The Economist: Germany strikes a brave new deal on immigration

2024/01/24 Leave a comment

Significant change:

Germany’s debate over migration sometimes seems divorced from reality. The country’s low birth rate and shrinking workforce imply a pressing need to import manpower. Much political talk, however, is concerned with how to keep immigrants away. The anti-immigration right is surging in opinion polls, and even otherwise liberal folk are increasingly prone to saying that “certain kinds” of immigrants are alien to the national Leitkultur, a fuzzy concept of Germanness.

Yet the past week has seen a turn. Earlier this month German media exposed the proceedings of a private conclave of hard-right politicians at a posh hotel near Berlin in November, where the participants discussed expelling millions of aliens. That scandal woke up the dormant left, which has organised a series of big “anti-fascist” demonstrations in cities across the country. On January 20th some 250,000 Germans took to the streets in one of their biggest mass protests this century.

Meanwhile, the governing centre-left coalition, made up of the Social Democrats, the Greens and the liberal Free Democrats, has injected some good sense into the immigration debate. On January 18th and 19th it passed two immigration bills in the Bundestag. The first, pleasing to conservatives, will make it easier to expel asylum-seekers with dubious cases, whose numbers have soared since the end of the pandemic. The second, more significant law will make it easier for legitimate immigrants to gain German nationality.

The reasons for the latter law are obvious, though German media has devoted strangely little space to discussing them. An extraordinary 13.4m of Germany’s 84m residents do not hold citizenship. More than 5m of these have lived in the country longer than ten years. In some cities the proportion is far higher: 45% of the population of Offenbach, a big satellite of Frankfurt, are foreigners, as well as a third of Munich’s and a quarter of Berlin’s. This number has swollen rapidly in the past decade, partly because more immigrants have arrived, but also because Germany has failed to naturalise those already here.

Germany’s “naturalisation rate”—the percentage of resident foreigners granted nationality every year—was just 1.2% in 2021, well behind the European average of 2.2%. Sweden did far better at 10%. The number Germany naturalised rose from 130,000 in 2021 to 168,000 in 2022, the highest in two decades. But the backlog still grew, because of a range of obstacles: restrictions on dual nationality, long residency requirements, tough tests to prove language skills and gainful employment, and a clogged bureaucracy.

On average, Turkish immigrants who acquire German citizenship have already been in the country for 24 years. Small wonder that nearly half of Germany’s 3m immigrants of Turkish background—the largest immigrant group—remain non-citizens. Their case is special. Among the hundreds of thousands of Turkish Gastarbeiter (guest workers) who arrived in the 1960s and 1970s, many assumed they would return to Turkey and so did not apply to become German. Yet with hard-right pundits wagging fingers at the alleged failure of Turkish immigrants to integrate, Germany’s failure to welcome them deserved scrutiny too.

The new law should help address the citizenship backlog. It shortens the residency requirement for most applicants from eight to five years, which is in line with other countries that compete with Germany to attract talent, such as France and America. In special cases the wait can now be as short as three years. Children who are born in Germany with at least one parent who has lived in Germany for five years will automatically become citizens. Dual citizenship is now generally allowed. New citizens will have to promise to uphold democratic freedoms and to accept Germany’s “special historical responsibility” for Nazism and the need to protect Jewish life.

Some 5m resident non-Germans are eu citizens who already enjoy nearly all the rights of natives, and so may not see the need to add another nationality. Of the remaining 8m foreigners, including around 1m Ukrainian refugees, it is unclear how many will now rush to acquire a German passport. It is also unclear how capably the understaffed and underfunded bureaucracy that handles naturalisation, much of it managed by local governments, will adapt to the new rules.

Some estimates suggest that 2m or more Germans could be added to electoral rolls in the next few years. There will probably not be enough of them to strongly affect the next national election in autumn 2025. Nevertheless, the far-right Alternative for Germany party attacked the new law as a “coup d’état through a forced restructuring of voter demographics”. Whomever newly minted Germans vote for, it is hard to argue with two points. Without immigration, Germany’s population would already be in steep decline and its economy in jeopardy. And if Germans fail to make immigrants welcome, they risk creating precisely what the hard right fears: a huge pool of disenfranchised, disgruntled aliens in their midst. ■

Source: Germany strikes a brave new deal on immigration

And in related German news, consideration being given to allowing foreign citizens to serve in the army:

A proposal to allow foreign citizens to serve in the German army, known as the Bundeswehr, could be extended to Europeans in countries outside of the EU.

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius had initially put forward the idea of welcoming non-Germans to enlist in order to combat a drastic shortage of personnel.

In addition to Pistorius from the Social Democrats, the idea has also received support from lawmakers belonging to one of its two coalition partners, the FDP, plus the opposition Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

However, questions remain about how such a plan would be implemented.

Free Democratic Party (FDP) member Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, who chairs the German parliament’s defense committee, told DW that she can envision opening up the German army to candidates from across the continent.

She said candidates could initially come from the EU as well as countries like the United Kingdom, a former EU member, as well as neutral Switzerland. But there is also scope beyond these countries.

“I think that Europe also needs to be considered further, namely those who may live in European states but which do not yet belong to the European Union, but which may well be in accession negotiations,” Strack-Zimmermann said in an interview with DW’s Nina Haase.

“I don’t want to tie it down like that, because it has to be legally scrutinized,” she added.

Source: Germany weighs allowing foreign citizens into the army – DW – 01/22/2024 – DW (English)

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What’s changing in German immigration policy in 2024 – DW (English)

2024/01/03 Leave a comment

Useful overview:

When it comes to immigration policy, Chancellor Olaf Scholz has already set the tone for the new year. In an interview with the news magazine Der Spiegel in December, he came out in favor of “large-scale” deportations for rejected asylum applicants.

