Refugees and migration: Merz: deport criminals to Syria and Afghanistan

Despite the unclear political developments in Syria after the fall of ruler Bashar al-Assad, CDU leader Friedrich Merz is sticking to the call for deportations of Syrian criminals. “The country is still very unstable, we know that,” said the CDU and CSU candidate for chancellor to the German Press Agency in Berlin. “But we in the Union have been of the opinion for a long time that in principle one can and should deport people to Afghanistan and Syria. We would do that.”

At the same time, careful attention must be paid to who is currently coming to Germany and Europe from Syria, demanded Merz. “In any case, I don’t want to see the members of the Assad militias who committed terrible crimes in Syria here in Germany.” These are accomplices of the Assad regime who may now face criminal proceedings in Syria, but would rather go on the run instead. “The clear message must be: We will immediately turn you back here at the borders.”

“We will not accept the Assad loyalists”

Merz called for a clear, coordinated stance with all other European countries according to the motto: “The EU and Germany will not accept Assad’s loyalists. The whole thing with moderation and a sense of proportion, but also with clarity and consistency.”

According to the Federal Ministry of the Interior, around 975,000 Syrians currently live in Germany. Most have come since 2015 as a result of the Syrian civil war. More than 300,000 of them have a subsidiary protection title. So they were not admitted because of individual persecution, but because of the civil war in their homeland.

CDU leader: Separate asylum from labor migration

Germany has helped many refugees and provided accommodation, said the Union faction leader. But the number of refugees living in Germany is already too high and the cities and municipalities’ capacity to accept them has been exceeded. “It can’t go on like this anymore. And that’s why we now have to say more consistently in the immigration and migration debate: We need a policy change in immigration policy too.”

The Union proposes to strictly separate labor migration from asylum migration, emphasized Merz. From the beginning there must be two different procedures. “Anyone who wants to come to Germany or Europe because they have a reason to flee must choose a different procedure than someone who says, ‘I would like to start working in Germany tomorrow’.” For this purpose, the Union has proposed a purely digital “work and stay” agency that would carry out this task uniformly for the whole of Germany. This should also apply to German diplomatic missions around the world, where applications are piling up and not being processed quickly enough.

When asked whether the proposal by the parliamentary manager of the Union parliamentary group in the Bundestag, Thorsten Frei (CDU), to abolish the individual right to asylum and replace it with European reception quotas still applies, Merz said: “German asylum law basically plays into the ongoing asylum procedures only play a subordinate role.” In 2023, only 120 Syrians and 523 Afghans were granted asylum status in accordance with Article 16a of the Basic Law.

Merz’s message to Poland and Austria

Today we primarily see asylum applications under European law, said Merz. “And according to European law, these asylum applications should actually be submitted and processed in other countries of the European Union, not in Germany.” He added: “That’s why we come to the conclusion: rejections.”

“If the asylum system in the EU no longer works, we have to change the system,” demanded Merz. “But it cannot be the case that the member states of the European Union simply wave through to Germany and say: Sorry, the system no longer works, go to Germany.”

That’s why he recently told both the Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and the Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer “that we have to find solutions here, always with the offer to do this together in Europe. But also always with the clear statement: It It can’t be that you wave through and we take them all in.”