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EUROPE-MIGRANTS-GERMANY
Three years on, many migrants lost in German bureaucratic web
BERLIN, Sept 4, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Three years after Zaid al-Ahmad fled from
war in Iraq, the 23-year-old is still struggling to get out of a bureaucratic
web in Berlin.
Ahmad was among hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers who have sought
refuge in Germany since Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision on September 4,
2015 to keep the country’s borders open to people fleeing war and misery.
Overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of new arrivals that reached over a
million in three years, Germany’s refugee agency and legal system is running
a massive backlog on asylum applications and appeals.
As a result, many migrants have found themselves still in a limbo years
after they arrived, uncertain if they will be allowed to stay.
“I’ve been waiting, but nothing’s coming,” he told AFP.
Ahmad’s initial asylum application was rejected in December 2016 by the
Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF).
But he promptly filed an appeal in January 2017. Since then, he has been
waiting for Berlin’s courts to decide.
– Legal backlog –
Like the BAMF, the courts are overloaded.
Some appeals are similar to Ahmad’s, while others are seeking to extend
their residency permits. In the most urgent cases, plaintiffs are seeking to
obtain stays for deportation orders.
Critics blame mistakes or sloppy decisions made at the BAMF for the legal
jam.
“They hired these people who are not qualified” to deal with the delicate
mission of determining people’s future, said Greens MP Filiz Polat.
As a result, more than one in two BAMF decisions ended up in a legal appeal
in the first half of 2018.
At the end of 2017, 372,000 appeals were awaiting examination by the
courts, four times more than in 2016, the government said.
In Berlin, “more than two-thirds of the cases have not yet been dealt with
by the administrative court for asylum law,” the court said.
Amid the legal entanglements, migrants like Ahmad are left living in
uncertainty.
“It’s stressful. I can’t live peacefully,” he told AFP.
– Dire consequences –
Migrants are granted temporary residency in Germany pending the final
verdicts.
But Ahmad said these permits are for brief stays of three or six months.
Such short permits mean he is effectively locked out of the rental market
as landlords want to see permits of at least a year.
For the last two years, Ahmad has shared a room of less than 20 square
metres (200 square feet) with two other refugees in a shelter. Their shared
kitchen is upstairs and with communal living comes annoyances of “cigarette
issues, promiscuity and noise”.
Meanwhile, a bureaucratic delay elsewhere resulted in a failed Iraqi asylum
seeker remaining in eastern Germany, where he allegedly stabbed a man to
death in Chemnitz. The killing sparked xenophobic demonstrations.
The suspect should have been deported to Bulgaria — his first port of call
in the European Union — but the administration failed to carry out the
expulsion in time, according to Interior Minister Horst Seehofer.
Having missed the legal deadline, authorities had to reexamine his dossier
from scratch.
Ahmad, a keen football fan whose mop of curls is reminiscent of Egyptian
player Mohamed Salah’s, dreams of signing up for training in nursing — a
sector in which an ageing Germany has a chronic staff shortage.
While waiting for the court decision, he is trying to obtain qualifications
that would allow him to get an apprenticeship in the sector.
To make ends meet, he works in the evenings, making cappuccinos in a snack
bar.
Data suggest that some headway has been made in getting newcomers into the
workforce.
Some 290,000 refugees who arrived since 2015 have already found work,
according to the employment agency.
The proportion of migrants still dependent on state aid has decreased by 36
percent between 2016 and 2017, it said.
And despite the long wait, Ahmad is determined to make it work in Germany.
“When I arrived in Germany, I didn’t have an idea what I should expect.
What counted for me was to flee Iraq,” Ahmad said.
“Now I know that my future is here.”
BSS/AFP/MRI/2213 HRS