In the first half of 2023, government figures show that 7,861 people were deported. A reform, dubbed the Repatriation Improvement Act, hopes to increase that number. Changes include an end to announcing deportations in advance and extending asylum detention to 28 days. Police will also have extended powers to search for those ordered to leave, and access their property, such as phones.

Smugglers and other kinds of criminals, including those without convictions but suspected of criminal associations, could face faster deportations, as part of efforts to “more consistently and more quickly” act against “dangerous individuals,” said Interior Minister Nancy Faeser.

More migration agreements

Germany is also negotiating agreements with Georgia, Moldova, Kenya, Colombia, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, though these would not affect the majority of asylum-seekers who come from Syria, Afghanistan and Turkey. But the move is part of a larger effort to designate more countries as “safe countries of origin,” which would permit Germany to return people to those places. Georgia and Moldova received this status in November.

If the European Union revives its deal with Turkey, a move Germany supports, that could facilitate sending people there, as well.

Germany also wants to process asylum applications faster. Right now, it can take more than two years to handle an asylum claim, according to government data. Proposed changes to the law hope to get that down to between three to six months.

People going through the asylum procedure are also set to receive fewer benefits. Welfare payments, currently accessible after 18 months, will become available only after three years. Those living in state housing will also have the cost of their food deducted.

Cards instead of cash for benefits

More German cities and states want to move to a card-based system for benefits, rather than bank payments, to prevent asylum-seekers from transferring the money to others, such as relatives in the country of origin.

Hannover, in central Germany, started its “social card” in December, which works like a normal bank debit card. Areas of the eastern state of Thuringia have also issued around 160 such cards for asylum-seekers. The cardholder must go to the district asylum office every month to top up the card.

Hamburg and Bavaria are set to follow suit with similar programs in 2024.

More skilled labor immigration

While conditions look to be getting harder for asylum-seekers, recent reforms hope to make life in Germany more attractive for skilled labor.

A points system, based on language proficiency and professional experience, would grant eligible immigrants a one-year visa, during which time they can search for a job. The income requirement has also been lowered, and it will be easier for the applicant to bring along more family members.

The EU Blue Card is also to be expanded to cover sectors suffering from labor shortages, such as health care and education.

Starting in March, foreigners from outside the EU can come directly to Germany and start working while their qualifications are being approved. Workers will be able to stay up to three years, including with dependents, as long as they can prove they are able to support themselves.

The special immigration quota for people from countries in the western Balkans is also to be doubled to 50,000 people in June.

Source: What’s changing in German immigration policy in 2024 – DW (English)

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Articles of interest: Citizenship

2023/12/08 Leave a comment

Starting up my blog again, highlighting some of the articles I found of interest.

Past Imperfect: J. L. Granatstein’s prescient warning

Agree, both the good and the bad:

Also regrettable is that Granatstein did not offer a more pointed rationale for learning hist­ory. He argued that an understanding of the subject was “the prerequisite of political ­intelligence” but without going further. The cost of not knowing history is much deeper, in my view. It creates a real disquiet and robs the community of its ability to find nuance in any dispute. Indeed, one could argue that the incoherence of a vast array of policy areas in this country — from cultural and global affairs to housing and homelessness — can be explained only by a general loss of historical consciousness.

To talk historically about any episode — a court case, a medical issue, a construction problem, even a love dispute — is to inquire about “what really took place last time.” It ­naturally invites subtlety, attention to context, and storytelling that can lay the groundwork for compromise. It calls for clarity in sequencing events and necessarily examines what’s behind the story: “Well, we didn’t have the tools” or “Our thinking was wrong” or “We simply didn’t know.” It can build respect and, not least, modesty. But it can also bridge solitudes and open the road to cooperation, better understanding, and perhaps even reconciliation and forgiveness. No one who studies history seriously can be insensitive to the anxieties and cruelties of humanity or unimpressed by its resilience, ­creativity, and kindness.

But that sort of discipline has been evacuated from popular culture. For over a dozen years now, history departments have seen their student numbers decline. Consequently, new hires are even rarer than before. Governments seldom consider the failures and successes of previous policies; museums dedicated to the past are shrivelling without money for new exhibits and programs. Historians, terrified of being misunderstood, refuse to engage in public debates that could bring nuance to policy issues. Canada is not in a state of post-nationalism but is rather a place of hiber‑nation — a country that has fallen asleep and forgotten its past.

This is dangerous. Historical awareness bolsters democracy and democratic instincts. Take away history and you undermine the ability to discuss, to debate, and to share knowledge on how things evolved. Without such skills and knowledge, democracy as we know it will wither and die

Source: Past Imperfect: J. L. Granatstein’s prescient warning

Local citizenship judge wins Community Impact Award – Thorold News

A reminder of the power of in-person ceremonies:

The ceremonies to which she is referring are citizenship ceremonies. For just over five years Ivri has been a citizenship judge with Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada. In an average week in this role she swears in between 1,200 and 1,500 new Canadians.

In the relatively short time that she’s been one of nine judges in the Niagara and Hamilton offices of the department, she has welcomed more than 100,000 newcomers to Canada. Besides her family – husband Eldean and children Elijah, Zachariah, Ezekiel and Michaiah – she says it’s the most rewarding thing she’s ever done.

Ivri herself comes from an immigrant family. Her mother Valerie came to Canada to visit an uncle in 1967, leaving behind her husband Roosevelt and their son back in Jamaica. On leave from her job as a customs officer there, Valerie went to a Canadian immigration office to extend her visa. An officer there suggested she instead apply for citizenship, so she did.

Source: Local citizenship judge wins Community Impact Award – Thorold News

Shawn Taylor: Are Immigrants Falling out of Love with Canada? (And is it Because We Feel the Same?)

