Summary: CDU General Secretary Carsten Linnemann warns that 6.5 million people have come to Germany since 2015, but fewer than half are in work, calling that outcome unsatisfactory. He urges the government to stop illegal migration into social systems and to promote regular immigration into the labor market, establishing this as the guiding line for the coming years. Former Chancellor Angela Merkel says she’s surprised her hallmark phrase “We can do this” is still criticized, but she views the decision positively. She opened the borders in August 2015, admitting hundreds of thousands of refugees, and, in an interview, says it was a special decision she faced; fifteen years after the remark she asserts the process has achieved much and that what remains must continue.

This is a shitshow dressed up as policy, and it stinks of the same old theater: talk about “sobering numbers” while pretending the numbers don’t tell a story about who pays the bill and who carries the weight. Linnemann weaponizes a statistic about employment to push a political line that sounds reasonable but is really about more control, more guardrails, and more opportunities for business to hire cheap labor while pretending it’s all about humanitarian duty. Stop illegal migration into the social systems? Great framing—until you realize it’s a euphemism for stricter rules that squeeze the social safety net and treat newcomers as a problem to manage rather than people to integrate.

Merkel’s “We can do this” is a propaganda badge you can pin on a moment when the gates opened and the public was asked to swallow the abstract notion of “special decisions.” Now, fifteen years later, she lauds progress while insisting the work continues—as if the work isn’t exactly what created the pressure in the first place. The elites want to pretend this is about generosity and resilience; in reality it’s policy theater: a perpetual churn of arrivals, integration programs that are always “in progress,” and statistics that are used to justify the next round of political compromises.

If you’re looking for the real line, it isn’t “find more workers” or “save the social system.” It’s sovereignty, real and honest limits, transparent rules for entry, and true accountability for those who profit from open-door rhetoric while the public picks up the bill. The rest is just PR flourish, fear-mongering rebranded as humanitarianism, and a continuing gamble with the social fabric in service of whoever’s got the loudest microphone in the media.