Lord Mayor Frank Klingebiel already wrote to the Minister of the Interior Daniela Behrens on 21.08.2024 and urgently requested the suspension of a further allocation, or at least an extension of the allocation limit of 200 people/year for the city of Salzgitter.

This renewed request by the Lord Mayor is based on the continuing dramatic situation, particularly in the daycare and school sector, which is still unique in the country in its severity. The minister has not yet made a decision. The circular issued by the Lower Saxony Ministry of the Interior on October 7, 2024 has not yet determined the individual allocation figures for the individual cities and districts.
Salzgitter's urban society is diverse, with different nationalities having always lived peacefully side by side here. And it is in keeping with the dictates of humanity to grant refugees protection and integrate them into society. However, integration must be affordable for the host municipalities. Currently, the city of Salzgitter has reached the limit of its "infrastructure", especially in daycare centers and schools.

Xenophobia finds anchor points where people have the feeling that successful integration can no longer succeed simply because the system is overstretched. Mayor Klingebiel was one of the first local government officials to repeatedly denounce this almost unmanageable challenge to the federal government and the state of Lower Saxony.
In order to counter the consequences of taking in over 6,000 refugees in Salzgitter from 2015 onwards, he succeeded in 2017, with the support of members of the state parliament Stefan Klein and Markus Bosse, in obtaining a freeze on the allocation of refugees from the state of Lower Saxony. At the time, this urgently needed government regulation measure was unique in Germany.

After the state of Lower Saxony lifted this urgent reprieve, Mayor Klingebiel secured an agreement for the city of Salzgitter with the Ministry of the Interior and Sport to limit the number of refugees transferred to Salzgitter to a maximum of 200 in the period from October 1, 2023 to September 30, 2024, while also stipulating a number of qualitative characteristics. For example, as far as possible, mainly people with placement opportunities on the labor market, but no children or families, should be assigned.
Despite these restrictions, efforts to integrate people into society and the labor market are reaching their de facto impossibility. The social and education systems in particular are persistently overstretched, which is why Mayor Klingebiel is currently continuing to lobby the state of Lower Saxony to suspend or at least further limit the allocation of refugees to Salzgitter.

Irrespective of this, the city administration will do everything in its power to expand the "infrastructure" that is already needed. Reference is made to the implementation of the €50 million in Salzgitter aid and the €36 million in integration funds. In addition, Mayor Klingebiel will continue to work hard to ensure that the federal and state governments reimburse all refugee-related costs to the municipalities on a permanent basis.