Refugee Policy (Germany)

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As a refugee policy in Germany all of the legal requirements and practice of dealing the Federal Republic of Germany and its predecessor states with refugees and asylum seekers referred who enter the state or who wish to reside there permanently or should.

History of refugee reception until 1990

Holy Roman Empire since the Reformation

With the implementation of the principle of “ Cuius regio, eius religio ” in the Peace of Augsburg , the basis for the type of religious refugee who belonged to the “wrong” denomination and therefore fled to an area whose sovereign belonged to his own faith was created in the Holy Roman Empire . So was z. B. Cologne during the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) a place of refuge for Catholics, among them also high dignitaries.

The Mark Brandenburg had lost about half of the population through the Thirty Years War ; in the Uckermark even more than 90 percent. The country relied on immigration to make up for these losses. Economic considerations led to skilled workers from agriculture and craftsmen being recruited. But people were also accepted who had to leave their homeland for religious reasons. For example, because of the Edict of Potsdam , Brandenburg accepted the Huguenots who had been expelled from France . Later these were also taken up by those countries in which relatives of the Prussian king ruled, e.g. B. from Ansbach-Bayreuth . Most of the Lutherans from Salzburg also found a new home in the Kingdom of Prussia in 1731/32 , as did the Lutherans and Reformed Protestants who fled from Bohemia in the Nowawes colony (Potsdam-Babelsberg) founded in 1750 .

Religious refugees ( exiles ) from the Habsburg Empire emigrated to other Protestant areas of the Holy Roman Empire before the Tolerance Patent was issued (1781).

During the French Revolution , French “ counter-revolutionaries ” fled to German-speaking areas. The first wave of emigration in the first main phase took place immediately after the events in July and August 1789. The emigrants in the summer of 1789 were mainly the high nobility , especially the direct relatives of the king, as well as parts of the high clergy and the military leadership. The second wave began in the summer of 1790 with the entry into force of the laws to abolish the feudal system and the civil constitution . Again, nobles, clergymen and officers were among the emigrants. A third wave finally began after June 21, 1791, the day of the failed escape of King Louis XVI. to Varennes . The second main phase of emigration took place after the September murders in 1792 and the increasing radicalization of the revolution following the execution of the king in January 1793. More and more members of the third estate emigrated. Among them were many former supporters of the revolution, some even Girondists , who had broken with the new forces in Paris or were now exposed to political persecution. Smaller waves of emigration were caused after the end of the reign of terror by the royalist uprising of October 5, 1795 in Paris, which was suppressed under the command of Napoleon , and the coup d'état of Fructidor (September 4, 1797) .

Empire and Weimar Republic

During the German Empire and the Weimar Republic , Germany was one of the preferred countries for Jews fleeing pogroms and discrimination from Eastern Europe, Eastern Central Europe and Southeastern Europe . The first great wave of East Jewish refugees reached Germany as a result of the Russian Revolution and Counter-Revolution in 1904/05. With the First World War, which turned Poland into a major theater of war, the second great wave of East Jewish emigration began. As a result of the blockade of the Central Powers, this wave was directed mainly towards Central Europe, Germany and Austria. Hundreds of thousands of Polish Jews immigrated to Vienna and Berlin: children of a foreign culture, with foreign jargon, foreign customs and foreign conceptions. They came mostly as refugees, impoverished and forced to eke out their lives in every way. However, there is no evidence to support the assumption that Jews from the East brought with them an increased tendency to criminality from their regions of origin.

The historian Anne-Christin Saß found out that in the second half of the 1920s Berlin had developed from a place where the immigration of Jews who had actually wanted to move to the USA or Western Europe was stopped, to the “world jewish center”. This change not only intensified anti-Semitic resentments on the part of the political right, but also triggered defensive reactions from fully integrated "Western Jews" who were in some cases even assimilated to German culture .

Admission of escaped and expelled Germans and “Displaced Persons” 1945–1949

According to the results of a census from 1950, around 12.5 million refugees and displaced persons from the separated German eastern territories had come to the four occupation areas and Berlin since the end of the Second World War . In addition, 3 million refugees and displaced persons came to Germany from Czechoslovakia, 1.4 million from Poland on the pre-war borders, 300,000 from the Free City of Danzig, which was under the administration of the League of Nations until 1939, almost 300,000 from Yugoslavia, 200,000 from Hungary and 130,000 from Romania . In the villages in particular, these refugees and displaced persons often met with rejection from the long-time residents.

