SPD Mayor of Fürth: “Citizens are afraid to go to the park”

Tagesspiegel SPD Mayor of Fürth: “Citizens are afraid to go to the park” Daniel Friedrich Sturm • 18 hours • 4 minutes reading time The Mayor of Fürth, Thomas Jung (SPD), is calling for stricter controls on immigration. He also believes that family reunification must be linked to housing and proof of income. Mr Mayor, what are you and your city's main concerns in terms of migration policy? We urgently need workers, think of nursing or retail, for example. We are dependent on the influx of capable, hard-working workers from abroad. There are overwhelmingly great success stories in this area. We also need to take the concerns of many people about security in Germany seriously and do something about it. My hometown of Fürth has been the safest city in Germany for 20 years. But here too, many people are afraid of violence, something I have never experienced before. Is this fear justified? There has not been a knife attack in Fürth yet, as other cities have experienced. But the unprecedented series of brutal crimes across the country, from Solingen to Mannheim and Magdeburg to Aschaffenburg, has been burned into the consciousness of people across Germany. This terrible series has changed subjective consciousness. In our city, people were never afraid to visit the Christmas market. Citizens tell me that they are now afraid to go to the park or to the church fair. That is new. The state decides on immigration, not some gang of people smugglers. Thomas Jung, SPD, Mayor of Fürth What are your wishes for federal politics? The strong parties in the center, i.e. the SPD and the Union, must sit down together and decide on joint measures as quickly as possible and then implement them. We need a welcoming culture that allows good, hard-working and willing people to move to Germany. In addition, we must control who is allowed to come to Germany and stay. That is a core task of the state. The state decides on immigration, not some gang of people smugglers. Your SPD keeps saying that systematic control of the German border is not in line with the constitution and European law. Is that true? If we hide behind Europe, we are stirring up hostility towards Europe. Laws can be changed, yes, that is the job of politics. We changed the constitution several times, for example in 1993. Anyone who is honest will admit: the third country regulation and the Dublin Agreement do not work. That is not in line with European law! According to European law, no asylum seeker is actually allowed to apply for asylum in Germany. Should asylum seekers work? Work does no harm to anyone, neither the person who works nor society. There is a lot of work to be done. That is why I am in favor of asylum seekers being allowed and having to work. You are struggling with family reunification. Why? Family reunification is positive, it stabilizes, is Christian and humane. But family reunification should require that the family's livelihood is secured and that housing is available. At the moment it is like this: A person, usually a man, lives in Germany in a small room in a shared flat. Then many family members come with them. There is no living space and no income for them. They end up homeless. Family reunification, yes, but linked to proof of living space and income. Thomas Jung, SPD, Mayor of Fürth And then? Here they then go to a homeless shelter, where in the worst case scenario children grow up alongside drug addicts or alcoholics. That is deeply inhumane. We have a case of family reunification like this in Fürth almost every month. My social welfare office manager tells me: Our new homeless shelter - 100 places and construction costs of ten million euros - will be full by the end of the year. That is the systematic overburdening of a municipality. Therefore: family reunification, yes, but linked to proof of living space and income. Are the Ukrainian refugees right to receive citizen's allowance? No. That is a difficult question. But we often have women with children who do not have good language skills. In Fürth, only one in ten Ukrainians currently works. That is clearly too few. In Fürth, we have around 1,000 Ukrainians who are able to work but are not working, and around 1,000 vacancies. Of course, that does not fit together one-to-one. But the fact that 1,000 vacancies are available and 1,000 Ukrainians who are able to work are not working in one city is not sustainable in the long term. Who is supposed to understand that? Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) promised in 2023 that he wanted to "finally deport people on a large scale". The numbers are rising, but have already been much higher. What do you expect? Fortunately, the numbers are going up. A 70 percent increase during the traffic light period is already a success. But the federal and state governments must urgently take further action here.