Angela Merkel's About Face

Guess who said this?

It can not be that all the young people from Afghanistan come to Germany.

If you guessed beleaguered German Chancellor Angela Merkel you would be right.

Now that Merkel wants to run for a fourth term as German Chancellor she is seeing more clearly. Her open-arms immigration policy has failed. It caused her political party to decline. Indirectly, it caused Great Britain to exit the European Union. As of yesterday, it looks like France’s next president will be an anti-immigrant center rightist, Francois Fillon. And, of course, the anti-immigrant candidate in the United States won the presidential election over the candidate who wanted to govern like Angela Merkel.

It took some time, but Merkel has finally come to her senses.

The London Express has the story:

The beleaguered Chancellor said authorities would significantly step up the rate of forced returns as she battles to arrest an alarming slump in her popularity which has fuelled a surge in support for the far-right.

Mrs Merkel, whose decision to roll out the red carpet to migrants from across Africa and the Middle East spectacularly backfired, has taken an increasingly tough tone on immigration in recent months.

And in her toughest rhetoric yet the German leader told MPs from her party this week: ”The most important thing in the coming months is repatriation, repatriation and once more, repatriation.”

The stance marks an astonishing U-turn from the once pro-refugee Chancellor, who has been widely pilloried by critics at home and abroad for her decision to throw open Germany’s borders to millions of migrants.

The article continues:

Speaking at a conference of conservative MPs in Neumünster yesterday evening the Chancellor revealed that she expects 100,000 migrants to leave Germany this year, of which a third will be forcibly removed.

And employing a tough new form of rhetoric, she warned local regions to deport all migrants whose asylum applications are rejected, using force if necessary.