CDU on migration and integration

Together with chambers and trade associations, the CDU wants to recruit skilled workers from outside the EU in a targeted way. Skilled immigration is to be separated organizationally from asylum migration, and a Central Immigration Office is to serve as a single point of contact.

The CDU wants to bring skilled workers from other countries to Thuringia. The state should help more with this. Procedures for skilled workers should be faster. They should run separately from asylum procedures. One central office should serve companies and skilled workers.

Recruitment is to follow the needs of the community and the economy, with the state acting more as a broker and service provider. The German Professional School is to focus mainly on recruiting and qualifying prospective trainees. A Central Immigration Office (ZAB) is to act as a "one-stop agency" and handle the fast-track procedure for skilled workers through to issuing residence documents. Entry barriers are to be lowered and the time until people actually start work shortened. The CDU wants to offer foreign students and trainees a future in the state early on and promote Thuringia as an attractive place to live and work.

The CDU sees successful integration as integration into the labor market. Foreign vocational and university qualifications are to be recognized faster and with less red tape, and immigrants should be able to work while still attending a language course.

The CDU wants immigrants to be able to work sooner. Diplomas from other countries should be recognized faster. There should be more German courses. People should be allowed to work while they take a language course.

Recognition procedures are to be standardized and simplified, especially for health care professions. For people whose qualification does not yet fully match a German one, the CDU wants to create more places in top-up training courses. Offerings for German as a foreign and second language are to be expanded. Waiting for a language course should not delay the start of work, especially since, according to the platform, not every job requires perfect language skills.

The CDU wants a strict distinction between asylum and immigration. Those entitled to protection are to receive help, but protection is to be temporary and normally end with a return home. Anyone without grounds for protection or who breaks the rules is to leave the country immediately.

The CDU wants to separate asylum from immigration. People who need protection should get help. But protection should only last for a time. After that, people should return to their home country. Anyone with no reason for protection should leave right away.

The CDU sees refugee protection as time-limited, normally ending once the reason for fleeing no longer exists. People who deceive authorities about their identity or do not follow the rules are also to leave. Protection is to be designed so that it is not understood as a route to immigration. The party justifies its course by saying that arrivals overburden municipalities and society and that existing law must be applied consistently.

The CDU wants to create a central immigration authority within the state administration office to manage reception and returns and relieve municipalities. People with no prospect of staying are to be housed in central facilities and deported directly from there, instead of being distributed to counties and towns.

The CDU wants to create one central office for foreigners. It should organize reception and deportation. People who may not stay should go to a central facility. They should be deported directly from there. Towns should have less work this way.

The authority is to be a division within the state administration office and bundle tasks in asylum and residence law. Under its supervision, the Thuringian Centers for Reception and Return (TZAR) are to be created. Direct deportation from these centers is to apply especially to criminal offenders and people considered dangerous. A separate department of the authority is to focus on the immigration of skilled workers. The CDU sees carrying out negative asylum decisions as a matter of the rule of law.

The CDU wants to push at the federal level for countries of origin to receive money and visas only if they take back their citizens. In addition, more countries are to be classified as safe countries of origin, and asylum cases with little chance of success are to be processed faster.

Some countries do not take back their citizens after a deportation. The CDU wants these countries to get no money and no visas then. More countries should count as safe. Asylum cases with little chance of success should go faster.

Financial support from Germany and the granting of visas are to depend on a state taking back its citizens in returns or concluding readmission agreements. For asylum seekers with low chances of recognition, fast-track procedures and standards are to apply while respecting the rule of law. States with persistently low recognition rates are to be declared safe countries of origin. Both measures are meant to shorten procedures and make deportations easier.

The CDU wants to reduce incentives for irregular entry. Newly arriving Ukrainians would no longer receive Bürgergeld (citizen's income) but would first get the lower asylum-seeker benefits. Thuringia would no longer run its own admission programs.

The CDU wants fewer incentives to come to Germany. New refugees from Ukraine should not get Bürgergeld anymore. Bürgergeld is the basic income support in Germany. They should get the same benefits as asylum seekers. Thuringia should have no admission programs of its own.

Through an initiative in the Bundesrat, the CDU wants to end the so-called change of legal status that puts refugees from Ukraine directly on Bürgergeld. Future arrivals would be treated like other people seeking protection. The state would stop setting up its own admission programs. At the federal level, the CDU wants all social benefits for foreigners to be critically reviewed.

The CDU wants asylum seekers in reception centers and shared accommodation to receive only in-kind benefits. In addition, a payment card would be introduced across Thuringia. The party says this is meant to stop social benefits from being sent to countries of origin.

Asylum seekers in shelters should no longer get cash. They should get things like food and clothes directly. There should also be a payment card in all of Thuringia. People can shop with the card but cannot take out cash.

In-kind benefits would generally take priority over money. The payment card would follow models used in CDU-led districts and apply statewide. Asylum seekers could use it to shop in their region, but cash withdrawals would not be possible. The program argues that transfers of German social benefits abroad must not become a business model.

The CDU wants to promote the integration of people with a migration background who live lawfully in Thuringia, while making it more binding. Anyone receiving benefits would have to sign a personal integration agreement. Community work placements for asylum seekers would be expanded.

The CDU wants to support integration and set firm rules for it. People who get money from the state should sign an integration agreement. Asylum seekers should do more community work. The offers should focus on language, education, work and everyday life.

Together with municipalities, integration programs would focus on language, education, work and everyday culture. The aim is to strengthen identification with the Basic Law and its values and a sense of belonging to Thuringia and Germany. Community work placements that asylum seekers are required to take up would be offered more widely as preparation for regular employment. The integration agreement would be individual and mandatory.

The CDU wants immigrants to have to live in Germany longer again before they can become citizens. In the party's view, naturalization comes at the end of successful integration, not at its beginning.

The CDU wants stricter rules for the German passport. People should live in Germany longer again before they get it. The CDU says: integration comes first, then the passport.

The longer residence period would be pursued through an initiative in the Bundesrat. The CDU opposes lowering the requirements for supporting oneself financially, for language skills and for a commitment to the constitutional values. The program calls citizenship the highest status Germany can grant a migrant.

The CDU wants asylum procedures to be completed entirely in central facilities at the EU's external borders or in countries neighboring Europe. Frontex is to become a border police and coast guard with sovereign powers.

The CDU wants asylum claims checked at the EU's outer border. Only people who are accepted should then come to Germany. All others should be turned back at the border. The EU agency Frontex should get more staff and more powers.

Under this model, only recognized asylum seekers with prospects of staying would enter; people without such prospects would be turned back at the borders. The EU's external borders are to be monitored more closely because, in the CDU's view, it must be known who is entering. Frontex is to get additional border guards. As long as external border protection does not work, checks at internal borders are to remain possible.