Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel wants to "drastically decrease" the number of refugees coming to their country.
"At the same time we took on board the concerns of the people, who are worried about the future, and this means we want to reduce, we want to drastically decrease the number of people coming to us," Merkel told broadcaster ARD according to The Guardian.
Germany's chancellor is considered as one of the most powerful woman in the world, but her popularity in her homeland has "seriously eroded" according to a report by Los Angeles Times. Fears of refugees controlling the country and government losing ground on borders have tainted her leadership.
Named as Time magazine's person of the year, Merkel faces opposition from her own allies. Thomas de Maiziere, interior minister, and Wolfgang Schaeuble, finance minister, criticized her plans to allow refugees' families to follow them in Germany at a later date. This policy could triple the numbers of refugees.
"If she hasn't got the refugee crisis under control by then and the CDU is weak, it's going to be a different and far more difficult situation for her," Richard Stoess, a political scientist at Berlin's Free University, said.
With Angela Merkel's open-door policy, police authorities estimated that there are around 200,000 to 300,000 "undocumented and unregistered" refugees in Germany.
"It's not acceptable that people are coming uncontrolled across Germany's borders. A country has to be able to keep control of its borders. Politically, we've given that up far too easily. That's not anyone's idea of national security," Armin Schuster, member of Parliament for the Christian Democrats, said.
DW reported that in a survey, two-thirds of Germans want an "upper limit" for the number of refugees entering Germany and across the 3,757 kilometers of its borders.
But still, Angela Merkel argued that setting a limit in the number of refugees going to Germany ignores the "dynamics of refugee movements."
