In his party's biggest break yet from former Chancellor Angela Merkel and her policy that allowed more than 1 million immigrants into Germany a decade ago, CDU (conservative) Leader Friedrich Merz called yesterday for a resolution to change the country's asylum law with the goal of radically increasing the deportation of criminals in the immigrant population.
Likened by some to President Donald Trump present widespread deportation of criminals among the illegal immigrants now residing in the U.S., Merz's plan is also seen as a possible way of winning back former CDU backers who have abandoned the party for what they see is a soft stand on criminal asylum seekers.
The CDU leader's resolution, along with accompanying legislation in the Bundestag (parliament), could easily lead to the immediate expulsion from Germany of 40,000 asylum applicants whom Merz branded "ticking time bombs walking around our towns and communities."
Merz's call for the toughest-ever legislation dealing with criminals seeking asylum comes a week after a two-year-old child and a 41-year-old man were stabbed to death in the southern Germany town of Aschaffenburg. The widespread condemnation of authorities who did not recognize the attacker, an asylum seeker treated for a mental illness, was a clear and present danger to the community.
The expulsion legislation comes barely three weeks before Germans voted in national elections that the whole world is watching. A just-completed Ipsos poll shows Merz's CDU and its Bavarian junior partner the CSU (Christian Social Union) winning 30%, the nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD) Party at 19% — its highest-ever showing in polls — Chancellor Olaf Scholz's ruling Social Democratic Party (SPD) 16%, the Greens 14%, and the new Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), a left-of-center party that nevertheless takes a hard line on immigration, at 6%.
More than a few observers say that Merz's expulsion legislation is a means of winning back angry voters who recall Merkel's liberal line on admitting immigrants and are now backing the AfD — whose chancellor candidate Alice Weidel has long called for widespread expulsion of asylum seekers.
"Merz has absorbed a policy proposal the AfD was pushing for, but this is happening extremely late in the game," Swiss political consultant Louis Perron, author of the critically-acclaimed book "Beat The Incumbent," told Newsmax, "Remember that we're just a few weeks away from the election. This poses a problem of credibility. Merz as a person is certainly a credible messenger for it, but the party less so. Alice Weidel says: Why trust the CDU to solve the problems that it has itself created? It's a good point."
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