Overly negative but not without merit:

The evident decline in Canada’s citizenship rates may say more about the attitudes and habits of existing Canadians than those of newly-arriving immigrants. The federal bureaucracy’s failure to meet its own published service standards is certainly a self-inflicted wound. As is the proposal to solve this problem by eliminating much-loved citizenship ceremonies. The effect of both situations is to debase the perceived status of Canadian citizenship by emphasizing the transactional over the transformational. Then there’s the Roxham Road debacle, which offers migrants the opportunity to illegally sneak into our country via a dead-end road rather than at a regular border crossing and still be recognized as refugee claimants, with all the official support and standing this entails. If Canadian citizenship is supposed to be so valuable, it seems foolish to further cheapen the reputation of the entire immigration system in this way.

Beneath these obvious failures of governance and policy, however, lurks an even deeper and more insidious problem. As Bernhard explains, becoming a citizen is akin to joining a team with all other Canadians. A “club,” so to speak, that is exclusive to those who wish to be identified as Canadian and who intend to participate in its promotion and maintenance by voting and performing other civic duties. If we accept such an analogy, then it clearly matters how we advertise and promote this club to new members. So what sort of stories do Canadians tell about their own country these days? And do they amount to an effective marketing strategy?

 “The story of Canada that our major institutions tell has increasingly become one that focuses on only the most negative aspects of our country, such as oppression, racism, discrimination and dispossession,” observes Christopher Dummitt, an historian at Trent University’s School for the Study of Canada in Peterborough, Ontario. Common examples of this new tendency are factually-dubious claims, often from officially sanctioned sources, that Canada has committed and continues to commit genocide against the Indigenous population, is systemically racist towards black people, was once a slave country, and on and on. “It is a deliberate distortion of our actual history,” says Dummitt in an interview.

This sense of national self-loathing has become so encompassing that official multiculturalism, once billed as an unquestionable Canadian value, is now considered evidence of an “unjust society premised on white supremacy,” as two University of Calgary education professors absurdly argued last year. Even professed supporters of Canadian identity, such as ICC co-founder Ralston Saul, now casually declare that “Canada has failed on many fronts.” As for how such a perspective might work as a branding exercise, Dummitt says, “If the story about Canada is that it was an institutionally corrupt nation beset by the original sin of colonialism, then why would anyone want to become a citizen of that?”

Dummitt has been pushing back against the now-pervasive narrative that Canada is, at its core, morally bankrupt. In 2021 he organized a rebuttal signed by many eminent Canadian historians condemning the Canadian Historical Association’s (CHA) unilateral declaration that Canada’s treatment of Indigenous peoples was “genocidal.” In making such a claim, Dummitt’s rebuttal stated, the CHA was “insulting the basic standards of good scholarly conduct.” He has also spoken out against the practice of tearing down statues honouring Canada’s founding fathers, and is currently fighting Toronto’s plans to scrub the name of 18th century British parliamentarian Henry Dundas from its streets and public squares on the (entirely bogus) assertion that he was an ally to the slave trade. “We need to call out these nonsensical claims,” Dummitt states determinedly. “And we need politicians who are willing to celebrate the Canadian nation in diverse ways.”

With this sort of self-hatred being expressed by current citizens, is it any wonder immigrants are having second thoughts about joining Club Canada

Peter Shawn Taylor is senior features editor at C2C Journal. He lives in Waterloo, Ontario. 

Source: Are Immigrants Falling out of Love with Canada? (And is it Because We Feel the Same?)

Is Portugal’s Golden Visa Scheme Worth It?

No:

On Nov. 7, the same day that Portugal’s Prime Minister António Costa resigned amid corruption allegations pertaining to lithium contracts, federal officers in Brazil raided the Portuguese Consulate in Rio de Janeiro.

The Brazil raids were not connected to the Lisbon investigation, a spokesperson said. Instead, according to Brazilian police, they were part of a separate investigation into the falsification of documents in collusion with applicants seeking Portuguese visas and citizenship. Since the 1990s, amid periods of economic downturn and social instability, large numbers of Brazilians have struck out for Portugal. When the country began its “golden visa” program in 2012, wealthy Brazilians became the second largest group to take advantage of it.

Portugal’s golden visa grants European Union access to foreigners in exchange for investment. From its inception in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, it has faced backlash, and the criticism has only grown more vocal in recent years. Chiefly, it is blamed for contributing to a severe housing crisis that has made affordable housing unattainable for most Portuguese.

In early October, Costa’s Socialist government finally passed a law that took aim at the issue, removing the real estate investment pathway from the golden visa program. Previously, people who invested in a qualifying property worth at least 280,000 euros (about $305,000) were eligible. The change, almost a year in the making, has ricocheted around the world of global elites, many of whom had come to regard Portugal as a foothold into Europe. Although more than 30,000 foreigners have benefited from Portugal’s golden visa, its benefits for the Portuguese themselves are less clear.

Source: Is Portugal’s Golden Visa Scheme Worth It?

German State Saxony-Anhalt: No citizenship without supporting Israel’s existence 

Hard to see how this will work in practice:

The decree instructs authorities to pay close attention to whether an applicant exhibits antisemiticattitudes and states that “obtaining German citizenship requires a commitment to Israel’s right to exist.”

In a letter to local authorities, the Saxony-Anhalt state Interior Ministry said naturalization is to be denied to foreigners who engage in activities directed at Germany’s liberal democratic order as outlined in the country’s Basic Law. The denial of Israel‘s right to exist and antisemitism are included among such activities.

Local authorities have been instructed to deny an applicant’s naturalization request if they refuse to sign the declaration. A refusal is also to be documented in the individual’s application filing for future reference.

Source: German state: Citizenship applicants must support Israel

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In Germany, the anti-immigrant left is on the rise. Will it hold back the far right – or help it? 

2023/11/02 Leave a comment

Of note:

Sahra Wagenknecht is a 54-year-old politician who, until recently, was a member of the struggling leftwing party Die Linke. She is also a household name in Germany. A figure with undeniable charisma, she’s a stalwart on television talkshows, where her ability to present sometimes radical opinions as though they were common sense makes for lively discussions and entertaining viewing. Now, with the launch of her own party – named after herself – Germans may soon get the chance to vote for her too. Does she stand a chance – and what does the fanfare about the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) tell us about the direction of German politics?

