In an interview with DW, Jan van Aken, co-chair and co-lead candidate of Germany's Left Party, criticizes the country's current migration debate.
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00:00One of the main topics in the election campaign is migration policy.
00:03This week there is a heated discussion about it.
00:06If I see it correctly, all parties, except your party,
00:12are in favor of tightening migration policy,
00:15more deportations, more withdrawal to the borders, more border controls.
00:20You want the opposite. You don't want deportations at all.
00:23Yes, I am against deportations.
00:25I also think that this migration debate here in Germany
00:28is really bad, because it frightens millions of people.
00:32We must never forget that in Germany 21 million people live with a migration history.
00:37And they feel attacked right now.
00:39And also very massively attacked,
00:41when such a chancellor candidate Friedrich Merz from the CDU proposes
00:45that people who have two state identities, if they become criminal,
00:49can be withdrawn to the German passport.
00:52There are really millions of people here who say,
00:54I am now only German second class, because my parents immigrated once.
00:59So I think we have to be careful that we don't divide society in such a way
01:02that in the end nothing works anymore.
01:03The proposals of Mr. Merz and other parties,
01:05also the SPD, for example, also the Greens,
01:07are drawn to withdraw more people to the borders,
01:11who want to enter Germany, always with the argument,
01:14they were already in safe third countries.
01:18You see it completely differently. You all want to let them in.
01:21So it's not me who sees it differently.
01:22The European law sees it differently.
01:24According to European law, of course, they are allowed to come here,
01:27because in Germany it is decided whether their asylum process takes place here
01:31or in the country from which they immigrated.
01:33There are often court judgments in Germany, where you say,
01:35no, you can't push them back to Greece, for example, there are court judgments,
01:39because they don't have a fair asylum process there.
01:41So in this respect, what Friedrich Merz proposes is illegal.
01:45We as the left are the defenders of the German asylum system.
01:48And there is an asylum law, and you can't just sweep it away,
01:51because you think you'll get another 0.5% more with it at the election.
01:54After the latest attack in Aschaffenburg, where two people were killed,
02:00apparently by a Syrian asylum seeker.
02:05And yet you say that criminals should not be pushed back either. Why?
02:11No, first to Aschaffenburg. I don't think that's an asylum issue.
02:15There was a mentally ill rapist.
02:17He was known to be mentally ill and a rapist.
02:21And that's a really difficult question.
02:22How do we want to deal with mentally ill rapists here in Germany?
02:26No matter if they only have a migration background,
02:29or if they are as white and German as I am.
02:31That's always a problem, because somewhere is the limit,
02:33where you say you have to admit them to closed psychiatry.
02:36But you can't do it too early and too easily.
02:38So that's a question that has nothing to do with asylum.
02:41But if you demand that no criminals be pushed back,
02:45I don't think that's possible. That's a double punishment.
02:47In every social group there are rapists.
02:52And if I, as a German-German, know how I am,
02:55commit a crime of violence, I go to jail for three years.
02:57And when I come out again, the punishment is abuse.
03:00Why should someone with a migration background be pushed back afterwards?
03:04That's a double punishment.
03:05The German Constitution does not provide for such a double punishment.
03:09And that's why I'm against deportation.
03:10It always sounds so easy, but double punishment is not right.