Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said Friday that perhaps many Syrians should get “subsidiary protection”, which comes with only a one-year renewable residence permit and wouldn’t allow them to bring relatives to Germany for two years.
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The party rejects Ms Merkel’s welcoming approach to refugees and a few protesters carried banners reading “Stop Merkel, save Germany”.
Ralf Stegner, deputy chairman of the SPD – which is in coalition with the CDU/CSU Union parties – criticized de Maiziere’s comments, saying the ban on family members joining male refugees would simply encourage more women and children to make the perilous journey from the Middle East to Europe.
In a challenge to Merkel’s authority, conservative politicians, including Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, backed de Maiziere on the need for measures to stem the flow.
FAS reported that Altmaier was in fact informed by Vice Chancellor and leader of Germany’s Social Democrats Sigmar Gabriel, who later intervened.
The vice chancellor complained that, in recent weeks, coalition agreements have swiftly been followed by unannounced new proposals – creating the impression in Germany that “the government’s left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing”.
The pastor’s daughter has argued that Europe’s biggest export power and major beneficiary of globalisation can not hide from its consequences, insisting that setting an upper limit on arrivals is impossible.
A supporter of the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party displays an anti-Merkel placard during a demonstration against the German government on November 7, 2015.
On Monday night, the Islamophobic PEGIDA movement readied to again rally in the eastern city of Dresden, defying calls to stay home on the anniversary of the 1938 anti-Jewish pogrom known as “Kristallnacht”.
Horst Seehofer, the Bavarian state prime minister who has become Mrs Merkel’s bête noir over asylum policy, quickly seized on the interior minister’s initiative.
AfD is a main critic of the top European economy’s open-door policy under Chancellor Angela Merkel towards refugees fleeing war and persecution.
Greece’s current “revolving door system” for asylum-seekers would come to a halt.
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The government was forced to clarify on Friday that its asylum policy for refugees from Syria remained unchanged after de Maiziere said their applications would be handled differently in the future and that they would be barred from having family members join them.
