A Welcoming Culture Instead of National Rumpus Tour
To the demand of the committee on internal affairs chair of the Bundestag, Wolfgang Bosbach (Christian Democrats, CDU), after a crisis meeting of federal, Land and communal central organisations, Katina Schubert, member of the executive board of DIE LINKE declares:
We don’t need a crisis meeting, we need a different asylum and refugees policy. The CDU-led federal government still clings to the deeply discriminating German social welfare law for asylum seekers which by the Asylum Procedure Act prescribes mandatory collective accommodation of refugees for the first three months. It let’s municipalities bleed dry, so that they have ever greater difficulties to provide humane accommodation.
People that have fled seek shelter and admission here. It is the task of the Federal Government, the Land governments, the responsible communal authorities as well as civil society to warrant this protection. Instead, especially the CDU time and again picks up a quarrel about alleged asylum abuse. These debates are eagerly seized upon by right-wing populists and neo-fascists, trying to popularise them as is just happening in Berlin Hellersdorf and other places of Germany.
The democratic civil society, not allowing this, organises resistance against the right-wing extremist mob and the menace of the refugees and welcomes the refugees. This democratic civil society has now to be empowered. Therefore, we demand an immediate end to the crisis meetings talk. Germany has to own up to its international responsibility for the protection of refugees and eventually create the legal and financial preconditions for decentral accommodation.