Refugee talk on ARD
“Deportations could help communities”
By Marko Schlichting
November 7, 2023, 4:28 a.m
How can municipalities be relieved of the burden of accommodating refugees? The Prime Minister’s Conference dealt with this question together with Chancellor Scholz. On Monday evening, the guests on the ARD talk show Hart aber fair also addressed the topic.
Shortly before midnight on Monday evening, when the program “Hart aber fair” begins on Erste, the Prime Minister’s Conference is still running. There the participants want to agree on a solution to the refugee crisis in the municipalities. When the ARD talk show ends, the conference with Chancellor Olaf Scholz is still in full swing. After all, there was already a result in the evening. With a package of measures consisting of around a hundred individual points, the federal and state governments want to speed up the planning and approval of measures such as the establishment of daycare centers and schools. To this end, bureaucratic and legal hurdles should be reduced.
The prime ministers actually wanted to reach an agreement on how to solve the refugee crisis in the municipalities. But there are no decisions on this point. They should find a new commission. Late on Monday evening, the guests on the ARD talk show “Hart aber fair” also discussed the refugee issue. The problems are clear, but solutions seem difficult to find.
The parliamentary managing director of the Union parliamentary group, Thorsten Frei, admits: “We have been discussing these issues for weeks.” The Union parliamentary group submitted a “very comprehensive migration proposal” to the Bundestag last month. Unfortunately, he didn’t find a majority, says Frei. The politician is realistic: “What is on the table so far will not lead to a noticeable decline in the number of migrants in Germany and thus the problems for cities and communities can be reduced.”
At this point in time, the deputy SPD parliamentary group leader Dirk Wiese is still optimistic “that there will be a common, viable and, above all, pragmatic solution between the federal and state governments this evening.” He is in good spirits that many measures will be decided. The federal government has already made preliminary preparations and negotiated repatriation agreements with several countries, Wiese said during the program.
“The pressure to act is enormous”
Jens-Marco Scherf feels the current migration crisis. The Green politician is the district administrator of the Miltenberg district in northern Bavaria, near the border with Hesse. “The pressure to act is enormous,” says Scherf on “Hard but Fair”: “We now need an agreement and a whole package of measures.” Money alone will not help municipalities. Faster measures are necessary. “We are talking about homelessness, we are no longer able to integrate. And we are losing acceptance among the population,” says Scherf.
According to Scherf, there is currently accommodation for refugees in the Miltenberg district. This is a former school in which 60 people live – in three classrooms. This accommodation will have to be deactivated in the next few weeks; a second refugee accommodation is being planned. If that is no longer enough, refugees would have to be accommodated in gyms. “But what will I do in three months?” asks Scherf.
And then Scherf lists: “I need more daycare places, I need more teachers, I need more classrooms, I need more employees in the social welfare office, in the immigration office, in the job center. I need more volunteers, I need more apartments, I need more of everything . And I need a lot more time so that we can integrate people well. They have to learn the language, they have to learn how society works, we have to integrate them professionally, and at the moment we have only been able to accommodate people for the past few months . And I say: At some point we will have the consequences, we are already feeling some of them.”
Scherf: Cash withdrawals are a huge expense
Most of the solutions offered by the two federal politicians will not help Scherf – except for one. The local politician is in favor of deporting refugees without the right to stay: “Deportations could help the municipalities,” he says. Frei also advocates for asylum applications to be examined in third countries in the future and he calls for better protection of the EU’s external borders. Frei knows that this project will take a long time. That is why he is temporarily calling for the protection of Europe’s internal borders.
Frei also demands that refugees have to pay for food with a chip card instead of cash in the future. Bavaria wants to introduce this soon. Frei: “The crucial question is that money cannot be withdrawn, transferred to the country of origin or, worse yet, transferred back to smugglers.”
Local politician Scherf can gain a lot from this regulation. Cash withdrawals are a huge hassle and a security risk, says Scherf. However, a chip card solution must be “very unbureaucratic and very simple”. If you listen to Scherf, there should be a solution in the next few days. How long the planned commission will actually have to do this is still unclear, at least at night.