Sold to fools? – Kickl: “We have achieved nothing since Merkel”

He seems relaxed despite the intense election campaign. FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl drums up his favorite topic of asylum in the krone.tv “Summer Talk” (video interview above), as the topic dominates public debate again after the attack in Solingen.

crown.tv: They put up posters that said, “Thy will be done.” What is the will of the Austrians?
Herbert Kickl: This country needs a change of orientation. In recent years, many decisions have been made over the heads of the population. In 2015, 2016 or in the Corona years and now with climate communism, there was and is always a problem: a self-appointed political elite prescribes something to the people without anyone asking for it. This is exactly what the poster is referring to. We want a focus on the population.

Asylum, migration and radicalization are hot topics again. Asylum seekers have access to the labor market, but this has not solved the shortage of skilled workers…
If we want to solve the labor shortage through the “new migration of peoples”, then we are on the wrong track. When the so-called refugee crisis broke out in 2015, we were told that this would solve the shortage of skilled workers. And the second thing they told us is that these great workers will guarantee our social security with the contributions they pay into the social system. Now we see from the example of this Syrian family that exactly the opposite is the case: they are plundering our social security instead of filling it. The truth is: since German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in 2015: “We can do it”, we have not really achieved anything. Unless we want to abolish ourselves. If that was intentional, then it has succeeded. That is why a course correction is needed.

Speaking of course correction: The “Krone” has calculated that your deportation record as Minister of the Interior is as good as that of Minister of the Interior Gerhard Karner. You arranged 33 deportations a day. So you have not dealt with the migration problem much better…
I compare it to a ship that is leaking. At the end of 2017, I took over such a ship. A large number of people came through the enormous hole. The very first measure that a Minister of the Interior must take is to close this hole. And that is exactly what I did. Look at the numbers of new asylum applications: in my time they were the lowest. In my best year, I had less than 13,000 asylum applications. But then I did not say: “Wow, that’s great.” Instead, my goal was to have a quota of zero.

The chancellor calls for more deportations in the “Krone” interview. The ÖVP and FPÖ should meet on the content…
We submitted a motion in parliament that deportations should take place to Afghanistan and Syria. Neither party went along with it. That is why the credibility of the ÖVP is literally at the mercy of the devil. I will give you another example: in 2016, the SPÖ-ÖVP introduced an upper limit. At that time, it was said that if you exceeded this upper limit, Austria would no longer accept asylum applications. The ÖVP has always stood above this limit, which it set itself, and has not taken any of the promised measures. To say before the elections, after all those years of empty promises: ‘But now, when I am finally chancellor, I would do something.’ You want to fool the population.