Asylum debate in the Bundestag. “There are no social tourists,” say the Greens. “Speaking bans” should not exist, says the Union. The discussion becomes a lesson in what else can be said about an emotional topic.
Voice control – up to now this was known from the sat nav in the car. This offer is now also available in the German Bundestag. It comes from the Greens, the Left Party and the SPD. However, the Union finds the attempt to introduce “bans on speaking” on asylum issues threatening. In any case, it will change the debate about what can still be said.
Julian Pahlke has been active in sea rescue for almost six years, on the rescue ship “Iuventa” he fished refugees from the Mediterranean. He and his volunteers saved 14,000, reports the activist. Now the Greens sit in the German Bundestag, no longer as a research assistant to Claudia Roth, but as a member of parliament. Today Parliament is debating asylum and immigration.
And Pahlke says: It doesn’t matter whether someone is fleeing bombs from Ukraine or Syria. “There are no social tourists”, because: “no one leaves their country for a bit of social assistance”. There is also no illegal immigration, because there is no legal immigration from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan either. The “pull factor” is wrong – “part of anti-refugee baiting”. Later he calls out to CDU MP Philipp Amthor, whom he is astonished to say: “It’s right to put you in the right-hand corner.”
Talking about “pull factors” is “scientifically wrong”. Says Hakan Demir from the SPD. If there were a material incentive for refugees, “then all Ukrainians would have come to Germany immediately.” “For you,” he calls out to the MEPs from the lectern, “a tolerated person is a pull factor; for us, it’s a chance on the job market.” The traffic light government’s new chances of residence permit provides a secure residence status for rejected asylum seekers who have not been deported for years.
Helge Lindh, who was directly elected to the Bundestag for the Social Democrats in Wuppertal, says that a German “Sonderweg” is the language of the National Socialists. Adolf Hitler, as the influential Bielefeld social historian Hans-Ulrich Wehler explained, sought the Germans’ “special path” that then led to the abyss.
The Union chalked up a German “Sonderweg” to the traffic light government in the Bundestag today, because all other countries in Europe are closing their borders, while Germany is the only country that wants to open them further. Lindh says the Union’s language on migration issues is “indecent” and it is dishonest to claim that rejected asylum seekers “are parasites”. However, nobody in the Bundestag said that, nobody from the Union, nobody from the AfD.
“Nobody leaves their country to be treated like a second-class person here,” says Gökay Akbulut. The parents of the left-wing deputies applied for asylum in Germany in 1990, their daughter completed her social science studies with a master’s degree and is now a member of the Bundestag for the Mannheim left. The Union, says Akbulut, is “fishing in brown waters” and: “Those who talk to racists only make them stronger”.
Katrin Göring-Eckard is Vice President of the German Bundestag and a Protestant Christian. The Greens have been discussing asylum issues for years. She says that anyone who, like Friedrich Merz (CDU), talks about “social tourism” is doing Vladimir Putin’s cause. “Push and pull” are “imaginary factors”. This “is like an imaginary illness, that’s nonsense”. Göring-Eckard refers to Angela Merkel’s refugee policy, including her “We can do it”. She says: It is “completely normal politics that you create things”.
Josip Juratovic is a devout Roman Catholic Christian, says the native Croatian, who came to the Neckar area in 1975 after primary school. The Social Democrat is the last speaker today. His last sentence reads: “Jesus Christ was the most prominent refugee.”
Giving a different spin to the refugee discussion about language use is a large-scale socio-political experiment from the left. The chances that this will be linked are not even bad, especially since there are journalistic helpers. In talk shows like “Anne Will” or the “Presseclub” recently, they like to draw attention away from the currently increasing number of refugees and towards the language in which they are discussed.
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From this point of view, the “influx”, the “mass flight”, the “gateway”, “illegal immigration”, the “special path” and the “pull factor” become what the Green leader Ricarda Lang “rights” about Will Narrative” that strengthens the AfD.
In this way, the debate is raised to a meta-level, which has two advantages for the traffic light government, which is dominated by red and green in this field: There is then no longer any need to talk about the hard facts, the number of asylum seekers and the renewed occupation of gymnasiums at the expense of children’s physical education classes . And: Those who issue “speech bans” (Amthor) have already culturally prepared the ground for the “paradigm shift” in migration policy envisaged in the coalition agreement.
