Germany cracks down on immigration at border
Berlin, Germany – In the Bavarian town of Kiefersfelden, on the border with Austria in the foothills of the Alps, new Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt stood in the rain as he discussed the government's immigration policy. Dobrindt, of the conservative Christian Social Union (CSU), had stepped up the border controls a week earlier.
Germany's conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party the CSU declared war on illegal immigration during the federal election campaign earlier this year, and now they want to deliver. Unlike in the past, asylum-seekers will also be turned back at the border. Only 'vulnerable' individuals, such as pregnant women and children, will not be refused.
For years, anyone who made it to Germany, by whatever means, and declared that they wanted to apply for asylum were allowed to enter the country while their application was processed. Now, things are different.
When asked by DW what would now change in concrete terms, Dobrindt replied: 'I want to say to all those who think they can make money from people's suffering by trying to smuggle people into another country that we are doing everything we can to stop these criminal activities.'
The CSU politician added, almost proudly, that since the new coalition government of the CDU/CSU and the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) under Chancellor Friedrich Merz took office in early May, 739 attempts to enter the country illegally had been thwarted by Thursday, an increase of 45% on the previous week. This was only possible, said Dobrindt, because an additional 3,000 federal police officers had been assigned to duty at the border, with the numbers up from 11,000 to 14,000.
Time and time again, Dobrindt has used the vocabulary of criminal people smugglers and illegal migration. The new crackdown on immigration is also a final reckoning with the policies of former Chancellor Angela Merkel. In 2015 and 2016 in particular, her government allowed many hundreds of thousands of refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and other African countries into the country and coined the phrase 'We can do this!'.
In his government statement earlier this week, Merz emphasised almost reassuringly that Germany would remain a country of immigration.
But with regard to the police officers, Dobrindt put it in somewhat more complicated terms in Kiefersfelden, saying that officers would now ensure that in the 'combination of humanity and order', more attention would now be paid to 'order'. To this end, more drones, more thermal imaging cameras and helicopters are now being used.
During the election campaign, Merz promised that he would change the immigration policy on his first day in office. This is also certainly because of the electoral successes of the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD).
However, the new German tone on immigration is not going down well everywhere. Right at the start of his term of office, Merz learned during his visit to Polish President Donald Tusk in Warsaw that his eastern neighbour wants to combat illegal immigration on the EU's external borders, not the German-Polish border.
Tusk told Merz directly that Poland would not take in any refugees from Germany. 'The AfD, that's your problem, Mr Chancellor,' Tusk added. To which Merz replied: 'We want to continue to develop European immigration and asylum policy together and we will also carry out border controls in a way that is acceptable to our neighbours.'
During the election campaign, Merz announced that he wanted to limit the number of refugees to 100,000 people per year.
Last year, 229,751 people applied for asylum in Germany for the first time – significantly fewer than in 2015, when around one million people came to Germany. But still, that's almost two and a half times as many as Merz would like in future.
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