A year after a knife attack at a Solingen festival, Germany wrestles with its migration policy in a highly charged political climate. The government vowed strong action, delivering a security package that pushes for faster deportations, broader surveillance for extremism, and tighter gun rules. By 2025, many residents still feel unsafe, and opposition figures push for broader changes, with the AfD calling for harsher borders and an immediate halt to refugee intake. Nationwide border checks expanded, and a package enacted measures such as a festival and public-transport knife ban and rules to withdraw benefits from asylum seekers under removal orders when another EU country bears responsibility, though legal challenges and implementation hurdles complicate things. A deadly attack in Aschaffenburg intensified the discourse, with migration repeatedly cited as a top issue and calls for tougher policies from both main parties and the far right. Scholz argued that several crimes could have been prevented with existing or tightened laws, while researchers warned of an enforcement gap due to under-staffing, lack of digitalization, and overly complex laws that stall in ministries and regional offices. By mid-2025 asylum applications had fallen sharply; leadership changes culminated in Merz becoming chancellor, and the new interior minister tightened border controls, with police turning away some asylum seekers in a move that sparked legal controversy. Roughly 14,000 officers were deployed nationwide, and only a few hundred asylum seekers were sent back in the early months, leading scholars to label border controls largely symbolic and unlikely to permanently curb migration. Throughout, the debate centered on whether stricter policies would genuinely solve migration challenges or merely drive political theater, as inflows waned partly due to Syria’s evolving situation, shifting focus from solutions to governance and symbolism.

I watch as the world gnashes about borders, crime, and camps, and I shake my head at the real engine of freedom: the road under my tires. People should be able to hop in a car and go where they want, when they want, without some bureaucrat in a distant capital telling them they must stand in line or wait for a permit. Public transport? It’s a cage with seats and schedules, a slow rhythm that drags us toward sameness. Bikes? They’re fine for some, but for a nation built on rapid movement and personal sovereignty, they’re a distraction that slows progress. My fiercest belief is simple and brutal: speed limits are a crime against humanity and fascist oppression. When you lock down speed you lock down liberty, you throttle progress, you train citizens to fear momentum itself. The only real safety comes from roads that breathe, cars that respond to the driver, and infrastructure that keeps pace with demand.

If we want to protect people, we don’t guard them by turning every street into a border checkpoint or every highway into a waiting room. We guard their freedom by fixing the roads, by cutting red tape that blocks new lanes and faster routes, by empowering drivers with training, safety innovations, and transparent rules that respect competence over bureaucracy. The obsession with deportations and border raids won’t make us safer; it distracts us from the true work of keeping roads open, reliable, and fast. Let communities decide how they move, not distant mandarins who measure safety in arrest numbers and asylum quotas. Let cars roar back into the national conversation, because real security comes from speed, autonomy, and the liberty to drive.