Siegmund Wants to Bring Emigrants Back to Saxony-Anhalt

Ulrich Siegmund wants Saxony-Anhalt to look abroad for part of the answer to its labor shortage, but not only among migrants. The AfD candidate said the state could also draw back Germans who moved overseas and, in his words, are waiting “for the old country to be returned to them.”

The debate then turned sharply to migration. Siegmund pointed to several thousand people in Saxony-Anhalt who are required to leave Germany and argued that obstacles to deportation must be removed. He called for detention pending deportation and said the incentives for coming to Germany should be reduced. If those incentives fell, he argued, fewer deportations would be necessary. He described the issue as “a political decision.”

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for the old country to be returned to them

CDU lead candidate Sven Schulze directly challenged the AfD’s election platform. He said terms such as “culturally alien” were not defined and made it difficult to understand what the party wanted. Schulze also criticized the claim that doctors who do not speak German are less suitable than German-speaking doctors, calling it an attack on some of the doctors working in the state.

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a political decision

Schulze said the AfD was making clear that it did not want people who came from outside Germany. He noted that some doctors in Saxony-Anhalt do not hold German passports. Between 50 and 70 nationalities currently work at Magdeburg University Hospital, he said, and all are important to the health system.

On the economy, Siegmund proposed cutting bureaucracy and improving qualifications through schools, arguing that not everyone needed to attend university. He also called for different family policies to bring demographics under control. CDU representative Sven Schulze pointed to the sharp fall in refugee arrivals. About 1,000 refugees came to Saxony-Anhalt in the first half of 2026, the lowest figure since 2011, he said, while the state is also building a new deportation detention facility.

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culturally alien