The high approval ratings for the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party are partly due to what Bavarian conservative leader Markus Söder sees as insufficiently consistent deportations.
Söder, who is also premier of the southern state of Bavaria, said in the summer interview on public broadcaster ARD that while fewer people had been coming to Germany, "there are still very many here who have no right of residence."
Anyone without a residence permit must be returned to their country of origin. "We are doing this in Germany now very, very strongly," Söder said.
To combat the AfD, successful economic policy was also needed, he said. "And that is why it is so urgently necessary that many of the reforms now being tackled are also brought to completion - because they will ultimately make our country competitive again."
If car plants were closed, for example, "then the path of a person who no longer sees a future for themselves towards a radical decision becomes very easy indeed," the leader of the Bavaria-only Christian Social Union (CSU) party said, in an apparent reference to the announcement of many job cuts by the leading players in Germany's once mighty automotive industry.