BREAKING: New Merz government orders the pushback of all illegal migrants at the German borders, effectively abolishes asylum as a path into Germany

Refugees at the Westbahnhof in Vienna, 5 September 2015. What Merkel unleashed then, might finally be drawing to a close

From BILD:

From today, ALL migrants will be prevented from crossing Germany’s land borders illegally – even if they claim asylum. Federal Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt (54, CSU) has given the order …

At midday, Dobrindt gave instructions to the Federal Police to tighten border controls and increase pushbacks in the event of illegal entry …

Dobrindt has also revoked a verbal instruction to the Federal Police issued by former Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière (71, CDU) in 2015. According to this order … “Third-country nationals without documents legitimising residence and with a request for asylum must be allowed entry.”

Dobrindt has put a stop to this.

For ten years, anybody at all could enter Germany. All he had to do was claim asylum at our borders, and if he was smart, he would also make himself almost impossible to deport by destroying his identification documents. Migrants could do this even though none of them had any right to asylum in Germany. Asylum, after all, has to be claimed in the first EU country asylees reach. Merkel set aside this so-called “Dublin rule” in 2015, to reduce pressure on EU border states like Greece and Italy, but her act opened the generous German social welfare state to the entire developing world, serving only to pull more migrants into Europe generally.

As BILD notes, these policies have been in place for 3,533 days. Probably more than 3 million migrants – the vast majority of them would-be asylees – have come to the Federal Republic on the strength of them. Our politicians told us for years that nothing could be done about this, and now Dobrindt has done something. He has done something really big.

Legally, neighbouring countries are required to accept push-backs without question, and if Germany is consistent with push-backs, the sheer number of rejected migrants will compel our neighbours to enact their own push-backs as well. A domino effect will take root, which will end with the restoration of security at the external borders of the EU. This could be the end of an era – one of the stupidest, most pointless and self-destructive eras in modern European history.

That’s far from guaranteed, of course. This move will anger our neighbours; Austria has already voiced sharp dissent, but for the moment our leaders remain determined. Parliamentary group leader Jens Spahn (CDU) has said the push-backs will happen even over the objections of bordering countries. We must hope they stay resolute – also in the face of the press attacks and the activist protests that are to come, to say nothing of the legal challenges.

If the establishment are smart, however, they’ll accept Dobrindt’s policy change with nothing beyond some perfunctory nostrums about the universal sanctity of human rights. The Union parties, after all, are not doing this out of a newfound love for border security. They’re desperate to stop the bleeding of their own support to Alternative für Deutschland. This is, in its own way, a direct attack on the AfD – and a far more serious one than any new spy agency classification.