Germany's center-right opposition parties — who are leading in the polls — are toughening their attitude toward Ukrainian refugees, with a leading member of Bavaria's conservative Christian Social Union (CSU) now calling for them to be sent back to Ukraine if they don't find a job.

"More than two years after the start of the war, the principle must now apply: Take work in Germany or return to safe areas of western Ukraine," the CSU's parliamentary leader Alexander Dobrindt told the tabloid Bild am Sonntag newspaper at the weekend.

Though the claim has been frequently debunked by migration researchers, Dobrindt repeated the argument that unemployment benefits — known as Bürgergeld, or citizens' income — were keeping Ukrainians from finding work. "We need stronger obligations to cooperate for asylum-seekers when it comes to taking up work," he said.

The German Foreign Ministry responded in a regular government press conference on Monday, saying there were no safe areas in Ukraine.

The argument for restricting the benefits of Ukrainian refugees in Germany was previously made by the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) — the CSU's non-Bavarian sister party in German politics — and last week by the smallest party in the Chancellor Olaf Scholz's center-left coalition, the neoliberal Free Democratic Party (FDP).

"Newly arrived war refugees from Ukraine should no longer receive a citizen's income, but should fall under the Asylum Seekers Benefits Act," FDP General Secretary Bijan Djir-Sarai told Bild last Monday. This, he suggested, would force more Ukrainians to find a job.

"We have a shortage of labor everywhere — in the restaurant and construction industries, for example, or in the care sector," Djir-Sarai added. "We should no longer be using taxpayers' money to finance unemployment, but instead we need to ensure that people get jobs."

Both Scholz's center-left Social Democrats (SPD) and his other coalition partner, the Green Party, have rejected........

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