Saxony's interior minister criticizes the federal government's migration policy

Saxony's Interior Minister Armin Schuster (CDU) has criticized the behavior of the German government in migration policy. "Germany would have to fight in the first place to improve external border protection," he told Deutschlandfunk radio on Thursday. Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) should "finally make this his business" and also conclude agreements with safe countries of origin, as his predecessor Angela Merkel (CDU) did with Turkey, he said. "We prevent thereby illegal entries and open for it the way for the legal immigration of work and skilled workers, which Germany needs."

They have "never been so close" to a common European asylum system, Schuster said. "There I would expect Germany, and in the best case together with France, to play a much stronger pacemaker role."

"Migration agreements, the classification of safe countries of origin, that is overdue," Schuster said. The chancellor would have to "finally make that his business." "If Denmark, Holland or France drive a harder course in asylum policy, we must also engage with our partners and not be as in a special role as a ghost driver on the road."

Also in view of the precarious situation, Schuster considers stationary controls at the latest now also at the Saxon borders born. Rejection is only possible in the course of it, not with Schleierfahndung, he contradicted the view of the Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser (SPD). By crossing the border line, people had entered the country and could only be deported back in a long process that often failed, he said. She said it was incomprehensible that Faeser was extending these checks in Bavaria and refusing to do so for Saxony, "where the numbers are just double, I don't understand that."