Angela Merkel: Refugees Must Return Home Once the War Is Over

German Chancellor Angela Merkel appealed to conservative lawmakers on Saturday by insisting that most refugees from Syria and Iraq would go home once the conflicts there end.

The public divisions between Merkel and her conservative coalition partners have forced her administration to renegotiate immigration and asylum policy to avoid political rifts. 

Support for her conservative bloc has slipped as concerns mount about how Germany will integrate the 1.1 million migrants who arrived last year, which takes one of the highest numbers of asylum-seekers in the EU.

Meanwhile, the refugee crisis has played in the favor of the right-wing opposition party Alternative for Germany, or AFT, whose support is now in the double digits, and whose leader was quoted on Saturday saying that migrants entering illegally should, if necessary, be shot.

Related: Germany: New Year's Eve Attacks Spur Talk of Deportation

"We need ... to say to people that this is a temporary residential status and we expect that, once there is peace in Syria again, once IS has been defeated in Iraq, that you go back to your home country with the knowledge that you have gained," she told a regional meeting of her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.

Related: Angela Merkel Proposes Law to Make it Easier to Deport Migrants

According to the Migration Policy Institute Europe, Germany has recently implemented several important changes to its immigration and asylum policy such as delaying family reunifications for some refugees by up to two years, and making it harder for refugees to obtain permanent residency and to shorten temporary resident permits.

The recent modifications also include a shift from offering full and categorical refugee statuses based on nationality to case-by-case determinations

​During his speech on Saturday, Merkel also encouraged other European countries to provide assistance, ”because the numbers need to be reduced even further and must not start to rise again, especially in spring”.

WATCH: Merkel Praises Bolivian Growth and Achievements