A German opposition MP has called on chancellor Olaf Scholz to consider a temporary migration "pause."
Former health minister Jens Spahn was speaking as Berlin faces mounting pressure to reform its immigration policies.
Spahn has now called for a "several year pause in regular migration" saying that Scholz's targets for tackling migration were too weak.
In an interview with Bild, the CDU-party MP said the new target on the issue of illegal migration should be "zero."
Former health minister Jens Spahn has clashed with chancellor Olaf Scholz
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He said: "We have irregular migration in large numbers, above all of young men – 18 to 40-year-old men are the majority of those who come to us.
"There was once a goal of getting under 200,000 per year in the grand coalition. We succeeded in doing that too. Then, in 2000 and 2021, the numbers fell accordingly.
"But, you know, the goal of irregular migration must be zero. Also, it’s irregular, illegal, not legal.
"And the goal of things that are not lawful is, in my view, zero."
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In October 2023, data released by German police showed that 21,000 people entered Germany via "unauthorised entries", such as land border crossings, in the previous month. The government responded by imposing additional checks at land borders.
Spahn has said his targets would allow extra time for those already in the country time to learn German and integrate into society.
The migration levels have given the hard-right AfD party which has surged in polls over the last year to second place.
However, the party has slipped in the polls slightly recently, though it remains second on around 19 per cent, behind the opposition conservatives but well ahead of Chancellor Olaf Scholz's Social Democrats on 15 per cent.
AfD has 78 of 735 seats in Germany's parliament and leads polls in several poorer, post-industrial eastern states where its anti-establishment, anti-immigrant stance resonates.
It also opposes Germany's backing of Ukraine in the war with Russia. The centre-Right CDU party has clashed with the Scholz government over the latter's refusal so far to provide Ukraine with powerful Taurus missiles.
CDU leader Friedrich Merz accused Scholz of "playing into Putin’s hands" by having constant public arguments about sending Taurus missiles to Kyiv, which the chancellor has firmly ruled out.