Migration? “I refuse to pretend there is a magic solution.”
Lars Klingbeil, SPD federal chairman
Source: dpa/Kay Nietfeld
The SPD chairman Lars Klingbeil has accused the critics of the traffic light migration policy of populism. He emphasized that Germany urgently needs the immigration of skilled workers. Anyone who is allowed to stay must get a work permit as quickly as possible in order to be able to secure their livelihood.
DHe SPD chairman Lars Klingbeil has spoken out against supposed patent solutions to the issue of irregular migration. “I refuse to act as if there is a magic measure,” Klingbeil told “Bild am Sonntag”. “That delivers a populist headline, but it doesn’t mean that even one less person comes to Germany.”
Klingbeil emphasized that Germany urgently needs skilled workers to immigrate: “So that they come to us and want to stay here, we have to work on our welcoming culture for skilled workers.” At the same time, the asylum procedures need to be accelerated: “Anyone who comes to us has to do so within a few weeks Have clarity as to whether he can stay here or has to leave again.”
Anyone who is allowed to stay must get a work permit as quickly as possible in order to be able to secure their livelihood. “This is all taking too long for me. The workplace is an important place for integration and learning the German language,” said Klingbeil. And those who cannot stay must leave the country quickly.
More migration agreements should be negotiated with countries of origin and smugglers should be combated better. The idea of Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) to control the borders with the Czech Republic and Poland more closely was also “exactly right”.
CDU leader Friedrich Merz had previously called on Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) to find a solution to the issue together with the Union. “I offer you: Let’s do this together, and if you can’t do it with the Greens, then throw them out, then we’ll do it with you – but we have to solve this problem,” he said at the CSU party conference on Saturday in Munich.
The Deputy Prime Minister of Hesse, Tarek Al-Wazir (Greens), spoke of difficult but also unavoidable decisions. Anyone who does not have the right to stay at the end of a procedure will have to leave the country again, the Green Party’s top candidate told the Editorial Network Germany (RND) in the upcoming state elections. “We have to enforce that too if we want to protect the right to asylum.”
There have recently been increasing warnings of overload from states and municipalities. By the end of August, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees registered more than 204,000 initial applications for asylum – an increase of 77 percent compared to the same period last year. In addition, because of the Russian war, more than a million people from Ukraine sought protection in Germany without having to apply for asylum.
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