Migration and asylum are becoming issues of capital political importance in Germany. The Government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz wants to accelerate the deportations of foreigners without the right to reside in the country – many of them asylum seekers with their applications denied –, which are often stuck. The Executive of Social Democrats, Greens and Liberals yesterday approved a bill to expedite deportation procedures to the country of origin, which would affect 54,330 people. “To protect the fundamental right to asylum, we must significantly limit irregular migration,” the Minister of the Interior, Social Democrat Nancy Faeser, defended at a press conference.
According to the federal government, at the end of June there were 279,098 foreigners obliged to leave the country, but for various reasons 224,768 of them are allowed to continue here – the so-called Duldung, translatable as ‘tolerated stay’ – so those obliged to leaving immediately are the aforementioned 54,330. Of these, only 19,464 are rejected asylum seekers. Many others are people whose visa or residence permit has expired.
The tolerated stay is allowed if the person has completed qualified vocational training, has a minor child with a residence permit, or suffers from an illness that could be aggravated by leaving. But it can also be granted for lack of a passport, and the immigration authorities of the länder can suspend a deportation for up to three months for humanitarian or international law reasons.
Be that as it may, the deportations are not occurring at the pace that the Government would like, now that the political climate is becoming strained due to the immigration issue, increasingly raised by the conservative opposition, and a usual battlehorse of the extreme right. According to official figures, between January and June 7,861 people were returned to their countries of origin, more than in the same period of the previous year (6,198). The most recent were to Austria – as people registered in that country as their first point of entry into the EU –, Georgia and North Macedonia. In the first half of the year, they went mainly to these two countries and Afghanistan. The trips are made by plane. “The number of returns this year is already 27% higher than the same period last year, but there is still a need for changes,” Faeser told reporters in Berlin.
Among the changes, the bill – pending parliamentary ratification – provides for extending the time of administrative detention from the current ten days to 28 days, to give the authorities more time to carry out the deportation procedures. The rule of informing the affected person a month in advance is eliminated, to prevent them from escaping, with the exception of families with children under 12 years of age.
When searching for people in shared accommodation, police officers will also be able to enter other rooms if they suspect that the person they are looking for is there. If the foreigner does not have a passport, they can access his mobile phone and open his locker to establish his identity and nationality. Legal requirements will also be simplified to expel those suspected of belonging to criminal organizations and human traffickers.
But, says the Executive, the collaboration of the countries of origin is required, which Germany tries to win by offering in exchange to facilitate qualified legal migration. Scholz negotiates agreements with Georgia, Moldova, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kenya.
The conservative opposition applauded the draft, although calling it small, and the far-right AfD accused the Government of copying its agenda of issues. The plan to expedite repatriations, which already appeared in the coalition contract of the three ruling parties signed in 2021, coincides in time with an increase in migrant arrivals across the borders with Poland, the Czech Republic and Switzerland, which has led the Government to install controls. According to the federal police, between January and August 70,753 foreigners entered Germany illegally.
