Germany
changes its tune on refugees
Growing
public unease prompts tough talk and harsher measures from Berlin.
By MATTHEW
KARNITSCHNIG AND JANOSCH DELCKER 10/2/15, 6:12 PM CET
Call it the
Aufwiedersehen culture.
Just weeks after
Germans surprised the world, and themselves, by embracing the
challenge of taking in hundreds of thousands of refugees, Germany’s
leaders are rolling up the welcome mat.
In a primetime
appearance on German television on Thursday, Interior Minister Thomas
de Maizière lashed out at the “many” refugees he accused of not
following Germany’s rules.
“There are many
refugees who believe that they can just allocate themselves,” he
said. “They leave the facilities and order a taxi — and then,
surprisingly, they have the money to drive hundreds of kilometers
across Germany. They strike because they don’t like the way they’re
accommodated, they create trouble because they don’t like the food,
or they get into fist fights in the refugee centers.”
De Maizière, whose
comments recall populist stereotypes of asylum seekers, wasn’t
alone. Spooked by signs of waning public support for the government’s
refugee strategy in polls, senior officials from both left- and
right-of-center parties have begun calling for tougher measures in
recent days.
“In Germany, we
are rapidly getting close to the limits of our possibilities,”
Sigmar Gabriel, Germany’s economic minister and vice chancellor,
told Spiegel Online in an interview published Friday. “While the
asylum law doesn’t have a ceiling, there are real limits to how
much pressure we can put on our cities and towns.”
Germany expects
somewhere between 800,000 and one million refugees this year,
substantially more than the rest of Europe combined. The influx has
forced local communities to convert everything from school gyms to
parking lots into refugee camps.
The rhetorical
shift, officials say, is part of a concerted effort to show a tougher
face to the refugees to discourage more from coming. But the comments
appear aimed more at shoring up domestic support by reassuring the
Germans the government is still in control of the situation.
For the first time
since the crisis began, a majority of Germans said the number of
refugees coming to Germany “scared” them, according to a poll for
state broadcaster ARD released on Friday. The country appears split
down the middle, with 51 percent expressing fear, while 47 percent
said they weren’t afraid. Back in September, just 38 percent said
that they were scared, while 59 percent said that they weren’t.
In the same poll, 54
percent of the respondents said they were satisfied with Angela
Merkel’s performance — her lowest rating in nearly four years.
The widening
criticism of the government’s handling of the crisis is putting
some of those in charge on the defensive.
“Everyone is
making every damned effort — there’s just no other way at the
moment,” de Maizière told the Bundestag on Thursday, adding that
the country’s leaders had to make tough decisions when confronted
with the largest influx of refugees in many years.
“It’s
easier to take selfies with refugees than to get tough” — German
MP
“In September,
more refugees came to Germany than in any other month during the last
couple of decades,” he said. About 280,000 arrived in September.
Much of the pressure
on Merkel’s government is coming from its backbench, especially the
more conservative Bavarian wing of the party. This group has been
outspoken in criticizing the chancellor and is pushing for harsher
rules.
“It’s easier to
take selfies with refugees than to get tough,” said one MP, a
reference to the widely circulated photos of Merkel with asylum
seekers.
‘The unthinkables’
In response to such
pressures, the government introduced new legislation this week to
make it easier to deport asylum seekers whose applications have been
rejected. Such measures would have been impossible to push through
the Bundestag just a few months ago. Now, the growing public unease
is forcing the government to put what some here call “the
unthinkables” on the table.
The asylum bill,
which is expected to be rushed through for implementation on November
1, would reduce incentives for so-called economic migrants by
switching from cash benefits for refugees to allowances in-kind.
The legislation
would also add Albania, Kosovo and Serbia to a list of “safe
countries of origin,” meaning asylum applications from those
nationalities, which are almost always rejected, could be processed
much more quickly than at present.
Refugee advocates
have criticized the measures, saying they will complicate life for
asylum seekers while doing little to slow the flow of new arrivals.
Even after the changes go into effect, refugees, regardless of their
origin, will be afforded broad rights to appeal. Critics say neither
the application process nor deportations will be accelerated and
dismiss the effort as a political ploy aimed at calming the public.
“The planned
government actions are a disappointment,” said Werner Schiffauer
from Frankfurt’s Viadrina University. “They will neither
accelerate the application processes, nor will they create a
deterrent effect that the interior minister is after.”
The trouble for
Berlin is that more substantial changes to the asylum rules would
require amending Germany’s constitution, a complicated process that
would require a two-thirds majority in both houses of parliament.
Faced with a large
influx of refugees from the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, the
government took that step, but now those reformed rules are viewed as
out of date.
Some migration
experts say further reforms to the law are inevitable if the crisis
doesn’t ease soon. For now, the government insists it has no such
plans.
Authors:
Matthew Karnitschnig
and Janosch Delcker
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