AfD state leader Holm backs targeted immigration for workers

Leif-Erik Holm, the AfD’s leader in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and its candidate for state premier, said the party would admit selected foreign workers who speak German.

“We can of course let them in,” Holm said during a livestreamed interview with Ostsee-Zeitung editor-in-chief Andreas Ebel. He pointed to tourism as an area where this approach was already working successfully.

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We can of course let them in.

Holm rejected the description of the AfD as hostile to foreigners. “It is simply not right that we are xenophobic,” he said, arguing instead for an orderly policy focused on Germany’s national interests. Bringing in skilled workers in measured numbers, he said, would not be a problem.

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It is simply not right that we are xenophobic.

He took a harder line on people entering Germany illegally and rejected asylum seekers whose deportations have not been carried out. Holm said deportations should be intensified, with a state-run departure center, detention facilities for removals and special police units. He said people who are due to be deported often go into hiding, preventing the removals.

The number of first-time asylum applications in Germany fell during the first half of the year. Information from the Federal Interior Ministry showed 39,646 applications in that period, compared with 61,336 in the first half of the previous year. The earlier figure was itself about half the total recorded in the first half of 2024, when roughly 121,000 first-time applications were filed.

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The most common reason why people are not deported today is that those who are supposed to be deported go into hiding.