Last week, German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (Social Democrat) pushed for more rejected asylum seekers to be deported. She told the Rheinische Post: “I will bring our comprehensive legislative package for more and faster returns to the cabinet … Anyone who does not have the right to remain in Germany must leave our country … This is necessary so that we can continue to provide good care for people who have found protection from war and terror with us.”
Faeser noted that 1.1 million war refugees from Ukraine alone have found shelter in Germany. But she stressed that the number of rejections this year was already 27% higher than in the same period last year. “Nevertheless, we must provide regulations with which we can enforce our laws more consistently and quickly,” she said. “Our repatriation package includes a package of restrictive measures. This also includes expelling and deporting criminals and threats more consistently and quickly.”
On Sunday night, a pro-Gaza demonstration took place in Berlin, under police supervision and with strict conditions. It was the first such demonstration permitted by the Berlin police since October 7. It was held in Alexanderplatz square under the relatively vegetarian banner of “Conflict in the Middle East,” and attracted only 800 participants – possibly because it was common knowledge the German secret service was shooting pictures.
The speeches were made in German and repeatedly mentioned the civilian population in the Gaza Strip. One demonstrator, Ahmed Tamim, told Kan 11 correspondent Dov Gil-Har: “Freedom of expression is very limited here when it comes to Palestine.” He added: “The problem is not the Jews, we love Jews. We are only against Zionism.” Tamim warned the participants in German to avoid any anti-Semitic expressions and stopped them from burning any flags, which is practically a prerequisite in these events.
I for one couldn’t be happier to hear an Arab demonstrator in Alexanderplatz square say the Jews aren’t the problem, only the Zionists, because only 81 years ago, another Arab sat in an office not very far from there, and handed Adolf Hitler a letter saying, “The Jews and their accomplices are to be counted among the bitterest enemies of the Muslims, who made known … their hostility since ancient times and have everywhere and always . . . treated them Muslims with guile. Every Muslim knows all too well how the Jews afflicted him and his faith in the first days of Islam and what hatefulness they displayed toward the great Prophet — what hardship and trouble they caused him, how many intrigues they launched, how many conspiracies against him they brought about — such that the Quran judged them to be the most irreconcilable enemies of the Muslims … They will always remain a divisive element in the world: an element that is committed to devising schemes, provoking wars and playing peoples off against one another. … In England as in America, it is the Jewish influence alone that rules; and it is the same Jewish influence that is behind godless Communism. … And it is also this Jewish influence that has incited the nations into this grueling war. It is only the Jews who benefit from the tragic fate that the nations suffer.”
Turns out Ahmed Tamim has by now pared it down to just the Zionists.
But I digress. German Federal Police data showed that 21,366 individuals entered Germany illegally in September alone. This number represents the single highest monthly tabulation of “unauthorized entries” into Germany since February 2016, when 25,650 mostly Syrian refugees flooded the border. Police data show that 92,119 individuals entered Germany illegally between January and September of 2023, putting the country on track to exceed the 112,000 people who entered illegally in 2016.
The draft law presented by Faeser provides, among other things, for the authorities and the police to expand their powers to enforce rejections. According to the draft law, unresolved identity remains one of the main obstacles to enforcing the obligation to leave the country.
For example, the maximum duration of the so-called exit custody, with which a foreigner who is obliged to leave the country can be detained, would be extended from ten to 28 days so that the authorities have more time to prepare a deportation. And the draft law permits police officers to enter rooms other than those of the person concerned to enforce a deportation. This is to ensure, in shared accommodation, that the real person is deported.
“It is clear that at the same time, we will continue to negotiate agreements very intensively with the countries of origin so that they actually take their nationals back,” said Faeser.
Depending, of course, on whether or not those countries of origin still exist.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz (Social Democrat) also called recently for speedier deportations. “Anyone who has no prospect of staying in Germany because they cannot provide reasons why they deserve protection must go back,” Scholz told Spiegel, arguing that with continued unlimited immigration, the German welfare state would soon no longer be able to be maintained. “We have to deport more and faster,” said the Chancellor.
