The CSU’s proposal that the granting of a residence permit for refugees should no longer be based on the need for protection, but also on the ability to “secure a livelihood”, is met with broad rejection. Constitutional lawyer Volker Boehme-Neßler told the TV channel “Welt” that the granting of residence permits to refugees is legally only based on the person’s need for protection, not on whether they can “earn their own living”.
Criticism also comes from other factions and groups in the Bundestag. “The CSU is again throwing the baby out with the bathwater by making legally very questionable proposals” said SPD faction vice Dirk Wiese to the “Welt” (Friday edition). It is undisputed that the German economy needs “skilled and labor forces from abroad”. “Germany should therefore make a positive impression on legal immigration. The CSU, however, is achieving the opposite with its approach to the AfD” Wiese said.
The FDP does not agree with the CSU’s plan, but wants to tie the granting of unlimited residence permits to the taking of work. “It makes sense to link the long-term stay in our country to the independent securing of a livelihood” said Ann-Veruschka Jurisch, the FDP’s migration policy expert, to the newspaper. “That’s why the Free Democrats have consistently advocated for this in the past and have regulated it accordingly in the new citizenship law.”
Clara Bünger, the left-wing party’s parliamentary group’s right-wing spokesperson, wants to stick to the asylum law. “New year, same old tune: the CSU is presenting proposals that are not only morally questionable, but also unexecutable in a legal sense” she said. “The European asylum system guarantees a residence permit to people in need of protection – a fundamental lesson from the crimes of National Socialism.