In Germany, there has not been such a heated and pervasive debate on migration and asylum since the “refugee crisis” of 2015. Then, more than a million people, mostly from war-torn countries like Syria, Iraq or Afghanistan, arrived on German soil in search of refuge. Nearly a decade has passed since then, and much has changed in the country. One of the main ones is that conservative Angela Merkel is no longer at the head of a three-party party led by Social Democratic Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who came to the federal chancellery to try to copy the style. Merkelian and now he is going through his lowest hours.
Another thing that is fundamentally different in this Germany today compared to 2015: the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has never had as much capacity as it does today to set the tone for the other parties and establish the framework within which they debate migration and security. The historic results of the last regional elections in Thuringia and Saxony, where the AfD was the first and second most voted force respectively, reinforce the feeling that the rest of the parties follow what the far right says.
The anti-immigration party used as ammunition the attack last August in Solingen, committed by a Syrian who should have been expelled from the country. A few days after the attack, which left three dead, the Scholz government agreed to urgent measures: cutting aid to asylum seekers whose cases fall under the jurisdiction of other European Union states; expressing a desire to reduce irregular immigration; more powers for the police to “fight Islamists” by monitoring their activities and movements; and an absolute ban on carrying knives or sharp weapons at public events and on public transport.
Deportations, controls and aid cuts
The Solingen attack came on the eve of elections in Thuringia and Saxony. On the Friday before the vote, authorities confirmed the deportation of 28 Afghan citizens convicted of various crimes and considered a potential danger. The deportation flight departed from Leipzig/Halle airport in Saxony, where the AfD narrowly trailed the conservative CDU in the September 1 election. These were the first deportations of Afghan citizens to their home country since the Taliban regained power in 2021 after a stampede by Western troops and the abandonment of a US-led military operation, with NATO participation and in which they were also present. were German soldiers.
Although the Scholz government insists that the expulsion was planned for a long time and had nothing to do with the regional elections in Saxony and Thuringia, the timing and location give a veneer of legitimacy to the proposals of the far-right AfD. openly speaks of a “remigration” project aimed at expelling hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of foreigners from the country.
The latest twist in German immigration policy came after the electoral debacle in Saxony and Thuringia of the parties that are part of the tripartite led by Scholz (Social Democrats, Greens and Liberals): the reintroduction of controls at all the country’s land borders, a measure that came into force on Monday this week and is planned, in principle, to last six months. Not all border crossings are controlled by the German police, but daily and random checks will be maintained at the four cardinal points of the national borders. The measure contradicts the freedom of movement established within the Schengen area and generates tensions with neighboring countries such as Poland and Austria.
Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, a social democrat, justifies the controls aimed at limiting irregular migration, the jihadist threat and the risks derived from the war in Ukraine. The Migration Council, an organization made up of more than 200 academics specializing in migration issues, warns that the current strategy of the German government is “very dangerous”. “The consequences of a policy of rejecting people seeking protection at the German borders are incalculable. National decisions alone are counterproductive for the system of a coordinated European migration policy. They generate unexpected dynamics and block the development of European policy,” the entity says.
At the same time, Berlin wants to speed up the deportation of asylum seekers who are in the country but have been registered in other countries under the Dublin Convention. To this end, executive Scholz has announced the elimination of social benefits for these people, who will receive the essentials – housing, food and hygiene products – but will find themselves without additional social assistance, such as a basic income or child benefits. This is a measure with which the German authorities intend to increase pressure for these asylum seekers to leave the country as quickly as possible. In the first six months of 2024, just over 3,000 people were sent to EU countries where they had been registered as seeking protection. According to the organisation Mediendienst Integration, which specialises in information and data on migration and asylum, there are currently around 44,000 people in Germany who have to leave the country and another 180,000 whose presence is tolerated by the authorities while their legal situation is being clarified.
Meanwhile, in a political context where the extreme right is contaminating the discourse of almost all German parties, the main opposition party, the conservative union CDU-CSU, maintains that the measures of the Scholz government are insufficient for it. The party led by Friedrich Merz openly demands that the German police reject at the border not only those who have already been refused asylum in Germany, but all those who want to apply for it, a measure incompatible with European law and whose political consequences would be unpredictable. both for the country and for the rest of the EU.
What do the numbers say?
The election campaign in Saxony and Thuringia was marked by the following mantra: “In Germany, immigration is out of control”. Two parties particularly emphasized this discourse: the extreme right of Alternative for Germany and the conservative left of Sahra Wagenknecht. The CDU also used this argument.
But do the data really support this dialectic of loss of border control and migration flows? According to the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, the number of asylum applications exceeded 350,000 in 2023, 100,000 more than in 2022, but far from the more than 700,000 in 2016, to put the figures in historical perspective. Furthermore, between January and August 2024, Germany registered around 160,000 asylum applications, 21% fewer than in the same period in 2023. The country is far from a collapse in reception capacities and is not even confronted with the images of collapsed registration and reception centers, like those left by the so-called “refugee crisis” ten years ago.
Regarding the number of irregular entries, last July they exceeded 7,000, according to data from the federal police. In September of last year, this number exceeded 21,000. The trend towards irregular immigration therefore does not correspond to the discourse that “it is out of control.”
Germany is at a crossroads: its severe demographic crisis, the consequences of which have been accumulating for decades, is forcing the country to recruit hundreds of thousands of foreign workers every year to maintain its productive model and welfare state; on the other hand, electoral pressure from the extreme right is leading the traditional parties to believe that each new asylum application will inevitably mean more votes for the ethnic ultranationalism of the AfD.
Scholz’s current coalition government is trying to overcome this paradox: its ministers travel the world and visit countries in the so-called “Global South”, with whose governments they sign bilateral agreements to attract qualified foreign workers. Meanwhile, the government and part of the opposition are implementing strategies and recipes applauded by a far right that categorically rejects immigration in order to stop it at the ballot box.
