By Carl-Victor Wachs and Hans-Jörg Vehlewald
After the admission stop for migrants in Hanover, demands were made to relieve other cities and districts.
Background: Hanover had taken in more migrants in the past few months than planned according to the distribution key, so no longer has to accommodate anyone for six months. The city (530,000 inhabitants) is currently caring for more than 6,300 refugees (of which around 1,600 are Ukrainians). This results in a quota of 85 inhabitants per refugee.
What does this mean for other cities that have similar refugee quotas?
CDU interior expert Alexander Throm (54) to BILD: “In 2023 we will have at least 300,000 asylum applications. Rather more. The forecast is based on the first three months of the year, when there were already 80,000 initial applications. In the summer months, that tends to increase.”
Throm continues: “The municipalities are already at the limit of their capacity or even above it, we can see that in Hanover. All of the asylum seekers who are coming now are a burden on the municipalities on top of the large number we took in in 2022. But our options are finite!”
Throm notes that Germany is “well above what we set as the integration limit, namely 200,000 people a year.” That is a number that Germany could have integrated well. “But there are many more coming. The country is like a sponge that is already saturated.”
What is the traffic light coalition planning?
It relies on skilled workers among immigrants. FDP domestic politician Stephan Thomae (54) makes it clear to BILD: “Germany is a country of immigration. It is therefore important that there is a rethink in people’s minds, so that everyone recognizes the enormous potential that immigration has for our country.”
In order to achieve this, according to Thomae, “we also have to make it clear that there can be no immigration into our social systems.”
Thomae continues: “The traffic light announced a paradigm shift and has already delivered it. We decided on the opportunity stay, accelerated the asylum process, appointed a special representative for migration agreements and will now further develop the immigration of skilled workers. The traffic light has already achieved more in migration policy than the Union has done in 16 years of government.”