In August 1952, the so-called Burden Equalization Act was passed to compensate for the loss of assets and jobs of the displaced . The legal status of “ displaced persons ”, “ displaced persons ”, “ Soviet zone refugees ” and repatriates is regulated by the Federal Expellees and Refugees Act (BVFG) that came into force on June 5, 1953 .

The so-called " Displaced Persons " (DP) played a special role in the history of refugee policy in Germany in the period after 1945. Most of them were deported to Germany in the course of the Second World War, mainly as forced laborers . According to a generous definition, liberated prisoners of war, Eastern Europeans who came to Germany voluntarily after the start of the war, and refugees from the Soviet army were also considered "DPs". “DPs” should (and mostly wanted to) repratriated , i. H. be returned to their countries of origin. Citizens of the Soviet Union were also repatriated against their will; Poles and Balts, as well as the forced laborers from parts of Belarus and the Ukraine, who had lived on Polish territory before the war, had the choice of going back to their homeland, emigrating to another country, or staying in Germany. Since Stalinist dictatorships were established everywhere in Eastern Europe , many “displaced persons”, especially those who were suspected of collaborating with the Nazi occupiers of their country of origin, endeavored not to leave Germany because they had to expect high fines in their home country. For example, the former Latvian general and later general of the Waffen-SS Rūdolfs Bangerskis died in exile in Oldenburg (Oldb) in 1958 . Federal German lawmakers call “displaced persons” “homeless foreigners”. Their legal status on the basis of the “Law on the Legal Status of Homeless Foreigners in the Federal Territory” of April 25, 1951 is similar to that of recognized asylum seekers.

In the Regensburg Ganghofersiedlung (the former “ Göring Home” of the Nazis), a settlement for around 5000 “displaced persons” from Ukraine was built between 1945 and 1949 on the initiative of the Americans. Similar settlements emerged elsewhere in Germany. There was hardly any contact with Germans outside the camps or settlements or they were of a superficial nature. In 1950, the Rheinische Post commented on the dissolution of a "Poland camp" in Solingen with "DPs" on it with the remark that the " Polish economy " was finally over ; instead of the “post-war eyesore”, “Bergisch cleanliness will soon prevail again in the disfigured area”. In addition, the Ukrainian DPs were unpopular in many places because they were viewed as privileged in view of the emergency situation at the time, partly consisted of former Nazi helpers and formed petty criminal gangs who dominated the black market that was necessary to supply the population at the time .

Refugees from the GDR in the Federal Republic of Germany

From the founding of the GDR on October 7, 1949 to June 1990, over 3.8 million people left the state, many of them illegally and at great risk. This figure also includes 480,000 GDR citizens who have legally emigrated since 1962 . Around 400,000 returned to the GDR in the course of time.

The Federal Government's policy towards refugees from the GDR maintained a decidedly “ welcoming culture ”.

Foreign refugees in the Federal Republic of Germany 1949–1990

Based on the experiences of German emigrants who had to flee from the National Socialists on a country that took them in as a refugee, the following succinct provision was included in the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany as Article 16 in 1948/1949 : "Politically persecuted people enjoy the right to asylum" . The Federal Republic of Germany thus undertakes to grant the right of residence to politically persecuted people.

The second legal basis for the asylum policy of the Federal Republic of Germany is the Geneva Refugee Convention , which was passed in 1951 and entered into force in 1954 (officially known as the Agreement on the Legal Status of Refugees ), which provides minimum standards for dealing with refugees worldwide. The group of people covered by this convention is called “ convention refugees ”.

Between 1953 and 1979, an average of 8,600 asylum applications were made each year; the number of average applications rose to more than 70,000 between 1980 and 1990. The main reason for the increase in the number of asylum seekers was the military coup in Turkey in 1980 . It led thousands of Turks and especially Kurds to flee to the Federal Republic of Germany.

In retrospect, it is criticized that the Federal Republic of Germany, due to the recruitment ban for migrant workers in 1973 and the lack of an immigration law, left only two options for non-Germans from countries outside the European Union: family reunification and assertion of the basic right to asylum. The “eye of the needle” of the asylum was said to be very early on, “soon opened powerfully from the outside and drawn in again and again from the inside” “in a public defensive battle that created the enemy image of the so-called 'asylum seeker'”.

During the Cold War , hundreds of thousands of people from the states of Eastern Central Europe fled to the west via the " Iron Curtain ". In particular after the suppression of the Hungarian uprising of 1956, the violent termination of the “ Prague Spring ” in Czechoslovakia in 1968, and the Solidarność movement in Poland, politically motivated flight once again became a mass phenomenon. The refugees found admission and asylum mainly in the countries of the NATO pact states, especially in the Federal Republic of Germany.

