A German small town Thursday sent a bus with 31 Syrian refugees on a road trip to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s office in protest against her liberal migrant policy.
The Bavarian district chief behind the journey to Berlin, Peter Dreier, said his rural area was buckling under the strain of a mass influx that brought 1.1 million migrants to Germany last year.
Local citizens had told him “it’s time we set a limit,” he said. “We are trying to help these people integrate. But that won’t work if this year we face another wave of one million, or even more.”
Calling the trip “an act of desperation,” he said he had warned Merkel about his plans in a phone call last October, and had announced it to her office on Wednesday.