A German government minister has said that his government has pledged to provide €150 million to help migrants return home.
The aid funds will be available to both those whose asylum applications have been rejected as well as those who return voluntarily to their home countries. It is targeted primarily as people from Iraq, Afghanistan and from Balkan countries.
"For the next three years, we will put aside €50 million a year for this return programme," minister for development Gerd Müller told German media.
He said the funds will help people make a new start. "We can offer them education, professional training, employment and social benefits."
After an unprecedented influx of migrants and asylum seekers last year when the country espoused an “open door” policy, Germany has since tightened its borders and its regulations on migration.
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s policy has received criticism from a number of quarters, including her own Christian Democratic Union party. Merkel, 62, is seeking a fourth term as head of state and recognises that national focus must be broader than the migrant situation.
The campaign "won't only be about the refugee issue," she said in an interview. "A lot of it will be about the economy, social security and family policy."
Comments
Ms Merkel is not a communist. She is a Christian (she leads the Christian Democrats, which is a clue); her father was a Lutheran pastor; and she happened to be born and brought up in East Germany, which was a communist state.
The case of the Jews before WW2 is similar, since they were also fleeing a murderous totalitarian regime. Many were refused immigration into countries where they would have been safer. You say that the Jews "did not expect much"; they wished only to save their families´ and their own lives.
Is this grammar is all right for you?
I remember that Cameron stood out in the EU against accepting a "share" of the refugees. If there are such problems among immigrants as Margaridaana shows, they were not caused by Ms Merkel.
I am sure you can be a Communist and a Christian....
I really do fear for my grandchildren in UK and in fact keep telling them to get out before England becomes a Muslim state, by way of the ballot box. Thank goodness I won't be around in twenty years time to witness the carnage. Thanks Angela!
It may be that her response was not well received in Germany (or indeed in the Algarve, by the looks of it) but no-one can maintain that her response was not humanitarian.
Let us remember first the closed door policy to European Jews which was practised by many of the liberal democracies (including Britain and the USA) before 1939, and the awful fate for those Jews locked up in Europe. And second, that the West has some moral responsibility for the instability in North Africa and the Middle East, much of it caused by our own governments.