Thorsten Frei, expressed hope for a “joint solution like at the beginning of the 1990s”. At that time, the Union and the SPD had agreed on the amendment to the Basic Law known as the asylum compromise. “Our hand is stretched out,” Frei said.
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