'Mini-Merkel' calls for Syrian migrants to be returned home

[Swordsmyth]

One of the frontrunners to succeed Angela Merkel as leader of her political party has called for Germany to deport migrants to Syria.
Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer said asylum-seekers whose claims are rejected or who commit crimes could be returned to the war-torn country.
“Certain regions of Syria could be secure enough in the foreseeable future,” she told Bild newspaper.
Ms Kramp-Karrenbauer, popularly known in Germany as “mini-Merkel”, is widely seen as Mrs Merkel’s preferred successor.
But she has been at pains to distance herself from the chancellor’s controversial migrant policy in her bid for the leadership of the Christian Democrat party (CDU).
Germany currently bans deportations to Syria because of the situation there. The German foreign ministry is set to reassess the policy by the end of this month, but an internal memo leaked to the German press warns: “It is extremely challenging to get first-hand reliable information about the situation in the country."
The German embassy in Damascus is currently closed and the country is deemed too dangerous for diplomats to visit.
Ms Kramp-Karrenbauer’s comments are a clear attempt to avoid being seen as a Merkel continuity candidate in the race for the CDU leadership.
She has also called for asylum-seekers who commit crimes in Germany to be barred from the entire Schengen Area.
Mrs Merkel will step down as party leader in December but says she wants to see out her current term as chancellor, which ends in 2021.
Ms Kramp-Karrenbauer currently has a narrow lead with the general electorate, according to opinion polls, but the new leader will be chosen by delegates at the CDU party conference in December.
As Mr Kramp-Karrenbauer strives to avoid being see as too close to Mrs Merkel, her closest competitor is working equally hard not to be seen as too close to the populist Right.
Friedrich Merz, who is just behind her in the opinion polls, went on the attack against the nationalist Alternative for Germany party (AfD), describing them as “openly Nazi”.
Mr Merz, a 63-year-old former rival of Mrs Merkel, is the preferred candidate of the CDU’s conservative wing and widely expected to shift the party to a more Right-wing course if he wins.
But he went out of his way to establish clear space between his vision for the CDU and the AfD in an interview with German radio in which he vowed never to go into coalition with the populists.

More at: https://www.yahoo.com/news/apos-mini-merkel-apos-calls-170641019.html

 

[Swordsmyth]

One of the candidates aspiring to replace Angela Merkel as the CDU’s chair after she refused to seek re-election has come under fire for calling to discuss if the right to asylum specified under Germany’s Basic Law can continue to exist “in this form.”
Friedrich Merz, a candidate for the Christian Democrats’ leadership, has triggered debates both within his party and among political rivals after he expressed doubts that the asylum right should continue to be a feature of the country’s Basic Law, which serves as its constitution.
“If we want to regulate immigration at the European level, then someday we will need a general debate on the fundamental right to asylum…I have long believed that we need to think about it,” Friedrich Merz said when he and his competitors for the CDU’s leadership presented their positions to fellow Christian Democrats.

The remark has sparked debates in Germany, the only EU country to guarantee asylum-seekers refuge in its constitution. Politicians on the right, on the left and in the political center criticized the CDU leadership candidate, although they had different arguments.
The right-wing Alternative for Germany, which advocates a stricter stance on migration, accused Merz of stealing their ideas. Parliament group leader Jürgen Braun tweeted that “In the fight for the CDU chairmanship and better poll numbers, Friedrich Merz uses a tried and tested means: copying the AfD!” His colleague Dirk Spaniel said that Merz has occupied the AfD’s grounds on the right.
The Social Democrats, who are the CDU/CSU coalition’s partners now, also expressed their outrage at the spokesman for his populist stance. Lawmaker Johannes Kahrs slammed both Merz and his rival candidate, national Health Minister Jens Spahn, for opting to play ‘the AfD card’, Handelsblatt reports. He suggests that the AfD would profit as a result.
“Doubting people will choose the original, not the CDU copy,” Kahrs said.
The SPD group’s deputy leader Karl Lauterbach dubbed Merz “Trump light” for his millionaire lawyer and background in corporate management.
“He is in every way a Trump light, just a millionaire and not a billionaire. The Greens, who now run after the CDU, would still wonder how nice that will be,” he tweeted.
Merz’s statements were opposed by the Greens, who preferred to keep the constitution as it is.
“The basic right to asylum is the doctrine of the constitution from the terrible experiences of Jews who sought to flee Nazi Germany and from the flight experience of millions of Germans,” said Green Party Deputy Leader Constantine von Notz.
Merz has also faced a backlash within his own party, while his competitors attempted to take advantage of the outrage directed against him.
“The fundamental right to asylum for the politically persecuted is a great achievement of our constitution against the background of the two world wars, great suffering and expulsions. The problem is that it’s being exploited too often today, leading to uncontrolled migration,” Jens Spahn tweeted.
Another candidate for the CDU leadership and Angela Merkel’s favorite, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauerhas, or AKK, rejected a restriction of the asylum law, saying it would violate the spirit of the constitution.
It’s AKK who leads the polls as the most possible replacement for Merkel, the respected Deutschlandtrend survey suggested in mid-November; Merz came in second.

More at: https://www.infowars.com/possible-merkel-successor-crackdowns-on-migrants-called-trump-light/