AfD on migration and integration

The AfD wants to allow labor migration only when domestic options are exhausted and a specific need has been demonstrated. It gives priority to domestic workers and to bringing back skilled people who have left.

The AfD wants to find workers at home first. Skilled people who moved away should come back. Skilled workers from abroad should come only when truly needed. They should not receive welfare benefits.

With return programs, the AfD wants to reach skilled people who, in its account, left the state because of taxes, red tape and a lack of prospects. Foreign qualifications would have to be proven fully equivalent to the German one. Immigrant workers should not end up in the welfare system or displace locals through cheaper competition. The platform cites Canada and Australia as models of demand-based management.

The AfD wants children with a migration background to be taught first in separate preparatory classes where needed. There they are to learn German and basic social behavior. Only those who can follow lessons linguistically and socially should move to a regular class.

Some children do not speak enough German yet. The AfD wants separate classes for them. There they learn German and rules for getting along. Only after that should they join a normal class.

The platform argues that schools and teachers are heavily strained by children without sufficient German. Regular lessons are, in its view, not the right place to learn the language. The move to regular classes or vocational schools should happen only once children can keep up linguistically and socially. The AfD says switching too early overwhelms the children and harms the learning climate of the whole class.

The AfD wants foreign offenders to lose their right of residence through the criminal verdict itself. For certain serious offenses and a prison sentence of at least one year, deportation with a permanent entry ban would follow automatically.

Foreigners who commit serious crimes should lose their right to stay. The criminal court should decide this in its verdict. This applies from one year in prison. The person must then leave the country. They may never come back.

The platform points to Denmark as a model. It justifies the proposal with lengthy administrative proceedings before deportation and with the fact that the criminal court already examines the offender as a person. The rule would apply to a list of serious offenses. In the AfD's view, this also benefits well-integrated, law-abiding migrants whose reputation suffers because of repeat offenders.

The AfD wants to press the federal government for effective border protection by all legal and political means. As a last resort, it reserves the option of declaring a statewide freeze on taking in asylum seekers in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.

The AfD wants the federal government to protect the borders better. It wants to put pressure on the federal government. As a last step, the state would take in no more asylum seekers. The AfD calls this an intake freeze.

According to the platform, the federal government has not stopped irregular immigration. The AfD wants aid to be based on individual need and prefers humanitarian help close to conflict regions, which it considers many times more effective than spending at home. It describes benefits for criminals, people who refuse to integrate and economic migrants as false incentives. Its stated goal is to preserve national and regional identity.

The AfD wants to create a dedicated unit for border protection and returns within the state police. In addition, a police task force against foreign offenders would be established.

The AfD wants a new police unit in the state. It should protect the border and help with deportations. A second group should be added. This group deals with foreign offenders.

The new unit would act against irregular entry, smugglers, and cross-border property and drug crime. It would build on joint units of state police, federal police and customs as well as the German-Polish patrols. The task force would work with other authorities to quickly initiate criminal, preventive and immigration-law measures. The platform justifies it with a sharp rise in serious crimes by non-German offenders.

The AfD wants to examine changes to the Flüchtlingsaufnahmegesetz (refugee reception law) so that municipalities have a say in housing asylum seekers. Existing municipal accommodation would be scaled back and asylum seekers housed in a few large facilities.

Towns should have a say on shelters for asylum seekers. The AfD wants to change a law for this. Many shelters in towns should close. Asylum seekers should live in a few large shelters. This should save money.

The platform points to places such as Upahl, Dabel and Ziesendorf, where the AfD says residents and local politicians were bypassed. In its account, the money spent on accommodation is missing for municipal infrastructure and investment. The scaling back is to happen as fast as possible and save money. Large facilities are meant to make care, security and access by immigration authorities easier.

The AfD wants to house people who are required to leave in separate state-run departure centers and to set up the state's own deportation detention facility. It cites the high number of failed deportations in recent years.

Some people must leave Germany. The AfD wants separate housing for them. The state should also get its own detention center for deportations. Dangerous people should wear an electronic ankle monitor.

Asylum seekers and people required to leave who have committed crimes or been violent would be housed outside of towns until deportation. The departure centers are meant to offer incentives for voluntary return, which the program says costs less than forced deportation. Until the detention facility is running, people required to leave would be held separately in regular prisons. The AfD plans electronic ankle monitors for dangerous people who are required to leave.

