A German police checkpoint at the border with Poland to prevent irregular immigration. FABRIZIO BENSCH (Portal)
Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced in the fall that Germany must begin “on a large scale” deporting asylum seekers whose applications have been rejected, i.e. people who continue to stay in the country despite lacking authorization. A good two months later, the Bundestag passed the law this Thursday that puts it into practice. Anyone who continues to find themselves in an irregular situation can be deported more quickly in Germany as the procedure is simplified and stricter rules come into force.
The coalition government made up of Social Democrats, Greens and Liberals is reacting to the steady increase in the number of asylum seekers, to Germans' concerns about irregular immigration in surveys and to the demands of local authorities who have been protesting for months against the overload and the shortage of resources available to them Medium. The decision is also not unconnected with the growing popularity of the right-wing extremist party Alternative for Germany (AfD), which managed to place itself in second place in voting intentions with a strong anti-immigration speech.
The developments are striking, but their actual impact on the number of deportations appears to be limited and does not correspond to the “large scale” announced by the Chancellor, as recognized in the bill itself. The duration of preventive detention is increased from 10 to 28 days; As before, the authorities will no longer announce any returns – except for families with children under 12 – and the police can search apartments or rooms in immigrant accommodation for people with a deportation order. or documents that can prove your identity and nationality. Agents can also pick you up at night if the flight is scheduled early in the morning.
The aim is to reduce the failure rate for planned repatriations that has been recorded in recent years. About two-thirds are never produced. In 2023, 31,770 returns could not be carried out for various reasons: cancellation of deportation flights, impossibility of finding or identifying those affected, refusal of the destination country to accept them or for medical reasons.
The so-called Repatriation Improvement Law aims to simplify the process so that people who are truly entitled to protection can benefit from public funds, said Interior Minister Nancy Faeser during the vote in Parliament. “Anyone who does not have the right to remain in Germany must leave the country,” he said. The new law, with its “clear rules,” will “effectively prevent escapes and prevent deportations,” the Social Democrat added. Faeser assured that expulsions increased by 27% last year compared to 2022, but the number is still insufficient.
The CDU votes against it
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The law was approved with the votes of almost all MPs from the coalition parties. The Christian Democratic opposition of the CDU and its Bavarian sister party CSU, as well as the far-right AfD, voted against it because they believe the law does not go far enough. Some Green MPs also did not vote for it, but for the opposite reason: for them, the tightening of immigration policy went too far. The standard was the subject of intense discussion at the recent Environment Party conference, with many members sharing the concerns of human rights organizations.
According to the Interior Ministry, around 242,642 people had to leave the country at the end of December because their asylum applications were rejected. But in fact only a small proportion are actually at risk of expulsion because the majority enjoy a so-called “tolerance status”. These are people who cannot be deported because they do not have an ID, are sick, are taking part in vocational training or have a minor child who has a residence permit. In total, the bill itself estimates around 600 additional returns per year that will be made possible by the new measures.
The shift in the federal government's immigration policy comes just a week after it was revealed that the AfD had secretly met with neo-Nazis to discuss a massive deportation plan that goes far beyond rejected asylum seekers and also aims to expel citizens with German citizenship to exclude passports from the country that are not considered “well integrated”. The news, revealed by research portal Correctiv, sparked a protest movement in cities across the country, with daily demonstrations against the far right and for democracy.
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