As Germany struggles to cope with a massive influx of migrants, the likes of which has not been seen since the European Migration Crisis of 2015-2016, the interior minister of the Free State of Saxony has called for programs for the admissions of refugees and migrants to be “at least suspended” temporarily.
In light of the 56,000 Ukrainian refugees and the tens of thousands of illegal migrants who have arrived to Saxony this year via the intensely active Balkan route, Saxony’s Interior Minister Armin Schuster (CDU), while speaking at an event organized by his party, said that programs, such as those which assist in the admission of Afghan migrants, must be “at least suspended” since the state’s capacity to take in newcomers has been overwhelmed, Junge Freiheit reports.
“Otherwise, the system of humanity and order of the past years threatens to come apart at the seams,” Schuster said, adding that Germany—in order to regain control of the situation—may need to reintroduce border checks with the Czech Republic and Poland.
The state interior minister also suggested that Germany’s Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) and the European Union should begin carrying out preliminary asylum checks at the bloc’s external borders. He then called for the list of safe countries of origin to be expanded, and urged the EU to reach readmission agreements with more third-world countries based on a model similar to that which had been used in the EU-Turkey deal.
Schuster’s statements came days after the AfD parliamentary group in Saxony wrote: “15,346 people who are obliged to leave the country live in Saxony. Why aren’t these illegal immigrants deported Armin Schuster and Michael Kretschmer? Meanwhile, you want to create new jobs to be able to cope with record keeping. We think deportation has priority!”
In September, the German news outlet RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland (RND) reported that 12 of the 16 federal states had to start blocking any additional intake of asylum seekers, stating that their resources and ability to welcome newcomers had been completely exhausted.
As The European Conservative reported earlier this month, Manuel Ostermann, the Deputy Chairman of Germany’s Federal Police Union, said more than 1,500 illegal migrants are arriving in Germany every day, with September alone seeing some 40,000 asylum seekers—not including Ukrainian refugees—enter German territory. Most are young men that come from Afghanistan, Syria, and North Africa.
