German Border Fence Essential To Curb Refugee Crisis, Insists Police Union

As Donald Trump stirs up campaign controversy for his own proposals to lock out immigrants, German authorities are receiving ideas to construct a border fence that would limit the amount of refugees entering the country.

Suggestions to create a border-length fence on the southern part of Germany that borders Austria are now being pushed by the German Police Union (DPolG). The organization’s national chairman, Rainer Wendt, has stated in Sunday morning’s edition of Die Welt that there is no other way to confront the immigration crisis. A fence must be built along the German border, he said, and then other countries to the south must follow suit in order to help contain the waves of immigrants.

“If we want to carry out serious border controls, we have to build a fence along the border with Germany. If we close our borders in this way, Austria will also close the border with Slovenia. That’s exactly the effect we need… Our internal organization is in danger we are facing social unrest. Someone now has to pull the emergency brake – and that person can only be Angela Merkel.”

Massive amounts of refugees have caused German citizens from across the board to offer possible solutions. This year, the government is estimating between 800,000 and one million refugees have crossed its border, reported n-1. Apart from the German border fence proposal, others closer to Merkel have also interjected possible solutions to the growing number of immigrants coming into Germany.

The Junge Union of Germany, a youth organization composed of Merkel’s own Christian Democratic Union and the conservative Christian Social Union in Bavaria, also called for the German police to be able to use force to stall immigrant entry. Though Chairman Chef Ziemiak did not specifically state that a border fence was the appropriate tool to secure Germany, he did say that the country was quickly reaching its saturation point when it came to dealing with the large number of immigrants.

“We will have no choice but to set an upper limit. We need a plan for 2016/2017, how to limit immigration. I do not know anyone who says this can continue in the long term, [especially when] the numbers may even rise… We need a discussion where the boundaries are.”

Still, Ziemiak made a point to note that his group stood with Merkel despite everything. While the German Chancellor hasn’t made any indication that she’ll be cracking down on immigration with a border fence, she did make another highly-watched move this weekend when she met with Turkish prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

Merkel told Davutoglu that she would be willing to catalyze a Turkish entry into the European Union, a move that she has fiercely opposed in the past. For this favor, Merkel would expect Turkey to assist heavily in keeping Syrian refugees from passing through Turkey into the rest of Europe, a move that might be able to prevent an infrastructure investment like a border fence. Though technicalities of the plan have not yet been entirely ironed out, New York Times reported that $3.4 million would be given to the country in order to “deal with” the approximately 2.2 million refugees currently living there. Davutoglu seemed to indicate that he would be inclined to accept these new conditions.

“Our priority is to prevent illegal immigration and reduce the number of people crossing our borders. In that respect, we have had very fruitful discussions with the E.U.”

While a German border fence would escalate the crackdown, it would only be one of many measures taken to divert the path many migrants use to reach northern Europe. Hungary recently attracted criticism for closing off its border to Croatia with an 186-mile razor wire fence, reported DW.

[Photo by Adam Berry/Getty Image]