In part, at least, people pay attention to Wagenknecht because she’s long had a penchant for radical positions. When she first came of political age, even Die Linke was concerned that she was a Stalin apologist. But Wagenknecht’s politics have changed with age. Her communism has been tempered by some expressions of admiration for the free market. She’s also become increasingly critical of immigration, Germany’s Covid-19 policies, sanctions on Russia, climate protesters and “lifestyle leftists”, as Wagenknecht dubs many advocates for racial and gender equality. Unsurprisingly, Die Linke hardly seems sorry to see her go: “It’s like with the grandmother who has cancer,” Dietmar Bartsch, co-chair of the party’s parliamentary committee, told Der Tagesspiegel. “You know she’s going to die, but you’re still sad when the time comes.”

There aren’t many new ideas in Wagenknecht’s political platform, though the way they are combined could be novel. Her economic plans are sprinkled with conspiratorial references to foreign monopolies, and she calls for a substantial increase in the minimum wage, but at their core her proposals are broadly similar to other centre-left policies. Her rhetoric about immigration, however, comes straight from the far-right AfD’s playbook. “There shouldn’t be any neighbourhoods,” she said in a 2021 interview, “where natives are in the minority.”

Wagenknecht’s politics clearly resonate with the German public. A recent survey of German voters found that 14% would vote for a Wagenknecht party, putting it just one point behind the governing Social Democrats (SPD) and two points ahead of the Green party. It speaks to the breadth of Wagenknecht’s coalition that, if initial polls are to be believed, she would take votes not only from her own former political home, but also from the centre-right CDU, the left-leaning Greens and the pro-business FDP. Most of all, though, Wagenknecht is trying to appeal to a section of AfD voters. Much of the party’s success in recent elections, she claims, comes from Germans who “don’t vote for the AfD because they’re rightwing. They vote for the AfD because they’re angry.” Wagenknecht’s attempts to siphon off the AfD’s protest voters currently seems like the only viable plan to mitigate the far-right party’s electoral success.

The reaction of the AfD has been surprisingly muted. There must be some disappointment: Björn Höcke, the party’s chair in the eastern state of Thuringia, has been practically begging her to join for months. But even if initial estimates are correct, the AfD would still be left with a compelling 17% electoral share, putting it second only to the CDU. Moreover, Wagenknecht’s populist, anti-immigrant rhetoric goes a long way towards legitimising the AfD’s own favourite electoral strategy. More troubling yet, if her party is as successful as early polls indicate, there will be fewer paths left to form majority governments without either the AfD or Wagenknecht, at a state or federal level. “A truly alternative left,” Höcke said in a recent statement, “could have an important function in the reconfiguration of the German party system.” Wagenknecht may take votes away from the AfD, but she may also make it possible for it to take political power if coalition partners find themselves forced to choose between two populist parties.

Germany’s main political parties are weak. The electorate is divided and governing coalitions, which have so far worked to keep the AfD out, have been increasingly divisive and ineffectual as a result. Infighting and incompetence have prevented the government from fulfilling many of its electoral promises. It is hardly the first to struggle: Germany’s politicians have been promising to streamline its often cumbersome bureaucracy, improve the country’s technological infrastructure and foster a more robust tech sector for decades. But political squabbles and a lack of imagination have prevented any meaningful change. Now, with a recession looming, resentment about the ineptitude of the political class is likely to grow even more pronounced.

Wagenknecht’s platform is still developing, but it isn’t likely to be all that different from the other parties’. The core governmental promises of better social services, a stronger economy and less bureaucratic hassle are shared across the political spectrum. The AfD and the Greens both campaign on increasing funding for education. Wagenknecht will, too. It won’t be surprising if she issues invectives against immigrants and climate activists.

But she’s hardly the only one who has figured out that you don’t necessarily need sound policy solutions or real leadership if you play on people’s resentments. Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, recently announced his plans to “deport on a grand scale”, while the leader of the CDU, Friedrich Merz, has gone on a veritable tirade, accusing Berlin neighbourhoods of not being adequately German and demanding that new immigrants to Germany declare their allegiance to Israel. With the world increasingly unsettled by violence in Ukraine and the Middle East, as well as by the ongoing series of climate crises, German politics is making a sharp turn in a nationalist-populist direction. And Sahra Wagenknecht could soon be accelerating that journey.

Source: In Germany, the anti-immigrant left is on the rise. Will it hold back the far right – or help it?

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Stateless in Germany have hardly any rights – DW (English)

2023/10/30 Leave a comment

Of note:

For people like Christiana Bukalo, 29, born in Germany but stateless, everyday life can become a challenge at any time: Opening a bank account, booking a hotel, getting married, pursuing a career as a civil servant — you need an ID for everything. But which state will issue you a passport if you don’t have any nationality at all?

“You don’t have freedom to travel because a travel document is required. You have difficulties when it comes to getting a job,” Bukalo told DW. “I know people who couldn’t finish their studies because they would have had to show a birth certificate to take the exam at the end. Also, stateless people don’t have the right to vote, even if they’ve always lived here.”

Bukalo is the daughter of West African parents whose nationality could not be verified by German authorities. She is one of a growing number of stateless people living in Germany — currently some 126,000 people. Many of them are Palestinians, Kurds, or former citizens of the Soviet Union or Yugoslavia — states that no longer exist.

Bukalo learned from an early age what it means to have no nationality. “Even as a child, you get the message that you don’t belong,” she said. “That you’re not supposed to stay here, but at the same time you can’t leave either. It’s very banal things that turn into a problem: Student exchanges, skiing trips abroad, none of that is possible. And of course, you have a great sense of shame, because you’re asked to explain something that has never been explained to you.”

