SPD on migration and integration

The SPD wants to develop the Skilled Immigration Act further, make it simpler to recognize foreign qualifications and digitize procedures. Refugees should be allowed to work as early as possible. Immigration must not lead to wage dumping, the platform says.

Germany needs skilled workers from abroad. The SPD wants to make the rules simpler. Foreign qualifications should be accepted more easily. Refugees should be allowed to work early. There should be more German classes.

The platform promises clear rules, less red tape and more transparent recognition of qualifications earned abroad. Integration courses alongside work, language support and counseling are to be expanded and given lasting, adequate funding. The Job-Turbo, a program for placing refugees in work quickly, is to be continued and widened. Exploitation, unfair competition and a weakening of collective wage structures are to be prevented.

The SPD wants to expand integration courses and fund them reliably. A new Partizipationsgesetz (participation law) is to use binding rules to ensure equal participation, for example in education, work and political decision-making.

The SPD wants to offer more integration courses. In them, immigrants learn German and how life in Germany works. The courses should get enough money. A new law should remove barriers. Immigrants should be able to take part equally everywhere.

The platform sees the courses as central to the first phase of integration and wants them to receive sufficient budget funds. The participation law is meant to remove obstacles to participation and create equal opportunity. The SPD expects better integration and more social cohesion from it. It defends the eased naturalization rules from the last term as a sign of belonging.

The SPD wants skilled workers to be able to immigrate more easily and quickly because, in its view, the aging society needs immigration. Well-integrated refugees without protection status and without a criminal record are to be allowed to switch into skilled-worker immigration.

The SPD says Germany needs skilled workers from abroad. They should be able to come more easily and quickly. Their degrees should be recognized faster. Some refugees do not get protection. If they work and commit no crime, they should be allowed to stay.

The Skilled Immigration Act is to be applied with little red tape and developed further on an ongoing basis. The platform provides for clear rules, simpler and faster recognition of foreign qualifications and fair recruitment agreements. The so-called Spurwechsel (change of track) is to be open to people who were not granted protection status but are integrated into work and society and have no criminal record.

The SPD wants to make asylum procedures much faster, both at the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees and in the administrative courts. Decisions are to be made within six months. Processes after arrival are also to become more centralized, digital and simple.

Asylum procedures should go faster. A decision should come within six months. For that, offices should work digitally. The immigration offices should get more support. People should be able to handle many things in one place.

Digitalization and a more modern administration are meant to make the six-month goal possible. The immigration offices are to be strengthened and data sharing improved. The platform provides for one-stop procedures in which matters are handled at a single point. For establishing identity, the SPD wants clear rules that take the state's security interests into account.

The SPD stands by the individual right to asylum and wants to implement the Common European Asylum System with humanitarian standards and a distribution based on solidarity. It rejects border closures and blanket turn-backs at internal borders. Family reunification for people with subsidiary protection is to remain in place.

The SPD wants to keep the right to asylum. All EU countries should take in refugees. No one should be turned away wholesale at German borders. Border checks inside the EU should be an exception. Families of people with limited protection may still join them.

The European asylum system applies from 2026 and, according to the platform, is to rest on the right to asylum and international refugee law. Border procedures are to meet high legal standards. For distributing refugees, the SPD demands more than the loosely agreed solidarity mechanism so far, with all member states taking part. It sees border closures and blanket turn-backs as contradicting the common European legal area. It justifies family reunification by saying it matters for successful integration.

The SPD wants tighter control of the EU's external borders and consistent returns of people required to leave, preferably through voluntary departure. At the same time, rule-of-law and humane standards are to apply: it rejects pushbacks and moving asylum procedures to third countries.

The EU's outer borders should be controlled better. People who may not stay should leave. Ideally on their own. Otherwise the state deports them quickly, above all criminals. But asylum procedures should stay inside the EU.

The border agency Frontex is to be overseen through independent monitoring and stronger scrutiny rights for the European Parliament. The platform rules out illegal pushbacks at the borders. People seeking protection are to get fair procedures inside the EU. The SPD wants to act against smugglers together with neighboring states; they are to be punished severely and expelled. As a general principle, the SPD holds that those who do not follow the rules must leave.

The SPD wants to shield sea rescue from prosecution and also have the EU organize it as a state task. Safe and legal escape routes, admission programs and migration agreements are meant to prevent dangerous crossings. More development cooperation is to reduce the causes of flight.

The SPD wants people in distress at sea to be rescued. Rescuers should not be punished for it. The EU should rescue people too. There should be safe routes for refugees. Germany should help poor regions so fewer people have to flee.

The platform provides for resettlement and humanitarian admission programs. Migration agreements are to open paths into training and work, support the reception of refugees in the region and at the same time firmly regulate the return of nationals required to leave. Development cooperation is to stabilize crisis regions, promote reconstruction after conflicts and create education and jobs locally. The SPD wants to continue the federal admission program for especially endangered people from Afghanistan.