2023-09-30 16:10:10
It’s a hot topic of debate in Germany ahead of October 8 regional elections in the states of Bavaria and Hesse, and in Europe as a whole ahead of next year’s European elections. The migration crisis was even an opportunity for Elon Musk to castigate Germany.
The president of the social network and anti-migrants.
“Is the German public aware of this?”, the American billionaire wrote on his social network on Friday, sharing a post from an account called “RadioGenoa” denouncing rescues of migrants in the Mediterranean by NGOs supported by Berlin and concluding “let’s hope the AfD wins the elections”. “Yes, that’s what we call saving lives,” the German Foreign Ministry responded to the businessman on X.
“So you are proud of it actually. Interesting. Frankly, I doubt that a majority of the German public supports this. Have you done a poll? It is certainly a violation of Italy’s sovereignty that the “Germany is transporting a large number of illegal immigrants to Italian soil? This sounds like an invasion…”, added the boss of the electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla and SpaceX on the night of Friday to Saturday. “If a government in a democracy goes against the will of the people, we must vote against” this government, he added later Saturday in a public post he addressed to the German ministry.
“Illegal immigration must stop, but I am completely in favor of a significant expansion and simplification of legal immigration,” Elon Musk also wrote in the meantime on X.
“A legal and European obligation”
On Friday, the head of the Italian government Giorgia Meloni warned that her country no longer wanted to welcome migrants saved by foreign NGOs. Rome accuses Berlin of financing several relief NGOs in the Mediterranean, some of which operate under the German flag. Giorgia Meloni wrote to Chancellor Olaf Scholz this week to express her “astonishment” at these subsidies.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock defended on Thursday the role of NGOs which come to the aid of migrants trying to enter Europe via Italy. “Saving people from drowning at sea is a legal and European obligation,” she stressed.
Welcoming refugees has returned to the center of debate in Germany with the strong surge of the AfD, whose voting intentions are reaching records. At the beginning of September, Elon Musk threatened to sue the Anti-Defamation League (ADL, which fights anti-Semitism and racism), which he accuses of defamation against his social network.
Musk’s own business interests
Elon Musk, whom Forbes magazine ranks as the richest person in the world with a fortune of around $250 billion, has become increasingly involved in politics of late.
On Thursday, he traveled to the Texas-Mexico border to meet with local politicians and law enforcement and get what he called an “unfiltered” view of the immigration situation in the USA. During the visit, Elon Musk, dressed in a black T-shirt, black cowboy hat and aviator-style sunglasses, advocated a two-pronged approach to overhauling U.S. tax laws. immigration in a selfie video published on X.
Elon Musk’s interest in the issue of immigration overlaps with his own business interests, recalls Reuters. Tesla’s Gigafactory in Berlin-Brandenburg, Germany, produces the Model Y vehicle and battery cells. In Texas, Tesla operates a factory in Austin, while Space X operates a major test and launch facility on the Texas Gulf Coast in Boca Chica near Brownsville.
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