‘Statefree’: A voice for stateless people

Two years ago, Bukalo decided to give stateless people a voice and founded the human rights organization “Statefree” in Munich. The goal was not only to inform the wider public, and to bring together those affected, but also to make demands on politicians.

“In Germany, we have an extreme reproduction of statelessness, as no way has been found to deal with stateless children who are born here,” she said. “We demand that stateless children born in Germany have a right to German citizenship.”

In Germany, it is the parentage that counts, not the place of birth. If the parents are stateless, so is their child. As a result, a third of all stateless people in Germany are children, though Bukalo also knows 65-year-olds who were born in Germany and are still stateless.

Statefree had high hopes for the new citizenship law proposed by the current center-left government of Social Democrats (SPD), Greens and neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP), but the issue of statelessness has not appeared in any draft law so far.

A spokesperson for the German Interior Ministry said in response to a DW question: “The concerns of stateless people are already sufficiently taken into account in the citizenship law. In addition, the general regulations for acquiring German citizenship apply to stateless people, since stateless people are also foreigners in the sense of citizenship law.”

Europe mulls deportations, not integration

The reform of the new citizenship law, which includes rapid naturalizations and incentives for skilled immigrants, comes at a time when the debate on migration is also at the top of Germany’s political agenda.

Bukalo is not surprised that her campaign is not making much progress at present. “I explain this to myself on the one hand with the politicians’ lack of knowledge about statelessness and on the other hand with the general political situation: The shift to the right in Europe,” she said. “Germany’s more progressive parties are having a hard time standing up for supposedly ‘progressive’ issues that have long been part of the status quo in countries like Spain or Portugal.”

No uniform legal procedures

Judith Beyer, professor of ethnology at Konstanz University, has been researching statelessness since she came across the topic seven years ago on a research trip to Myanmar, where 700,000 members of the Rohingya Muslim minority were fleeing persecution. They now live in Bangladesh but are considered stateless under international law.

Beyer works as an expert witness in a UK court when stateless people are in asylum proceedings. “Statelessness is a problem that is really not yet in the public eye in Germany,” she told DW.

Take the judiciary, for example: While in the UK experts like Beyer examine the life stories of stateless persons, and their expertise is incorporated into the final verdict on their status, in Germany the decision often rests solely with the judges.

There are also no standardized procedures in Germany for determining statelessness — it is up to municipal authorities, which means people in Munich sometimes get different decisions than they would in Hamburg or Cologne.

“The bottom line is that it depends on the individual who makes the decision,” Beyer said. “That’s what many stateless people keep complaining about: there is no legal certainty. Quite often it’s not malicious intent at all, but simply a lack of knowledge about how to deal with stateless people.”

Around 30,000 people in Germany like Bukalo have been officially recognized as stateless, which means they can apply for naturalization after six years of residency. But almost 100,000 individuals are categorized as persons with unclear nationality: Refugees who have no documents to prove their identity, such as the Rohingya who were expatriated from Bangladesh.

Being stateless is a violation of human rights, says SPD politician Sawsan Chebli. She was born in Berlin to stateless Palestinian parents and was not naturalized until she was 15. The ethnologist Beyer agrees: Stateless people are effectively denied the right to have any rights.

Source: Stateless in Germany have hardly any rights – DW (English)

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Germany: illegal immigration set to exceed record high

2023/10/23 Leave a comment

Helps explain the rise of the AfD:

Data released by the German Federal Police on Saturday showed that 21,366 individuals illegally entered Germany in September.

The number  — the single highest monthly tabulation of “unauthorized entries” into the country since February 2016, when 25,650 came after the peak of the so-called “refugee crisis” — follows a seven-month trend of increasingly high entry numbers.

Police data shows that 92,119 individuals illegally entered Germany between January and September of 2023, putting the country on track to exceed the 112,000 people that illegally entered in 2016.

Illegal migration, long a topic of hot debate across Europe and within Germany, has continued to put pressure on politicians to come up with an effective migration policy, something they have so far failed to do.

Scholz says Germany needs to conduct mass deportation of illegals

On Friday, leaders from the country’s three governing coalition parties met in Berlin to further discuss the issue.

Speaking to reporters from the German weekly publication Der Spiegel, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said, “We must finally deport on a grand scale those who have no right to stay in Germany.”

At the same time, Scholz underscored the need for Germany to take in individuals truly entitled to asylum, as well as attracting more skilled immigrants into the country’s aging workforce.

Scholz was reported as saying “a whole bundle of measures” were needed to address the issue of illegal migration into the EU — among them, hardening the bloc’s external borders and increasing Germany’s control of its own borders with EU neighbors.

Despite the principle of freedom of movement within the Schengen Area, Germany recently began conducting stops at its borders with the Czech Republic, Poland and Switzerland in an effort to confront the problem of illegal entries. Such controls already exist at Germany’s border with Austria.

The Federal Police statistics also come at a time when the opposition CDU/CSU has pitched the creation of a small working group between themselves and the government as a possible vehicle for finally getting a grip on the socially divisive issue.

Opposition pitches ‘German migration pact’

Friedrich Merz, who leads the conservative opposition, recently met with Scholz to discuss the issue, presenting him with a 26-point list of demands, including an annual cap on the number of people allowed to enter the country [200,000].

On Friday, Merz followed up with a letter to the chancellor pitching the idea of a balanced bi-partisan group.

Speaking to party members on Saturday, Merz said, “If we want to maintain social cohesion in this country, we must resolve this problem now.”

Lars Klingbeil, the leader of Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) greeted the opportunity to work with the opposition, calling it, “a good signal to citizens that we in the democratic middle can work with one another.”

“I expect to quickly find a common solution,” he added.

Still, Klingbeil confessed he did not believe in the concept of migration caps, saying he could not imagine the state would be so heartless as to turn away those facing true political persecution if such a cap had already been reached.

