End state cash payments to migrants from as it funds people smugglers, says German justice minister
This year more than 200,000 people have already applied for asylum in Germany, which is on course to become the biggest annual figure since 2016.
German local authorities, which take care of housing and funding for refugees, are increasingly complaining that the government is not giving them enough financial support.
The call by the justice minister appears to have some support from other parties in Germany’s coalition government, including members of the SPD party led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
“I would simply stop cash payments completely … we can’t allow ourselves to be fooled by people who exploit our right to asylum,” said Rita Röhrl, an SDP district administrator in Lower Bavaria, who agreed with Mr Buschmann’s remarks.
Germany’s coalition government is increasingly seeking to look tougher on migration issues as it faces pressure from the anti-immigrant AfD party, which is rising in the polls.
But there is also evidence that migration is becoming a cross-party issue in Germany. In September Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the president of Germany, said that the country had reached a “limit” on migration.
“[Germany has] like Italy, reached the limit of what it can bear,” he said, in a significant intervention. German presidents are generally expected to be the highest moral voice in the country and comment on the most pressing political issues.
Under former Chancellor Angela Merkel, Germany took in around a million migrants and refugees from 2015-2016, at the height of the Syrian refugee crisis.
