“Capacity limited”
CDU politician Frei criticizes the traffic light asylum policy
January 8, 2024, 1:02 a.m
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In the run-up to the official asylum seeker numbers for 2023, the Union criticizes the traffic light’s hesitant approach to the issue of migration. The CDU politician Frei accuses the government of being half-hearted. The mass influx is already overburdening society.
In view of the persistently high number of asylum seekers and the currently around 1.1 million Ukrainian refugees in Germany, the parliamentary managing director of the Union parliamentary group in the Bundestag, Thorsten Frei, has warned that society is being overburdened. “The federal government can no longer fool people,” Frei told the “Tagesspiegel”. “The ongoing refugee crisis cannot be solved with the half-hearted announcements from the traffic light coalition,” criticized the CDU politician. He warned that “society is reaching the limits of its capacity” and has “already exceeded them in many places”.
This Monday, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) wants to publish the asylum seeker statistics for the entire year 2023. It is expected that the number of initial applications for asylum in the past twelve months will be almost 330,000. According to Frei, it is not enough for the federal government to “put its hands on its back” and hope that the reform of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) “will have an impact at some point.” “We must act immediately,” he demanded.
The Union Parliamentary Secretary pointed out that, in addition to asylum seekers, according to the Central Register of Foreigners, there are currently more than 1.1 million refugees from Ukraine in Germany. Unlike at the beginning of the Ukraine war, many refugees now say they want to stay in Germany long-term, the CDU politician continued. “It’s not just a lack of housing. Our entire infrastructure is not equipped to handle such a mass influx,” said Frei.
Frei calls for proceedings in third countries
The CDU politician renewed his call for outsourced asylum procedures to the newspaper: “In addition, the procedures for asylum seekers should no longer be carried out in Europe, but in a safe third country,” demanded Frei. “Anyone who flees for political reasons is entitled to protection. However, this protection does not necessarily have to be guaranteed in Europe.”
According to the decision at the last federal-state summit in November, the federal government should examine whether asylum procedures in third countries are possible. However, there is disagreement on this point, especially between the FDP and the Greens: The Greens reject the examination of asylum applications in third countries, which is sometimes referred to as the “Rwanda model”. In contrast, the parliamentary managing director of the FDP parliamentary group, Stephan Thomae, declared that the third-country solution could be “a decisive lever for reducing irregular migration”.