Merz’s idea is to create what he called a “German migration pact,” with measures designed to decisively curb illegal entries as a way to take pressure off overburdened municipalities and restore public trust in government.

The issue of immigration has become increasingly central to German politics, giving rise, among others, to the growing popularity of the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD), which is currently polling around 22% nationwide — far ahead of all three ruling coalition parties.

Source: Germany: illegal immigration set to exceed record high – DW (English)

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Germany to ease immigration law to attract skilled workers

2023/06/24 Leave a comment

Of note:

From healthcare to IT, carpenters to technicians, Germany’s “help wanted” sign is blinking red. At a German industry event in mid-June, Chancellor Olaf Scholz promised business leaders that change was coming, and with less red tape.

Germany needs 400,000 foreign workers to make up the shortfall every year, according to the Federal Employment Office. And when the baby boomers retire en masse, the problem will only get worse.

Lawmakers from the parties in government — the center-left Social Democrats, the Greens, and the neoliberal Free Democrats — have worked out the final details of a skilled labor immigration law.

The bill heads for a vote this Friday (23.6.) in the Bundestag, Germany’s federal parliament.

Three options

The bill, initially drawn up by the labor and interior ministries, seeks to open up new opportunities for people from countries outside the European Union.

They could come to Germany either thanks to qualifications and degrees that regulators here will recognize in a faster and more streamlined process; or based on their work experience; or through a point system for job seekers with potential but without an existing employment contract.

Blue Card

Germany introduced what is known as the EU Blue Card, for highly qualified specialists, a decade ago. Now, it will also become easier to get, thanks to a lower income requirement.

In the future, they will need to make an annual minimum salary of €43,800 ($48,000), according to the news agency Reuters. And for IT specialists professional experience can take the place of a university degree.

Incoming workers will also be less restricted in their line of work. Until now, it has been difficult to change industries, based on the existing visa rules.

The ‘opportunity card’

With a point system under a new “opportunity card,” foreigners who don’t yet have a job lined up will be permitted to come to Germany and given a year to find employment. A prerequisite is holding a vocational qualification or university degree.

Points will be awarded for example for German and/or English language skills, existing ties to Germany, and the potential of accompanying life partners or spouses on the German labor market. The new reforms also seek to make it easier for prospective employers to bring their dependents with them.

An opportunity card permits casual work for up to 20 hours a week while looking for a qualified job, and probationary employment is also permitted.

Those who are awaiting asylum approval, and got their application in by March 29, 2023, have the appropriate qualifications, and a job offer and will also be permitted to join the labor market. This would also allow them to enter vocational training.

A similar change holds for those here on a tourist visa. They will not be required to first leave the country, before returning in an employment context.

Fewer hurdles in the recognition of degrees

A major obstacle to immigration has long been the requirement to have degrees recognized in Germany. This is a long, bureaucratic, and often frustrating process.

In the future, skilled immigrants will no longer have to have their degrees recognized in Germany if they can show they have at least two years of professional experience and a degree that is state-recognized in their country of origin.

However, this is only aimed at skilled workers above a certain salary threshold.

The Skilled Workers Act also provides for a new arrangement: Someone who already has a job offer can already come to Germany and start working while their degree is still being recognized.

Skeptics don’t expect improvement

Not everyone is happy with the proposed changes, which first came up for debate in March. Some in the opposition see a problem that legislation alone can’t fix.

“When thousands of skilled workers willing to immigrate are waiting for months for a visa or a recognition of skills, there finally needs to be enough staff, for example, at consulates — not new point system,” Hermann Gröhe, a lawmaker with the conservative CDU-CSU block, said.

Others are mindful of shortcomings in Germany’s digital infrastructure, which hamper visa processing and put off potential foreign labor.

“If a computer scientist from Pakistan or India has to wait months to get an appointment at the consulate for a visa, the doubt that sets in will have him choosing another destination country,” Gerd Landsberg, the managing director of the German Association of Cities and Municipalities, told the regional newspaper, Rheinische Post. He pointed out that all industrialized countries are competing for skilled work

In a recent interview with the Berlin daily, Tagesspiegel, the director of Berlin’s immigration office, Engelhard Mazanke, said his office alone already has a three-month backlog and needs at least 50 additional staff to process the influx of thousands of foreign workers and their families. He pointed out that they will come on top of refugees from Ukraine, Middle Eastern, and African countries, along with the regular flow of students and other kinds of migrants from around the world.

Meanwhile, a reform of the citizenship law is on the cards, too. To give immigrants an incentive to integrate and stick around for the long term.

Source: Germany to ease immigration law to attract skilled workers

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German citizenship: Record number of naturalizations

2023/06/02 Leave a comment

Of note, along with the planned policy changes:

A record 168,545 applicants with 171 different nationalities received German citizenship in 2022. That was 28% more than in the previous year, the Federal Statistical Office in Wiesbaden reported this week.

Twenty-nine percent of people who adopted German nationality in 2022 were from Syria, their average age was 24.8 years, and two-thirds of them are male. Many of them had fled their homeland when the civil war broke out in 2014 and have since found a new home in Germany. Before naturalization, they had been in Germany for an average of 6.4 years.

Syrians topped the list, followed by Ukrainian, Iraqi and Turkish nationals.

“Almost half of all Syrians who received their German passports did so after only six years. That’s because they were able to demonstrate exceptional integration achievements,” Jan Schneider, of the independent Expert Council on Integration and Migration, told DW.

“In fact, we can expect the number to rise further this year,” Schneider said, as the ruling center-left coalition of Social Democrats (SPD), Greens and neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP) has comprehensive plans for changing and simplifying the citizenship law.

High hurdles so far

Currently, the requirements for naturalization include language skills (B1) and a secure income, and candidates must have lived in Germany for a minimum of eight years.

People who want to become German citizenship have not only had to pay the fee of €255 ($272) but also need to be able to document their identity and pass a written test in German, which consists of 33 questions on German customs and society and the law. Applicants must also declare their support for democracy and the German constitution, the Basic Law.

