German parliament president Wolfgang Schäuble doubts that failed asylum seekers will be deported and claims that instead, they should stay in Germany and integrate into society.
“We should realise how difficult it is to deport in individual cases,” the former federal finance minister and member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) said, according to Die Welt.
“That’s why we should not foster too much hope that we can send back the majority of these people. Rather, we should all muster the strength to integrate them into our society,” he added.
Schäuble also defended the mass migration policies of Chancellor Merkel in 2015 stating: “On September 4, 2015, with the thousands of refugees at the train station in Budapest, the Chancellor’s decision was the right one. But what failed after that is to limit the communicative consequences.”
While serving as finance minister in the previous coalition government, Schäuble allocated the entire federal government surplus toward migrant costs in 2016. He also caused controversy that same year after making a statement in which he said closed borders could lead to Germany degenerating through inbreeding.
The comments were met with sharp criticism from the co-leader of the anti-mass migration Alternative for Germany (AfD) Alexander Gauland who said: “The statements of Schäuble are a monstrosity and a slap in the face of all rightful citizens.”
In an exclusive interview with Breitbart London earlier this year, Mr Gauland blamed German “self-hatred” as the catalyst for the”Refugees Welcome” culture that swept across Germany in 2015.
Since the height of the migrant crisis, Germany has had enormous difficulty deporting failed asylum seekers with up to 21,000 planned deportations having failed last year.
In June, an investigation into the Federal Agency for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) found that even convicted career criminals were rarely deported.
In one case, five Somali nationals convicted of piracy in a German court were even allowed to remain in the country on government handouts.