German Chancellor Angela Merkel has refused to back down over her open borders migration policy, saying in a televised interview that there is “no point in believing that I can solve the problem through the unilateral closure of borders.”
“I have no plan B,” she added.
According to Focus, Mrs Merkel said she was convinced she was doing the right thing, despite well over a million people entering Germany last year thanks to her migration policies. She said she was trying to redistribute as many of them as possible to other European countries – through the compulsory migrant quotas system – and claimed to be addressing the problems causing them to enter Europe in the first place.
She added that dealing with the migrant crisis has been a “difficult path”, but letting millions of people into the country was good for Germany’s reputation.
“This is a very important phase in our history. There is so much violence and hardship on our doorstep. What’s right for Germany in the long term? There, I think it is to keep Europe together and to show humanity.”
Calls have been increasing for the Chancellor to place an upper limit on the number of migrants entering the country. Members of the Christian Social Union (CSU), Mrs Merkel’s Bavarian sister party, have been particularly vocal in calling for a cap, with Bavarian premier Horst Seehofer saying the limit should be as low as 200,000 a year.
However, Mrs Merkel said she had no plans for any such limit, thus likely increasing tensions within her governing coalition.
Last week, the German government also admitted it had lost some 130,000 migrants after they failed to show up at the reception centres to which they had been sent. The Interior Ministry admitted that some of the migrants may have “slipped into illegality”, while others may have registered multiple times in different districts to increase their chances of being accepted.
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