Chancellor Angela Merkel has criticized Germany's lack of progress in deporting migrants who have had their claim to stay in the country turned down. She said it was necessary to reassure voters about immigration policy.
Speaking at a meeting of the youth wing of Merkel's Christian Democrat (CDU), the chancellor said deportations had to happen more quickly to show the electorate that concerns over migration were being taken seriously. Merkel, who has been criticized for her open-door policy for those seeking asylum, said Germany needed to step up deportations once asylum requests were denied, Deutsche Welle reported.
"We need a national effort to return those who have been rejected," Merkel stressed. "That is undisputed and we are working on that at the moment with great vigor."
When smaller numbers of asylum seekers arrived in the past, those refused the right to stay were not always deported rigorously. Given the high number of refugees and migrants, Merkel said, that situation now needed to change.
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