AfD on migration and integration

The AfD wants to abolish Thuringia's health card for asylum seekers. People whose claims are rejected or not recognized would receive emergency care only. The platform justifies this with the cost to the state budget and to insured people.

Asylum seekers in Thuringia have a health card. The AfD wants to end this card. Rejected asylum seekers would only get care in an emergency. The AfD says the card costs too much money.

According to the platform, the card places an excessive burden on the state budget and on the community of insured people. For rejected and unrecognized asylum seekers, treatment would be limited to appropriate emergency care. Recognized asylum seekers would get basic care, but at a level below that of regularly insured people.

The AfD wants a change of course in asylum policy and a needs-based immigration law modeled on Japan. Asylum should be reserved for people who are actually politically persecuted. The platform calls the multicultural society a wrong path that it wants to end.

The AfD wants to change asylum policy. Only politically persecuted people should get asylum. Only people the country needs should immigrate. Japan is the model for this. The borders should be fully secured.

The platform sees the causes of high immigration in political decisions such as open welfare systems, missing border protection and unenforced immigration law. It points to welfare dependency and the share of non-German crime suspects. A precondition for the new immigration law is complete security of Germany's borders. The individual legal right to asylum should also be open to debate. The party says it is open to foreigners who live here legally, integrate and support themselves through work.

The AfD wants to enforce the obligation to leave the country through a state-level deportation initiative. This includes deportation flights organized by Thuringia itself, a deportation detention facility, and separate housing for asylum seekers with a record of violence.

The AfD wants to deport more people. To deport means the state makes people without a right to stay leave. Thuringia should organize its own flights for this. There should also be a detention center for deportations.

The program announces new procedures to enforce departure for people who entered illegally and for those with tolerated status. The first to be deported would be those who have committed crimes or drawn attention through extremist agitation. Asylum seekers with a record of violence would live in separate facilities away from towns until they leave, which the AfD justifies as protecting the public and peaceful asylum seekers. The legal options for pre-deportation detention are to be used in full. For this, Thuringia is to get its own deportation detention facility quickly.

The AfD wants to abolish Thuringia's hardship commission because, in the party's view, it unlawfully lets people who are required to leave stay on. Church asylum would also no longer be tolerated, and groups that support it would lose public funding.

Thuringia has a hardship commission. It can let people stay in special cases. The AfD wants to abolish this commission. The AfD also wants to stop tolerating church asylum. Groups that help with such things should get no money from the state.

According to the program, the hardship commission has allowed foreigners required to leave to stay in hundreds of cases and has been politically misused. The AfD considers it beyond reform and wants to dissolve it. The party regards church asylum and similar help aimed at getting around immigration law as unlawful and wants to stop accepting it. Organizations that help rejected asylum seekers avoid deportation would no longer receive public funding.

The AfD wants to sharply lower the standard of provision and housing for asylum seekers in order to make migration into the welfare system unattractive. Benefits in kind and shared accommodation would be the rule, and the health card would be scrapped.

The AfD wants to give asylum seekers less. They should mostly get goods instead of money. They should live in shared housing. The health card should go. Doctors should only help in emergencies and with pain.

The standard is meant to be low enough to offer no incentive to immigrate while still securing a humane minimum subsistence level. The program criticizes the new payment cards as a sham because 150 to 180 euros are paid out in cash on top. New arrivals would live in state-run reception centers to relieve municipalities and taxpayers. Medical care would essentially be limited to acute illness and pain. The AfD also wants to identify and seize cash and valuables that asylum seekers bring with them to cover part of the costs.

For refugees and low-skilled migrants, the AfD wants to preserve their ability to return home rather than focus on integration. The party argues that integration often fails for lack of willingness and of the necessary preconditions.

The AfD thinks integration often does not work. Integration means newcomers become part of society. So the AfD wants many migrants to leave again soon. Courses should teach them things they need back home.

According to the program, many immigrants lack the will to integrate or preconditions such as German language skills. As a rule, a prompt departure should therefore be pursued and supported. This applies to refugees and especially to migrants with low or no qualifications. Educational programs would teach basic German and values, but above all skills for life in the country of origin.

The AfD wants to allow family reunification only for a few groups, arguing that it is used as a route into the welfare system. The conditions would be language skills and a job that also supports the relatives.

Family reunification means relatives may follow someone to Germany. The AfD wants to allow this only rarely. People who want to bring family should have learned German. They should also have a job and support the family themselves.

Reunification would be open to highly qualified, well-integrated labor migrants and to people with a recognized ground for asylum. They must have completed German courses and show a job that covers the whole family's living costs. For unaccompanied minors, the AfD says families can be reunited in a safe third country outside Germany. The party notes that this is compatible with EU law.

The AfD demands that the age of all unaccompanied refugees who claim to be minors be determined using approved methods. The party rejects the objection that X-raying the hand violates human dignity.

Some young refugees arrive without parents. The AfD wants to check the age of all of them. This can be done with an X-ray of the hand, for example. The AfD thinks that is reasonable.

The check would take place as a general rule for everyone concerned, not just in individual cases. As an example, the program names X-raying the finger bones. The AfD considers criticism of this method not credible, pointing to what it sees as pressure to get vaccinated against COVID-19.