The AfD wants asylum seekers and people required to leave to receive benefits in kind wherever possible, with no cash at all paid out in the departure centers. Asylum seekers would do unpaid work in municipal shelters. The party says this removes financial incentives for migration and encourages voluntary departure.

The AfD wants to stop giving money to asylum seekers. They should only get things like a bed, food and soap. Asylum seekers should work in their shelters without pay. The AfD says fewer people will come and more will leave.

The program calls this the "bed, bread, soap principle." Through a federal reform of the Asylum Seekers' Benefits Act, asylum seekers would cover part of the cost of their own care. What the AfD describes as abuse of the payment card is to end: it wants federal law to allow prosecution of such fraud and wants the state to review the nonprofit status of associations such as "Greifswald hilft." Unaccompanied minors would, where possible, be reunited with their families in safe third countries.

The AfD wants the protection status of Syrian refugees in the state reviewed and revoked on a large scale, and wants the state to actively prepare their return. It points to the changed situation in Syria and argues that refugee protection is granted only temporarily.

The AfD wants Syrian refugees to go back to Syria. Their protection in Germany should end. The AfD says the situation in Syria has changed. Criminals from Syria should leave especially fast.

According to the program, the new government in Damascus makes return agreements possible. Criminals and people classed as security threats from Syria would be deported as quickly as possible, regardless of the revocation proceedings. More generally, refugee status should not automatically lead to permanent residence. Refugees are to use their stay to gain job skills for rebuilding their home region and are to be given more community work opportunities; the state would also add incentives for voluntary return.

The AfD wants male unaccompanied minor asylum seekers aged 16 and older to be housed, as a rule, in shared shelters rather than in youth welfare facilities. It also wants age checks for all unaccompanied foreigners who claim to be minors.

Some young people come to Germany without parents. Today they mostly live in youth welfare homes. The AfD wants boys aged 16 and up to live in shared shelters. Their age should also always be checked.

In the shared shelters, the young people would live in separate areas and receive supervision. The program says this would relieve youth welfare facilities. Age assessment would be carried out across the board using approved methods.

The AfD wants to suspend family reunification as a general rule, review Ukrainian benefit recipients and return refugees whose claim to protection has ended. Kindergeld (child benefit) for children living abroad would be paid only at the rate usual in that country. The party argues that immigrants draw social benefits at a disproportionately high rate.

The AfD wants to stop refugees from bringing their families to Germany. People from Ukraine who get benefits should be checked. There should be less child benefit for children living abroad. The AfD says too many immigrants get money from the state.

According to the program, people from the main countries of origin for asylum seekers and from Ukraine receive social benefits in the state far more often than Germans do. On child benefit, the AfD objects that EU citizens living in Germany receive the same amount for children in another EU country as for children living here, and sees this as an incentive to immigrate. It wants to launch a federal initiative to adjust payments to the level of the country of residence. The program regards the welfare state as tied to the nation-state.

The AfD wants to abolish the state's Integration and Participation Act and replace it with a migration regulation act. State funding for groups such as the Flüchtlingsrat MV (refugee council) would end. The party accuses the state government of seeking to replace a society shaped by German culture with a multicultural one.

The state has a law on integration and participation. The AfD wants to get rid of this law. A new law should put the interests of Germans first. Groups like the refugee council should get no more money from the state.

The program opposes rules it describes as de facto migrant quotas in the administration and on public bodies, as well as migrant advisory councils and intercultural competence training for public employees. The AfD invokes the equal access of all Germans to public office based on aptitude, qualifications and performance. It says it will support immigrants who come legally, earn their own living and adapt to German ways of life.

The AfD wants to strictly limit and reduce Muslim immigration to Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Islamic associations would be required to record and report extremist tendencies and individuals in their circles. The party argues that Islam, in its view, is not a secularly constituted religious community.

The AfD wants fewer Muslims to come to the state. Islamic associations should set up their own reporting offices. There they should report radical people from their circles. The AfD says the associations must help with public safety.

The program acknowledges the religious freedom of Muslim citizens under Article 4 of the Basic Law but points to what it sees as social consequences of years of Muslim immigration. The AfD expects Islamic associations active in the state to share responsibility for public safety and social cohesion. They would have to run reporting offices or other bodies they consider suitable to record radical tendencies and the people involved.