Paradoxically, only after the Warsaw Pact countries opened their borders to the west did migrants from the now post-communist countries make up the majority of asylum seekers in Germany: in 1986 around 74.8 percent of asylum seekers came from the “Third World”. In 1993, 72.1 percent came from Europe and mainly from Eastern, Central Eastern and Southeastern Europe.

At the end of 1978 the Federal Republic decided to take in several South Vietnamese refugees. This was preceded by media coverage of the misery of the so-called boat people . In order to save the 40,000 affected Vietnamese, who had taken in the Federal Republic of Germany, long asylum procedures, the category of “ humanitarian refugees ” was created. In 1986 the human rights organization Pro Asyl was founded, which campaigns for the protection and rights of persecuted people in Germany and Europe.

Refugees accepted by the GDR

During the years of German division, politically persecuted people from Greece , Chile , Angola , Mozambique , El Salvador and Nicaragua also fled to the GDR. However, they had little contact with the population there in everyday life because they hardly lived with them, but were housed in special dormitories.

By 1962, the GDR took in over 200 deserted soldiers from NATO forces, primarily US soldiers.

Refugee Policy 1990–2015

In the 1990s, in the wake of the dissolution of the East-West conflict, there were numerous crises and wars in Europe and around the world. There was war in the former Yugoslavia ; There were border disputes between Ethiopia and Eritrea , as well as between Mali and Burkina Faso ; There was civil war in Burundi , as well as in the Republic of the Congo , Senegal and Zimbabwe . By 1992 the number of refugees rose to 440,000. In response to this there was a wave of arson attacks on foreigners' accommodation (in Hoyerswerda , Rostock-Lichtenhagen , Mölln and Solingen ). The electoral acceptance of right-wing extremist parties increased.

As a reaction to this crisis, Germany's asylum policy was essentially changed by the addition of Article 16a in the Basic Law: Anyone who comes from a “ safe country of origin ” or who entered from a “ safe third country ” has since then no longer been able to successfully claim political rights To raise asylum. In 1993 the Asylum Seekers Benefits Act was passed. Among other things, it stipulated that foreigners who were dependent on state transfer payments from the start received a lower amount than Germans and their equals. It fell to 40 percent below the rate for unemployment benefit II . In 1997 the Dublin Convention was concluded, through which the German refugee policy was secured under European law.

As Germany’s neighboring countries are only considered to be “safe third countries”, the number of asylum seekers has decreased steadily since 1993, from around 320,000 to a minimum of 28,018 in 2008. It was planned that asylum seekers would only then have a chance of a positive decision should have if they entered by plane. As part of the “asylum compromise”, asylum seekers who land at German airports go through an accelerated asylum procedure in the transit area. As a rule, a decision on the application should be made in two days, the objection period is only three days. The number of cases was also kept low by the fact that under Directive 2001/51 / EC airlines who allow third-country nationals (i.e. citizens of countries that are not members of the European Union) to enter an EU country without valid entry documents have to pay fines. the amount of which has been the same across Europe since 2001, namely € 3,000 to € 5,000 per illegally transported passenger.

Jewish quota refugees since 1990

After 1990, Jews from the former Soviet Union came to Germany as quota refugees . With them it was possible to develop Jewish life again where the Jewish communities had been (almost) wiped out under National Socialism.

Yugoslav Wars (1991–1999)

In the course of the Yugoslav wars, 350,000 citizens of the dissolving state of Yugoslavia fled to Germany by 1995. That corresponds to 48 percent of the refugees who left the former Yugoslavia at the time. Except for a few cases of hardship, most of them returned to their homeland by 2003.

Asylum Policy in the Context of the Refugee Crisis

The entry of several hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants triggered a refugee crisis in Germany in 2015 . In the course of the refugee crisis, Germany, like other countries in Europe and the United States, tightened its legal regulations on migration and asylum.

In September 2015, it became increasingly difficult for the authorities to accommodate the large number of refugees. This particularly affected the state initial reception centers (LEA). These are accommodations in which the refugees were accommodated after they were picked up by the federal police at a train station, for example. In order to initially at least approximately meet the demand, the regional councils responsible for this in the federal states opened provisional needs-based initial reception facilities (BEA) at many locations . The number of people living in the LEAs and BEAs varied daily. In 2015, they were accommodated in these initial reception centers for a maximum of three months. In September 2015, for example, the LEA in Karlsruhe had a capacity of 1,000 residents, but actually 3,500 people live there.

It also turned out to be difficult to register newcomers quickly and, after registration , to quickly separate refugees who have to be protected under the Geneva Refugee Convention from migrants who are legally not entitled to stay in Germany. Finding illegal immigrants and the quick deportation of non-residents also proved difficult . This situation in particular led to a controversial social debate about German refugee policy.