Anyone who has been convicted of a criminal offense does not stand a chance. Neither do applicants who have no income or savings and rely solely on state support.

But, now, Germany sees a labor shortage across its economy, ranging from IT specialists to medical staff to food servers. Labor market experts have estimated that Germany needs 400,000 immigrants per year to close the widening gap. Currently, only 60,000 are attracted each year by the government’s skilled immigration program.

A fundamental change in the citizenship law, the government argues, could be an incentive for people to come and for those already living here to integrate better.

Plans to simplify the citizenship law

Legislation proposed by Interior Minister Nancy Faeser will make dual citizenship easier, as well as naturalization for non-EU citizens. It boils down to three main changes.

Immigrants legally living in Germany will be allowed to apply for citizenship after five rather than eight years. This shall go down to only three years if the applicant can show special integration achievements.

Children born in Germany of at least one parent who has been living legally in the country for five or more years will automatically get German citizenship.

Multiple citizenships will be allowed.

So far, only EU and Swiss nationals, and those whose country of origin does not allow people to renounce citizenship such as Iran, Afghanistan and Morocco, for example; refugees who are threatened with persecution in their home countries; and Israelis are generally permitted to hold on to their original passports when they get a German one.

Schneider believes that, for some of the approximately 1.3 million Turks who are living in Germany, “the dual passport may well be an incentive for naturalization.”

Opposition to reform

The new record figures for naturalizations have triggered another storm of protest among critics, especially from the largest opposition group, the center-right Christian Democrat Union and the regional Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU). Their parliamentary group’s spokesman, Thorsten Frei, told the daily newspaper Die Welt: “The plans of Interior Minister Nancy Faeser increase the risk that more people will be naturalized who are not sufficiently integrated.” He said there were no convincing reasons to lower the requirements for a German passport.

Currently, about 6 million foreign citizens have been living in Germany for over eight years. If the minimum period of residence for naturalization is set at five years, migration expert Schneider pointed out, most of them will meet the criteria for naturalization.

Although it is not possible to predict today whether parliament will approve the government’s bill, “a massive increase in naturalization applications” is to be expected, Schneider said. “Applications for naturalization are already piling up in many Citizens’ Offices,” he added.

Source: German citizenship: Record number of naturalizations

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German Plan Would Ease Path to Citizenship, but Not Without a Fight

2023/05/30 Leave a comment

Of note and encouraging government is moving ahead:

Young, educated and motivated, José Leonardo Cabrera Barroso is just the kind of immigrant the government says Germany needs.

Originally from Venezuela, he settled into Germany, learned the language and got his German medical license. At 34, he is specializing as a trauma surgeon, working at a hospital in the northern port city of Hamburg. It took him a full six years — and because of his expertise, he was allowed to apply for citizenship sooner than the eight years required for most others.

“For me, this date was a must,” he said at the champagne reception in Hamburg after his citizenship ceremony in February. “After all the work I did to get here, I finally feel like I can celebrate.”

But if his path to becoming a German citizen was not easy, neither has been the effort to simplify that process for others who want to realize the same dream.

After months of political wrangling, the government presented a plan this month to make it easier and faster for employed immigrants to become citizens, shortening the time, for people with special skills like Dr. Cabrera Barroso, to as little as three years.

The changes, supporters argue, are urgently needed to offset an aging population and a dearth of both skilled and unskilled workers. Given the majority that Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-party coalition government holds in Parliament, the new law is expected to pass this summer.

But before then, even within the government — and certainly for its conservative opponents — the proposals have set off a wrenching debate over a fundamental question: Is Germany a country of immigrants?

On the ground, the answer is clear. Germany is more populous than ever — an additional 1.1 million people lived in the country, now of 84.3 million people, at the end of 2022 — thanks to migration.

One in four Germans have had at least one of their grandparents born abroad. More than 18 percent of people living in Germany were not born there.

In Frankfurt and a few other major cities, residents with a migration history are the majority. People with non-German sounding names run cities, universities and hospitals. The German couple that invented the Pfizer Covid vaccine have Turkish roots. Cem Ozdemir, a German-born Green politician whose parents came from Turkey, is one of the current government’s most popular minsters. Two of the three governing parties are run by men born in Iran.

Many of those changes have only accelerated since reunification 33 years ago, but many Germans still do not recognize the diversification of their country.

“The opposition does not want to accept or admit that we are a nation of immigrants; they basically want to hide from reality,” said Bijan Djir-Sarai, who came to Germany from Iran when he was 11 and is now the secretary general of the Free Democratic Party, which is part of the governing coalition.

The changes to the citizenship law are part of wider set of proposals that will also make it easier for skilled workers to settle in Germany and for well-integrated immigrants to stay.

Besides reducing the time an immigrant must live in the country to apply, the plan will allow people to keep their original citizenship and make language requirements less onerous for older immigrants.

The proposals are the most sweeping since 1999, when, for the first time in modern German history, people who were not born to German parents could get German citizenship under certain conditions.

Before then, it was virtually impossible to become German without proving German ancestry, a situation that was especially fraught for the nearly one million Turkish citizens who started coming to Germany in the 1960s to help rebuild the economy as “guest workers” and their descendants.

Since the government announced its plans in November, the conservative opposition has staunchly resisted easing citizenship requirements, criticizing them as giving away the rights accorded German citizens too easily to people who are not integrated enough.

Those arguments have resonated with some Germans at a moment when migration remains a fixation of the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party, which has risen in polls, pulling the mainstream opposition Christian Democrats farther right with it.

“Hocking citizenship does not promote integration, but has the opposite effect and will have a knock-on effect on illegal migration,” Alexander Dobrindt, the parliamentary leader of the Bavarian Christian Social Union, told the mass-market tabloid Bild.

Not all of those who have already gone through the longer, arduous process, agree with lightening the requirements, either.

