Daily Times

German Chancellor Angela Merkel defended on Wednesday a deal on tightening immigration controls from attacks directed by both her Social Democrat coalition partners and the far-right opposition.

The left criticised Merkel’s plan, sealed at the weekend with her Bavarian conservative allies, as being too draconian while the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party called on Merkel to resign, denouncing it as too soft and vague.

Migrant arrivals peaked in 2015 at more than a million people, many of them fleeing the Syrian war and therefore entitled to asylum, while others were trying to escape poverty.

Numbers have since dropped sharply but Merkel told parliament that Germans had to be reassured. “Order must be brought to all forms of migration so people have the impression that law and order is being implemented,” she said to applause for her own lawmakers but jeers from the AfD.

Published in Daily Times, July 5^th 2018.