Saxony's minister president again calls for upper limit on immigration

Saxony's Minister President Michael Kretschmer has once again spoken out in favor of an upper limit on immigration. A turnaround is needed on migration, the CDU politician said in an interview with the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" (Monday). "For that, you have to talk about a number. How many people can we take in, can we integrate?" He also once again did not rule out amending the Basic Law for this purpose. Kretschmer also said that benefits for people who are obliged to leave the country would have to be cut. "These payments must be reduced, also to increase the pressure to leave the country."

The CDU politician at the same time accused the federal government of not taking proposals from the recent conference of minister presidents seriously. Resolutions passed at the meeting on Thursday and Friday had been ignored, he said. "That's not a smart political style, to wait until you're really up against the wall and there's no way forward. That is a reproach that must be made to the federal government," the prime minister said.

In a resolution, the states had demanded, among other things, effective measures to speed up asylum procedures, stationary border controls at the borders with the Czech Republic and Poland and a nationwide standardized payment card for asylum seekers in place of payments in cash.

After the Minister Presidents' Conference, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) had sounded out possibilities for agreement on the issue with the Minister Presidents Boris Rhein (Hesse, CDU), Stephan Weil (Lower Saxony, SPD) and for the first time also with CDU leader Friedrich Merz in the Chancellor's Office on Friday. All sides subsequently called the roughly two-hour consultations constructive - even if there were no concrete results. Concrete solutions are to be found by the time all heads of government meet with Scholz in Berlin on Nov. 6.