Invade, take selfie with Mama Merkel, go on welfare, grope, rape ...
A senior figure in German Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative party has proposed setting up "border centres" along the frontier with Austria to speed up the repatriation of those asylum seekers deemed unqualified to stay.
Julia Kloeckner, leader of Merkel's Christian Democrats in the western state of Rhineland-Palatinate, said she thought the chancellor's push for a European solution to a large influx of asylum seekers into Europe was still the right decision, adding that her proposal was meant to "complement it".
"On the German-Austrian border, border centres will be set up," Kloeckner wrote in the paper, a copy of which Reuters obtained. It has been endorsed by the Christian Democrats' (CDU) secretary-general.
The proposal highlights the frustration in Merkel's party with the slow progress in achieving a European Union-wide solution to the refugee crisis, which is straining the infrastructure of many German municipalities.
Germany attracted 1.1 million asylum seekers last year, leading to calls from across the political spectrum for a change in its handling of the number of refugees coming to Europe to escape war and poverty in Syria, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
Growing concern about Germany's ability to cope with the influx and worries about crime and security after assaults on women at New Year in Cologne are weighing on support for the CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU).
An Emnid poll for the newspaper Bild am Sonntag showed support for the CDU/CSU bloc down 2 percentage points at 36 percent from last week. The right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) gained 1 point to 10 percent. Merkel's coalition partners, the Social Democrats (SPD), gained a point to 25 percent.
RESISTING PRESSURE
Merkel, despite appearing increasingly isolated over her open-door policy on refugees, has resisted pressure from some conservatives to cap the influx, or to close Germany's borders.
Instead, she has tried to convince other European countries to take in quotas of refugees, pushed for reception centres to be built on Europe's external borders, and led an EU campaign to convince Turkey to keep refugees from entering the bloc. But progress has been slow. ...
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