“I think you have to make sure it’s not given away too easily,” said Mohammed Basheer, 34, who came to Germany from Syria eight years ago and was among the roughly 200 immigrants who received their citizenship this year at the ornate Renaissance-revival City Hall of Hamburg. “I had to fight really hard for it.”

Over the months of negotiations, the smallest and most conservative of the parties in the governing coalition fought for changes to make sure applicants are self-sufficient and — apart from few exceptions — did not rely on social security payments.

“If we want society to accept immigration reform, we also have to talk about things like control, regulation and, if need be, repatriation,” Mr. Djir-Sarai said, acknowledging the opposition’s concerns. “It is simply part of it.”

Still, surveys show that more than two-thirds of Germans believe that changes making immigration easier are needed to alleviate rampant skilled-worker shortages, according to a recent poll. Industry; employers, like the German association of small and medium-size enterprises; and economists welcome the changes, seeing them as a way to attract skilled workers.

Petra Bendel, who researches migration and integration at the Friedrich-Alexander-University in Erlangen-Nurnberg, thinks that in addition to attracting new workers, the changes are crucial for integrating those immigrants already living in Germany.

“The problem is that we exclude a very large number of people who have long been part of us, but who still do not have full citizenship and are therefore also excluded from full political participation,” she said.

Although it naturalized the fifth largest number of people in the European Union in 2020, the most recent year for which such numbers are available, Germany ranks comparatively poorly in naturalizing permanent residents: 19th out of 27 E.U. member states, one spot lower than Hungary.

“Other European countries,” Professor Bendel noted, “naturalize much faster, namely mostly after five years and not after eight years, and that is why we ended up in the bottom third.”

In the coming weeks, the bill will be presented to Germany’s 16 states for comment before returning to the cabinet for approval. The government hopes to get it to Parliament for discussion and a vote before lawmakers break for the summer in early July, though the vote could be delayed until they meet again in September.

For some, like Bonnie Cheng, 28, a portrait photographer in Berlin, the changes are welcome, if too late. She had to give up her Hong Kong citizenship status when she became German last year.

Ms. Cheng is happy that others will not have to face the same choice. If she ever had any doubts about becoming German, she said, it was when she realized she would be the only one in her family with a different citizenship.

“If you want make people to feel integrated,” she said, “you should not tear apart their identities.”

Source: German Plan Would Ease Path to Citizenship, but Not Without a Fight

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Schools survey: Non-German students more likely to ‘sit next to a …

2023/05/08 Leave a comment

Interesting study:

A study on children’s attitudes toward their classmates resulted in some surprising, and other not so surprising, findings.

Based on surveys of ninth-grade children (aged 14 to 15) in Germany, research led by Zsófia Boda at the University of Essex and Georg Lorenz from Leipzig University has found that classes that are ethnically diverse are more welcoming of refugee students.

That’s the unsurprising part.

What it also revealed, however, was that students who were born in Germany to German-born parents were the most likely to reject their refugee classmates, and the least likely to refer to them as friends.

Would you sit next to a refugee?

The study is based on the results of a national survey of 6,390 children in Germany in 2018, which asked the students who their friends were and who they would not want to sit next to in class. Most of the refugee students involved in the survey came from Syria and Afghanistan — the two main countries of origin of people seeking protection in Germany.

The results, published this week in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, showed that the refugee children had fewer friends and experienced more rejection than their non-refugee peers.

But in a more mixed or ‘high-diversity’ classroom, it was much less likely for a child to say they would not want to share a desk with a refugee or asylum seeker, and more likely that they would name a refugee student as a friend.

The research found that there are two processes at work here: In a classroom with a high proportion of ‘non-German’ children, you are more likely to get people who are accepting of other non-Germans, the researchers explained. But also, ethnic majority (i.e. second-generation German) students are less inclined to reject refugee peers if they are surrounded by diversity.

The study suggests that this finding – that more diversity does not lead to greater rejection by the ethnic majority group – is an important one, because it challenges critical views of multiculturalism.

A large proportion – about half – of refugees and migrants in Germany are under the age of 18.

These young people need more than just access to education. Having positive and supportive relationships with others their own age in turn leads to them achieving better grades at school and results in overall better health and wellbeing for minority students.

The study suggests that if you take these away, the educational success and psychological adjustment of refugee adolescents will likely be put at risk.

Barriers to acceptance

So what is it that is stopping students from accepting their refugee peers?

There are several possible reasons, the researchers behind the study say. One is language, which is often said to be a major barrier to integration. Traumatic experiences can also make it hard for young refugees to adjust.

Other explanations for refugees having lower levels of social integration or acceptance in the classroom include the fact that they are likely to have joined the class later when friendships between other students have already formed. There is also the dynamics of friendship groups, which often grow and develop between people of the same ethnic group.

Moreover, the study also points out that social integration is not a one-sided process: “[T]he attitudes and behaviors of peers [is] crucial,” it notes.

What should policy makers do with these findings which, taken at face value, seem to suggest that refugee students should attend schools that are already ethnically diverse?

If they were to take this approach, it might jeopardize refugee students’ language development, which usually benefits from having a high proportion of majority-ethnic children in the classroom.

Steering refugee children into diverse schools could also lead to segregation instead of integration, and that would not help in promoting positive attitudes between German and non-German students, the study suggests.

There are some concrete steps that could “mitigate the negative consequences of prejudice,” according to the researchers. They recommend that teachers and principals are made aware of the challenges and that they support integration by, among other things, encouraging cooperation and showing support for mixing ethnic groups.

With global forced migration having become a ‘megatrend,’ Boda and Lorenz argue promoting the social integration of refugees, including adolescents, will remain crucially important for the refugees themselves. According to them, it will also reduce negative attitudes and prejudice towards immigrants — a problem which is widespread in Western societies.

Source: Schools survey: Non-German students more likely to ‘sit next to a …

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