An IMGlobalWealth.news Report
The Alternative for Germany’s dramatic victory in Saxony-Anhalt has put its migration policies under sharper scrutiny. The AfD secured nearly 44% of the vote in Sunday’s state election, a historic result for the far-right party.
“AfD proposes selecting non-European workers through stricter criteria, including qualifications, language ability and existing employment, backed by a points system and sectoral quotas”
Yet its position on foreigners is more differentiated than a simple demand to close Germany’s borders.
The AfD’s 2025 federal programme draws a clear distinction between asylum and irregular migration, legal migration from outside Europe, and the free movement of EU citizens.
On asylum, the proposed shift is sweeping. The party wants Germany to regain control of its borders, reject illegal entrants, seek an opt-out from the EU’s common asylum system and have asylum and subsidiary-protection applications processed outside Germany. Its “remigration” programme includes deporting people required to leave, returning certain foreign criminals and ending protection where the grounds for it no longer exist. It also wants Germany to renounce the UN Global Compact for Migration and Global Compact on Refugees.
But the AfD does not propose ending legal non-EU immigration altogether. Its programme explicitly welcomes qualified foreign workers where they can contribute to Germany’s economy, citing shortages in healthcare, skilled trades, science and IT. It proposes selecting non-European workers through stricter criteria, including qualifications, language ability and existing employment, backed by a points system and sectoral quotas.
For EU citizens, the position is substantially different. The AfD’s programme explicitly states that its proposed border controls would leave existing EU free-movement rules “unaffected”. That means a Maltese, Italian, Polish or French citizen would continue, under the policy as written, to enjoy a fundamentally different position from a third-country asylum seeker.
There is, however, a significant caveat. The AfD proposes requiring foreign nationals to have worked in Germany in social-insurance employment for at least ten years, without supplementary welfare payments, before qualifying for Bürgergeld, with benefits then limited to one year.
Applying such restrictions to EU workers would encounter EU law, which generally requires workers from other member states to receive the same social and tax advantages as German workers.
The distinction is therefore important: the AfD is not proposing to treat EU citizens and irregular non-EU migrants alike. But its agenda would still represent a much more restrictive Germany, including for some Europeans.
