2024-08-25 20:13:38
There are repeated reports of people seeking protection who temporarily travel to their country of origin. There are no figures for this. The migration commissioner warns that protection status could be lost if abused.
There is always speculation that refugees temporarily return to their homeland without legally permissible reasons. In the case of asylum seekers from Afghanistan, this has now sparked a new discussion – even though the authorities do not have any figures on this. The background to this is research by RTL, according to which travel agencies in Hamburg are allegedly organizing trips to the Hindu Kush for people from Afghanistan.
The Federal Government’s Commissioner for Migration, Joachim Stamp (FDP), is now warning refugees against travelling to their home countries for leisure or holiday purposes. He told Bild: “Germany must remain cosmopolitan, but not stupid. The authorities must ensure that people who have applied for protection with us but are on holiday in their home country immediately lose their protection status and can no longer stay in Germany. Period.”
Hamburg’s Interior Senator Andy Grote (SPD) told the German Press Agency that travel to the alleged country of persecution naturally also calls into question the protection status. And “if there are easily accessible travel routes to Afghanistan, there is also the possibility of repatriation.”
Travel to the country of origin may be permissible in individual cases – for example due to a serious illness or the death of close family members. When asked, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (Bamf) in Nuremberg stated that after trips home have become known, each individual case is examined to determine whether the protection granted should be revoked.
However, the authority says it does not have precise data on how often protection has been revoked. The BAMF does publish general statistics on protection checks – which also take place for reasons other than returning home. However, there is no detailed breakdown of the reasons why a revocation of the protection decision was reviewed or has taken place.
Regarding the admissibility of trips home, a spokesperson said: “In line with case law, the BAMF generally assumes that these are only permitted under specific conditions.” For example, a short trip back to “fulfill a moral obligation” – such as attending a funeral or visiting a seriously ill family member – is not grounds for revocation.
There have been debates in previous years about visits to the homeland by people seeking protection in Germany, for example when people travel from Syria. In 2017, a motion by the AfD in the Baden-Württemberg state parliament to investigate the stays of refugees in their homeland caused a stir.
Following a survey of immigration authorities, the Interior Ministry subsequently announced that around 160 cases had been reported since 2014 in which people had returned to their homeland once or more. It is assumed that a certain number of unreported cases are unreported. Examples of reasons given included personal, family or business reasons.
In 2017, the state government of North Rhine-Westphalia responded to a minor inquiry that, according to the information available to it, the refugees in question were not travelling to their home countries to “vacation” there.