Was There Ever a German Migration, Immigration or Asylum Policy?

Well....no.

Folks will say that a structure existed in 2013, and had been in place since 1949 to handle migrants, immigrants or asylum seekers.  To that I agree....they had structure, some basic rules, a couple of lines in the Constitution, and dedicated people who ran a government program.  That part is true.

In the early 1990s, as the Wall came down and there was no real border structure left in Europe....they even went and constructed the Dublin Convention which laid out basic rules on how asylum seekers would be prevented from shopping around.

The EU in this business?  Well...they had literally hundreds of issues that they were working upon and this was not in their top 500 issues (from the 1990s to today).  You can bring this up an ask why.  My guess is that they'd respond that the the 28 nations had a particular view which didn't agree with the EU representation, and I think they were afraid to 'cross the line'.

You can spend hours discussing the landscape, and come to three basic areas which are unresolved.

First, with the Dublin Regulation....once you arrive in Greece or Italy (or wherever), that's the place where you should do your asylum paperwork, and immigrate into.  You can't just wander in, and use a menu-system to pick a country.  Or if you did want to pick a country.....you could easily do that from your homeland, by walking into the German embassy...filling out the fifteen-page application....show an ID, and present a good case for immigration.  None of the asylum seekers want option A or option B. 

Second, once you fail a visa application....there's a set path for you to exit Germany.  Most migrants and asylum seekers didn't arrive with a plan 'B' idea in their heads.  So when this paperwork comes back.....they really don't want to go back home (especially if they've been in Germany for twelve months).  Yet, the federal government of Germany and probably half of the German states....have shown little concern for this problem.  In the past four months, with the new coalition team, the Interior Minister was hyped up to finally settle this exit-problem.  In an amusing way, he is mostly blocked off by Chancellor Merkel, part of the CDU folks, and the SPD Party.  The public views this 'children's party' in an amusing way. 

Third and final....the end-all solution to all migration problems, if you go and listen to the Chancellor.....is for the EU to fix it.  By that, she wants the EU to order various countries or member-states....to be just like Germany.  Oddly, it just doesn't sell well to other European countries. 

So I look back at the summer of 2017, when you could have come up and talked about ideas within the election campaign period, and absolutely no one (particularly the moderators or journalists) wanted to make this a top-three issue.  They all pretended that things would just continue....with no real policy.  Here we are today.....a government continually inventing 'escape-routes', because of the intent to avoid the issue.