Germany backs ‘Orderly Return Bill’ to deport refugees back home

Ahmed Lamlom

Since 2015, Germany has been going through a number of challenges that were the result of political and social circumstances, as the country with the most powerful economy in Europe, became a potential target for terrorist attacks, which claimed the lives of dozens and injured hundreds more.

Germany hosted hundreds of thousands of refugees who fled the war in Syria and Iraq. All of these challenges pushed Minister of the Interior Horst Seehofer to present his Orderly Return Bill (Geordnete-Rückkehr-Gesetz) to the Cabinet, hoping to strengthen current measures in order to limit and better control asylum law in the country.

After Seehofer got the Cabinet’s support, the plan will go to parliament for debate, and could pass before the summer recess.

Seehofer said his package contained “strong elements” that would facilitate expulsions. Last year, Germany deported about 25,000 people. This represents just over a tenth of the total number of people ordered to leave the country.

The most common reason for a failed deportation is the lack of possession of a valid travel document. Sometimes, migrants themselves do not look after the documents with which they have been issued, or they are found to have given false information, thus making their document invalid, according to Info Migrants News.

Other times, a deportation can fail because the country of origin will refuse to accept the person slated for deportation. At other times, a future-deportee might disappear before they can be deported or might be ill on the day of deportation. Again, in 2018 there were 7,849 last minute stops to deportations for one of these reasons on the day of the deportation itself.

In order to combat the ‘loss’ of documents, the draft law proposes giving those with “unclear identities” a different kind of temporary residence permit which would stop them taking advantage of the chances other people with a residence permit have.

For instance, people with a residence permit have the chance to work or attend language and integration courses.

Many nationalities, according to the government, most often lack any kind of travel document, will have to go their embassies in the future to obtain valid travel documents. When they refuse to do this, they could be fined or be banned from working, or forced to stay in one area until their deportation.

According to the new draft law, it would also be easier to detain potential deportees prior to their deportation. At the moment in Germany, there are only 490 deportation places.

Seehofer aims to use spaces in German prisons for those asked to leave Germany. The deportees would be separated from convicted criminals, says the government, but nevertheless detained. The plan is to be able to bring them from the detention centers to their embassies to prepare their documents for deportation.

Railing against the newcomers, the far-right AfD has become Germany’s biggest opposition party with more than 90 seats in the Bundestag.

The far-right party resorted to gain supporters through speeches about fears of the Islamization of Germany, by focusing on terrorist attacks and crimes by migrants.

In 2016, a teenage Afghan refugee went on an axe rampage; the self-radicalized Daesh fighter, understood to be Muhammad Riyad, injured 15 people with weapons on a train in Wurzburg last night before he was shot dead by police.

The attack has added fuel to the heated debate Europe-wide on immigration, Islam and asylum seekers from across the Middle East and Africa after Germany opened its doors to more than a million migrants from 2015 to 2016.

Also in July 2016, A 21-year-old Syrian refugee was arrested after killing a pregnant woman with a machete in Germany, though police said it did not appear linked to terrorism.

In the same year, a failed Syrian asylum seeker blew himself up and injured 15 other people with a backpack bomb near a festival in the south German town of Ansbach.

German journalist Hans Pfeiffer wrote in an article that the government believes that refugees are one of the reasons behind the rise of the extreme right, therefore, some individuals committed some crimes to convince the public with their ideas.

He also pointed out that if the government is really seeking to get rid of extremism, it would have to do more effort to limit the spread of extremist ideas.

Pfeiffer stressed that there are several steps that must be taken into account when dealing with the extremism situation, as if some Muslims are posing a threat, this must not be reflected on the Muslim community in Germany, because it is serious, and could lead to undesirable consequences.

Last October, Angela Merkel has said her fourth term as Germany’s chancellor will be her last. Speaking after disastrous regional elections in Hesse and Bavaria for her Christian Democrats and its Bavaria-only sister party, Merkel said she saw the results as a “clear signal that things can’t go on as they are”.

Her presumed favoured successor is the party’s secretary general, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who is currently reconsidering the migrant policy in Germany.