SEEKING ASYLUM IN GERMANY

After serving just 18 months as head of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF), Jutta Cordt was fired on Friday by Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, after an internal review discovered that the agency’s branch in the city of Bremen had violated legal and internal regulations for the approval of asylum applications. In April, it was revealed that a …

Bavarian State Premier Markus Söder has unveiled new measures to speed up the asylum process and deport rejected applicants. He believes the rest of Germany should follow his lead. With Bavaria’s elections only a few months away, State Premier Markus Söder of the conservative Christian Social Union (CSU), is advocating a tougher stance on asylum-seekers. The CSU, which has traditionally dominated …

One in four migrants who arrived in Germany to seek refuge from wars and conflicts since 2015 has since found a job. According to figures from the research institute of the Federal Employment Agency, those from Pakistan have been the most successful. “If employment growth continues at this rate, half of the migrants will be employed within five years,” the …

Immigration offices in Germany do not have hardware they need to identify migrants, according to media reports. A lack of fingerprint scanners means authorities cannot keep track of asylum-seekers. Officials at immigration and welfare offices attempting to identify asylum-seekers face serious difficulty ensuring people are not taking advantage of German social services, according to reports in Die Welt and the …

Nearly every second deportation from Germany was cancelled in the first quarter of 2018, according to the German Federal Police. Some of the deportations are called off at the last minute. Charlotte Hauswedell reports. Between January and March this year, a total of 5,548 rejected asylum-seekers were deported from Germany, a spokesperson for the Federal Police told the Funke media …

The German Federal Office for Migration and Asylum (BAMF) will re-examine some 18,000 cases in which refugees were granted asylum in Germany, the agency’s director, Jutta Cordt, has announced. The inspection will cover all successful asylum applications filed as far back as 2000, she added while addressing a press conference on Friday. The measure will be applied to all asylum …

EU member states are expected to increase detention centre capacity and step up migrant deportations, in line with a request from the European Commission. The European Commission has asked member states to increase their detention centre capacity and step up deportations of economic migrants, according to the latest report on the implementation of the EU Agenda on Migration Policy. The …

 Germany has put forward a new proposal for the repatriation of some 30,000 undocumented Nigerian migrants to their home country. Dr Jan Hecker, foreign policy adviser to Chancellor Angela Merkel, visited Abuja last week to hold talks with Nigerian officials on the deportation plan. In an exclusive interview with the German international broadcaster, Deutsche Welle (DW), Nigeria’s Foreign Minister Geoffrey Onyeama …

A medical doctor in Bavaria has publicly announced his decision to stop treating asylum-seekers, after working in a reception centre for three years. He claims half of his patients were simply medical tourists. Health organizations have denounced his statements. Charlotte Hauswedell reports. A doctor working in the Deggendorf reception centre in Germany’s southern state of Bavaria told the German newspaper …

The man has arrived in Milan one day after authorities denied his appeal to stay in Germany. The case sparked major national attention when other migrants prevented authorities’ first attempt to deport him. A 23-year-old refugee from Togo, who made headlines with the attempts to block his deportation order has landed in Italy, authorities confirmed on Tuesday. The news came …

Germany granted residence permit to some 35,000 Eritrean refugees last year. This entitles them to bring their families over. But not all are successful. Daniel Pelz of Deutsche Welle (DW) reports on the reasons for this. With its population of around five million, Eritrea is one of the main countries of origin of African refugees. Young people especially are among …

The German Cabinet has approved legislation allowing refugees with subsidiary protection status to bring their direct relatives to Germany. Critics say that the bill breaches human rights, and that it will force more migrants to put their fate in the hands of people-smugglers. Marion MacGregor of Deutsche Welle (DW) reports. German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Cabinet on Wednesday voted to resettle …

German police Thursday raided a refugee centre where they had met violent resistance three days earlier when they tried to pick up a Togolese man for deportation. Several hundred armoured police searched the facility in Ellwangen, Baden-Wuerttemberg state, during the dawn operation and arrested the 23-year-old rejected asylum seeker, authorities said. In the early hours of Monday, four police had …

A German migration official is suspected of having granted asylum to some 1,200 migrants in exchange for bribes. Germany’s migration agency has been under intense scrutiny since the arrival of over million refugees in 2015. A former official of Germany’s Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) is under investigation over allegations that she, along with four others, accepted bribes …

Assessing legal service in the pursuit of their application is a major challenge for asylum-seekers because they cannot afford the required fees. An initiative works to help refugees overcome this challenge. Refugee law clinics across Germany offer legal advice to refugees. This is a free service and most of the volunteers are university law students who have specialized in asylum …

Unaccompanied minors travelling to Europe for protection pose a significant challenge to the authorities. Aasim Saleem of InfoMigrants takes a closer look at the protection mechanism and its shortcomings for underage migrants in Germany. A person is registered as an “unaccompanied minor refugee” if he or she is under the age of 18 and has fled without his or her …

“We won’t be putting a check in anyone’s pocket,” Germany’s development minister has said. The new initiative follows a test program whereby Germany gave refugees extra money to return home. The German government announced on Wednesday a new initiative to make it more attractive for refugees in Germany to voluntarily return to their country of origin. Federal Minister of Economic Cooperation and Development, …

The number of migrants who cannot be deported rose in Germany in 2017. Authorities often struggle to obtain the relevant travel documents from their countries of origin, according to a report. The number of rejected asylum seekers and migrants who cannot be deported as they lack the necessary travel documents has increased by 71 percent, to 65,000 in 2017 from …

Rejected asylum seekers in Germany almost always challenge the decision in court, and around 40 percent of them win. The number of such appeals nearly doubled from 2016 to 2017. Nearly half of all rejected asylum seekers win their challenge against the decision, according to a report published Friday (23 March). Over 328,000 asylum seekers appealed the decision to deny …

Asylum-seekers arriving in Germany are to be sent to centres where they will stay until their application is decided, under a plan by the new coalition government. The move is intended to make the process more efficient, but critics are worried that vulnerable and traumatized people may be put at increased risk. The plan to establish all-in-one processing centres for …