Germany has been betrayed again on migration
Some of them have even been arrested on arrival for using false papers. Heiko Teggatz, the chairman of the Federal Police union, has warned that NGOs are teaching Afghans how to deceive the authorities: don't mention if you have Taliban links; do claim you are persecuted. In one case NGO workers are said to have stated that an Afghan was at risk because he is gay, only for him to rage that he wasn't when officials asked him about his sexual orientation.
The absurdity doesn't end there. In Munich, public officials are under investigation for giving immigration permits in return for cash, handbags, events and limousine rides.
Unsurprisingly, the German public, following the infamous 2015 asylum crisis and years of expanding legal routes, want less immigration. Yet, despite the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU)'s win in last month's elections, it seems like this sincere wish is about to be betrayed.
That's because the CDU has ruled out any deal with the hard-Right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which means it has to go into coalition with the Left-wing Social Democratic Party (SPD) and form an 'Albania coalition' (so-called because the colours of the two parties are black and red, like the Albanian flag). Without the possibility of accepting the votes of the AfD, the CDU has little leverage in the coalition negotiations.
That's why the SPD has felt confident to release a new immigration paper which calls for a move away from 'limiting' to 'regulating' immigration. While the CDU promised it will reduce immigration, this paper instead demands half a million immigrant workers every year; those who are in Germany illegally should, in most cases, be allowed to stay; deportation should become a last resort; foreign nationals should be allowed to vote in Germany so long as they've lived there long enough; and anyone who lives in Germany for 25 years should get citizenship without any conditions, so presumably even if they can't speak the language.
The SPD, formerly the party of the working class, seems to have decided that rather than trying to win back the voters it lost in the last election, it can instead introduce policies aimed at attracting an entirely different voting bloc.
Having slumped to one of its worst electoral performances, with working-class strongholds like Gelsenkirchen being won by the AfD on comfortable margins, it has ended up reliant on the immigrant vote: Die Linke, a hard-Left party born out of East German communism, won 29 per cent of the immigrant vote, while the SPD won 28 per cent. Both parties promised more liberal immigration laws and more generous welfare.
Should this go ahead, Germany will find its already creaking infrastructure under even more pressure. The housing market is still struggling to keep up with the pace of current migration, while the construction industry has seen profits falling as the cost of building materials increased and regulations worsened.
If the CDU accepts any points of the SPD's immigration working paper, it will betray its voters. Sixty-eight per cent of Germans want fewer asylum seekers and 57 per cent want asylum seekers who arrive illegally to be turned away at the border. A mere 3 per cent want more refugees.
That the AfD won 20.8 per cent of the vote, double the result of the last election, should then come as no surprise. Those who worried about immigration but put their trust in the CDU one last time will have nowhere else to turn to in future.
After the election Friedrich Merz, leader of the CDU and likely the next chancellor, said that 'Left politics is over.' But the many Germans who voted for a Right-wing Government seem to have yet again been given thoroughly Left-wing politics. By seeking a coalition with the SPD, and giving them the advantage by ruling out working with the AfD, Merz is in danger of disproving his own boast.
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