Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced the German government’s shift to stricter immigration policy, which has been in preparation for a long time, in an interview with Der Spiegel magazine.

“We must proceed with mass deportations for those who do not have the right to remain in Germany (…) More and faster deportations,” the chancellor said, stressing that anyone who cannot establish a right to asylum and has no prospects of staying in Germany should return to the country of origin.

According to the Social Democratic chancellor, if immigration to Germany continues without limits, then the welfare state is at risk. “Whoever is in favor of unlimited immigration must be equally honest and accept that we will not be able to maintain the welfare state in its current form,” he says. Olaf Solz states that immigration management actually requires “cruelty to a degree”, but this does not imply a loss of humanity.

“Benefits in kind” instead of allowances

In the same interview, he defends the stricter controls at the EU’s external borders and the new European solidarity mechanism, which provides for the first registration of newly arrived at the external borders and then their distribution to all EU countries on the basis of solidarity.

It also provides support to Interior Secretary Nancy Fesser, who recently announced the introduction of intensified border controls at Germany’s borders with neighboring countries to tackle irregular immigration. It also supports in the future the idea of ​​benefits in kind instead of money and allowances for asylum seekers and considers Georgia and Moldova as safe countries of origin.

Judges uphold, dissent like-minded

Germany’s Association of Judges and Prosecutors was quick to offer support for Scholz’s plans to speed up asylum procedures and deportations, but called for administrative courts to be strengthened with extra staff. According to the Federal Office for Migration and Asylum, more than 120,000 asylum cases were pending before the competent German authorities by mid-2023.

Strong criticism of Solz’s announcements has also come from within the coalition parties, such as the Social Democratic Youth, which says the chancellor is slipping into using the “vocabulary of the far-right mob” when what is being called for is a grassroots social democratic immigration policy. humanitarian values.

Serious tensions over the Soltz plans are also being raised by members of the Greens, with former party official Jürgen Trittin pointing out that 30 years after 1993 “we should have learned that isolation, deterrence and deportations are not an immigration policy but an economic program of strengthening racism and the extreme right”.

It should be noted that in that year a Solidarity Pact was signed between the then German government and the federal states for the financial support of German Reunification and the integration of East Germans.