It’s an odd thing to admit, but nowadays I don’t get many chances to speak German, despite the fact I live in Germany. Excluding the various admin tasks I have to do, my job is more or less wholly in English, given that my job is in fact to teach that particular language. If I speak any German at work, it’s with the colleagues of the various other language departments, or with the ladies in the canteen who are giving me a crash course in Swabian. At home I speak in some half considered German/English patois with my wife, slipping from German to English, almost sentence by sentence. With my children it’s firmly English, or rather Geordie, given that raising our kids with two languages is a responsibility that falls mainly on my shoulders, and I’m their only English speaking influence, or at least only human English speaking influence; I’m probably third in the pecking order behind Peppa Pig and Bluey.

Perhaps this is why I embrace even the most mundane conversation in German. If a workman comes to the house, I chew their ear off about what they're working on. When I’m in the supermarket, I gamely attempt small talk with the same expressionless cashier. I do believe they’re warming to me - last Friday they said “have a nice weekend”, which isn’t bad for three years of effort. By far the most German I speak is at the Kindergarten, with the teachers and with various parents I meet during morning drop-off and afternoon pick-up. I must come across as slightly odd, as I enthuse about upcoming parents’ evenings, or who will be volunteering to put the beer benches out for the Herbstfest. In all honesty, I care little for what they think. Having made so many embarrassing mistakes speaking German, I’m basically impervious to humiliation, and anyway, I’m only using them for their German.

It was during one of these Kindergarten chats earlier this week that I discovered some of the parents are rather envious of our family, and not just our family, but the many families at our nursery that speak more than one language. “I wish we could speak something other than German to the kids” one mother told me “I used to speak a lot of English, but I would never do that with the children”. Another exclaimed how “wonderful” it must be to have bilingual children, and what a gift it was to be able to share a different culture, while one dad wondered if our daughter shouted in English or in German when she was angry, and seemed delighted when I told him it depended very much on how angry she was.

This conversation about raising children in a bilingual household, though enjoyable, was an odd one given the current political climate in Germany. The positivity expressed by my fellow parents seems lost on Germany's politicians. Only this week, the coalition government decided to reestablish harsher border controls across the country, expanding those that already existed in the east. This in turn comes on the heels of far-right successes in the regional elections in Thuringia and Sachsen, which saw the rightwing AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) become the largest and second largest parties in both states respectively. These successes for the virulently anti-migrant party, coupled with two high profile Islamic terrorist attacks over the summer, has seen a noticeable tonal shift in the debate around migration to Germany.

In fairness, the national discussion in Germany was already fairly toxic. Like in the UK, the term “migrant” has been morphed very effectively by unsympathetic journalists, right-wing politicians, and social media into a catch-all term to include both legal and illegal migrants, as well as asylum seekers. This process has made the debate so binary, that listening to it should come with a health warning. Only last week, the host of one of Germany’s major political talk shows declared, with no evidence, that migrants were responsible for raising rental prices.

In the span of a decade, we’ve gone from the “we can do it” years of Angela Merkel and the 2015 migrant crisis, to closed borders and baseless accusations levelled at anyone with the temerity to not be German. In fairness, Germany isn’t alone in this new wave of migrant bashing - across Europe the same discussions are playing out. Whether rightly or wrongly, people are concerned about migration and its impact, and it would be a foolhardy politician that ignored these issues. A recent survey from public broadcaster ARD highlighted this when it reported that 77% of those asked wanted a change to the current asylum and refugee policies. Of course, what changes people wanted wasn’t mentioned, but I suppose such polls are for politicians to interpret.

Whether those questioned envisioned a left-leaning coalition government closing Germany’s borders is anyone’s guess, but perhaps to those concerned this looks like action. How effective it will be is debatable, though experts have suggested it may act as some form of deterrent. You would think with such drastic action, that those voices clamouring for action on migration would at least be pleased, but that’s not how these things work, or at least not in Germany.

One of the most vocal on the issue has been Merkel’s successor as head of the CDU (Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands), Fredrich Merz. Since the start of 2023, Merz has been deeply focused on migration, although seemingly with little useful to say. Over the last year, Merz has claimed that migrants were taking dentist places away from Germans, blamed Germany’s annual fireworks chaos at New Year’s Eve on migrants, specifically “little pashas”, and accusing Ukrainian refugees of "social tourism”. Despite backtracking on every single one of these statements, the comfort with which this disinformation was offered, in print, on TV, and in speeches says a lot about where the discussion is in 2024.

You would think, then, that Merz would be delighted with the government's decision. However, one of the important aspects of being in opposition, or at least this current opposition, is remembering to never agree with the government, even when they do what you want. No, the government hasn't gone far enough according to Merz, in fact what they should be doing is processing migrants at the border and refusing entry directly. It was for this reason that the CDU flounced out of discussions with the government about migrant policy this week, annoyed that their idea wasn’t being listened to. How the plan would work was not made clear, nor how long it would take and how much would need to be invested.

Police unions have already said they will struggle to do what the government is now asking. Having driven through a number of these checkpoints recently, I can see why. There’s clearly too few police officers to cover the current border checks, and there seems to be even fewer resources to support them. The kinds of checks envisioned by the CDU would surely require more than the ten officers I saw a few weeks ago, huddled under a cheap looking camping gazebo to avoid a torrential downpour. The only thing they seemed to be affecting was the traffic, as everything slowed to a crawl as we crossed from Austria back into Germany. Given the lack of investment, the police seemed to be relying on a tried and tested method of identifying potential illegal migrants, which is to say any person of colour who happened to be driving by was being pulled over and checked. Whether this is the great solution to voters' fears over migration, I couldn’t possibly say, but it certainly didn’t look like it.

With everything seemingly being done to appease the far-right AfD and their voters, one has to wonder if they themselves are at least a little pleased with the outcome. Well, actually we already know their feelings on the matter. As soon as the border checks were announced, something the AfD had advocated for, they suddenly seemed unhappy. Even Merz’s half baked ideas were inadequate. What the AfD are now calling for is an end to migration completely for five years. The lesson that seems to be forgotten, or perhaps never learned, is that you can’t appease the far-right, ever. If you pander to them in any way, they will drag the debate ever further to their side of the gutter, poisoning the well with ideas that will never work.

The ultimate problem of all of this is that it ignores the obvious issues. Germany’s population is getting older, there aren't enough young people to replace them, and if the pension system is to be maintained, migration in some form will have to continue. However, by demonising all migrants, this obvious truth has been lost entirely. Moreover, Germany has a massive lack of skilled workers across multiple fields. If we take Thuringia as an example, the state that saw fit to vote the AfD as the largest party in state elections, we see the problem with more clarity. In a state that already has too few doctors, 13% are migrants, and in an industry where moving on is quite common, it’s worth asking whether many medical specialists would want to stay following the election result. Hell, how many would even want to come in the first place?

As half baked as the current government's ideas might seem, they at least make slightly more sense than those being put forward by the CDU and the AfD. What’s more, they seem to be having an impact, not on migrant numbers, but on the polling numbers of the governing coalition's largest party, the SPD. With a week to go until the state election in Brandenburg, the SPD have risen by six points and within touching distance of the AfD, who have been leading polls for months. Surely this is the greatest success and clearly exactly what voters want, not a sensible solution, not even a particularly humane one, but something, anything to solve the never-ending problem of migration. Well, until we run out of doctors at least.

Proofreader: @ScandiTina

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