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Comment by lyschoening | Hacker News Reader

Nationalist movements regularly combine widely accepted populist left-wing positions with xenophobic ideas (and proceed to disregard the left-wing ones once in power). I live in Denmark; the Danish People's Party here is also very left-wing on niche social issues and uses that to trick people into voting for them. Trump used this strategy so well that you had followers of Bernie Sanders switching allegiances to vote for him. And of course the original Nazi party adopted many socialist ideas in the beginning, stealing votes from the Social Democrats and Communists.

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Out of interest, how is a cap on immigration xenophobic?

Is the mere introduction of a cap xenophobic? Or is there some set limit on the cap you could have, below which you are xenophobic?

I know the answer is probably 'X type of people want this cap on immigration, therefore the cap on immigration is X-ist!', but just wanted to make sure.

Because it's proposed out of prejudice towards these immigrants, and not out of a rational argument. Germany has a demographic problem and needs these people.

Because the cap is arbitary. It says that no matter what kind of person someone is and whether they are a partner or relative of someone who is already a national or legal resident, they are not allowed residence.

It gets even worse if you apply an immigration cap to refugees and asylum seekers as well, at which point you're saying that the arbitary immigration cap is potentially more important than their survival.

The cap, for one, would involve closing the borders, so we're talking about a cap of around 0 of people seeking asylum. A cap on immigration violates human rights law. Children of migrants born in Germany would not get German citizenship under the AfD program. EU citizens would be excluded from the social benefits that German citizens receive in Germany and other EU countries. That would also be unconstitutional.

Of course, having positions that violate present law does not necessarily imply xenophobia, but it is quite telling that the AfD only wants refugees that are qualified workers and does not want to give foreign citizens the rights Germans have.

They are voted into the Bundestag, where they must represent what they signed off to represent. You can't just 180 from what you defined as your goals, or the Verfassungsschutz can fuck a party over. Honestly, read their Election program. They have many things in common with even the left parties, like SPD and Die Linke. They are for the minimum wage, they want to extend unemployment benefits to be combined with the amount someone has worked, so people that worked for long don't fall into bankruptcy just for being layed off and have to move. This will help immigrants as well, compared to parties like the FDP which are against a minimum wage for all without limiting rules.

I don't think a hardcap on legal immigrants combined with a border partrol to stop illegal ones is Xenophobic. The argument is founded, as Bavaria's social system collapsed for couple of months last year when the big immigration wave came. I'm aginst a border patrol and hard cap, but the AFD is in no way Xenophobic for wanting it the other way.

> You can't just 180 from what you defined as your goals

Of course you can. You're working off the bizarre assumption that a party manifesto is binding in any way whatsoever.

One of the most famous instances is in 2005, when the SPD went into the election with "no sales tax increases", and CDU advocated for "2% sales tax increase". In the end, they formed a coalition, and arrived at the compromise of 3% increase.

There is absolutely nothing legally binding about a Wahlprogramm. Our constitution is quite clear on that, Art. 38 Abs. 1:

Members of the German Bundestag shall be elected in general, direct, free, equal and secret elections. They shall be representatives of the whole people, not bound by orders or instructions, and responsible only to their conscience.

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