Sigmar Gabriel, the head of Germany’s center-left Social Democratic Party, is calling for tougher integration policies in his country.
In an interview with Spiegel Online on Monday, he said that immigrants who refuse to participate in programs offered by the government to help foreigners integrate are as unwelcome as hate preachers who have found homes in some of the country’s mosques and receive their funding from abroad.
The SPD leader’s comments attracted criticism from the Green Party. Veteran Green politician Volker Beck described his words as the “beating of the drum against immigrants with cheap populist politics.”