2024-08-24 15:26:45
Discussion about legal loophole
Traffic light coalition wants to ban refugees from returning home
17.08.2024Reading time: 2 min.
According to research, some refugees are travelling to Afghanistan despite their protection status. The traffic light coalition now wants to close a legal loophole that allows such trips.
The traffic light parties apparently want to close a legal loophole that allows Afghan refugees to travel to their country of origin. “Germany grants protection for humanitarian reasons to people who had to flee their homeland because of danger to life and limb,” said Sebastian Hartmann, the domestic policy spokesman for the SPD parliamentary group in the Bundestag, to the newspapers of the Bavarian media group on Saturday. “But if groups of people return to the said home countries for a holiday, then there can be no immediate danger to their well-being.”
The background to the current discussion is research by RTL, according to which travel agencies in Hamburg are allegedly organizing trips to the Hindu Kush for people from Afghanistan. The research shows that Afghans with protection status and a blue passport, which only allows a trip home in exceptional cases, are traveling illegally to their country of origin.
The trick is apparently not to stick the visa into the passport. The German Police Union is now calling for this legal loophole to be closed. “The federal and state governments must work together to clarify how protection status can be revoked in the event of verifiable return trips,” said Hartmann.
Embed
“In principle, there is nothing to prevent people from travelling with blue passports. It is important to achieve transparency about travel destinations and to guarantee controls upon re-entry,” said the Green Party’s domestic policy spokeswoman, Lamya Kaddor.
This could be remedied by requiring that entry stamps be noted in the passport, “and not on loose sheets of paper.” It should be emphasized that travel to dangerous countries of origin should only be undertaken in agreement with the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees if it cannot be postponed.
Stephan Thomae, the parliamentary manager of the FDP parliamentary group, also said: “Anyone who applies for asylum or refugee protection in Germany and then voluntarily returns to the country from which they fled because of war, civil war or personal persecution obviously no longer needs our protection.” In these cases, the protection status must be revoked immediately so that the next step can be deportation and an entry and residence ban imposed.
“Germany must remain cosmopolitan, but not stupid”
The Federal Government’s Commissioner for Migration, Joachim Stamp (FDP), warned 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.”
Travel to the country of origin may be permitted 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.