Thuringia’s left-wing Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow has accused the Union parliamentary group leader Friedrich Merz (CDU) of doing the AfD’s business with his statements about the dental treatment of rejected asylum seekers. “The AfD is kicking itself, feels confirmed and even supported by the confirmation of its clichés,” he told the editorial network Germany.
Merz had a discussion about migration policy on television on Wednesday World said: “They’ll go crazy, the people, when they see that 300,000 asylum seekers have been rejected, are not allowed to leave the country, are getting full benefits, are getting full medical care. They sit at the doctor and have their teeth remade, and the German ones Citizens next door don’t get appointments.” The SPD and the Greens reacted indignantly.
In fact, asylum seekers – including tolerated people whose application was rejected – only receive acute medical care for the first 18 months, but then have almost full access to the health system. In the Union, Merz received more support. North Rhine-Westphalia’s Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst (CDU) explained that Merz only wanted to draw attention to the general burden on the state, society and social systems caused by the sharp increase in irregular migration. Others, like Schleswig-Holstein Prime Minister Daniel Günther (CDU), remained silent.
The former chairman of the CDU Basic Values Commission, the historian Andreas Rödder, agreed with Merz. What the party leader is talking about is “the toxic combination from which our country is suffering: the excessive demands caused by uncontrolled migration plus the growing deficits in our infrastructure. In this respect, he is completely right,” Rödder told the newspaper der World. “Friedrich Merz’s problem is not the excitement of the left, but (are) the snipers in his own party.”