In her government statement of February 17, 2016, shortly before the EU summit in Brussels on February 18 and 19, the Chancellor said that she would continue to work for a European-Turkish solution to the refugee issue. The aim is to "noticeably and sustainably reduce the number of refugees in order to be able to continue to help those people who really need our protection". This goal is to be achieved by combating the causes of flight , protecting the EU's external borders - especially the border between Greece and Turkey - and an orderly and controlled influx of refugees. Those arriving at the Austrian-German border are now registered and checked. A uniform refugee ID will be introduced gradually.

In October 2015, a legislative package with major changes in the 2015 Asylum Law - Asylum Package I came into force. On February 3, 2016, the federal cabinet passed a second legislative package with stricter asylum rules - Asylum Package II . Among other things, the introduction of special reception facilities (BAE) for certain groups of refugees is planned, whose asylum applications should be decided within three weeks, including the possible appeal against the decision of the BAMF in court. The legislative package was passed by the Bundestag on February 25, 2016 . Since the legislative package can be viewed in parts as unconstitutional for two years due to the suspension of family reunification for persons entitled to subsidiary protection , the Child Protection Association has asked Federal President Joachim Gauck not to sign the law. It was issued on March 11, 2016 without an accompanying publication of a constitutional assessment by the Federal President and announced in the Federal Law Gazette on March 16, 2016 .

European refugee and asylum policy

From the perspective of 2008, the Federal Agency for Civic Education divided the history of migration and asylum policy, first of the European Communities , and later of the European Union since 1957, into three phases:

  1. 1957–1990: coordinated policies of the member states
  2. 1990–1999: intergovernmental cooperation
  3. 1999–2008: Migration policy as a real community task

See also

Portal: Migration and Integration in Germany  - Articles, categories and more on migration and flight, intercultural dialogue and integration

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hermann Schäfer: Educated migrants made Prussia a great power , In: Die Welt . December 15, 2015
  2. ↑ Brandenburg State Center for Political Education: Welcome culture . February 2015
  3. ^ Matthias Winkler: The migrants of the French Revolution in Hochstift and Diocese of Bamberg . Bamberg historical studies. Volume 5. University of Bamber Press 2010, p. 41
  4. ↑ Eastern Jews in Germany . Jewish Museum Berlin
  5. ^ Tobias Brinkmann: Jewish Migration . European history online . December 3, 2010
  6. ↑ Jochen Oltmer: "Immigration to Germany contrary to the prohibition": Eastern European Jews in the Empire and in the Weimar Republic . In: Ashkenaz - magazine for the history and culture of the Jews . 2007, H. 1, pp. 97-121
  7. ^ RN Coudenhove-Kalergi: Jewish hatred of today. Chapter “Migration to the West of the Eastern Jews” . Vienna / Zurich 1935
  8. ↑ Andrea Ehrlich: The Shtetl - Economic and Social Structures of the Eastern Jewish Way of Life . hagalil.com . 1996
  9. ^ Thomas Medicus: Berlin as the center and Jerusalem of Europe . In: The world . April 12, 2012
  10. ↑ Ludger Heid: Eastern Jews in Germany: Only a few felt related to them . In: The time . April 3, 1987
  11. ↑ Klaus J. Bade / Jochen Oltmer: Normal Case Migration: Texts on the immigrant population and new immigration in the unified Germany since 1990 . Federal Agency for Political Education 2004. Chapter Migration in the Cold War ( online )
  12. ↑ From forced laborer to displaced person . History @ tlas Lower Saxony
  13. ^ Foundation "Remembrance Responsibility Future": After the Third Reich: Displaced Persons and "Repatriates" .
  14. ↑ Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection / juris GmbH: Law on the legal status of homeless foreigners in the federal territory
  15. ↑ a b A small Ukraine in Regensburg . In: Slavic traces (Ed .: Europaeum. Ost-West-Zentrum der Universität Regensburg). 2014. pp. 19–29
  16. ↑ Treated like a third rate pack . In: Der Spiegel . Edition 32/1983. August 8, 1983
  17. ↑ Bettina Effner, Helge Heidemeyer (ed.): Flight in divided Germany. Marienfelde emergency reception center memorial , be.bra verlag, Berlin 2005, p. 27f.
  18. ^ Tilman Wickert: Collective Review: Refugees and Refugee Policy in the Cold War . Federal Agency for Civic Education. 17th July 2013
  19. ↑ Lilli Sippel / Reiner Klinholz: [ asylum seekers in Germany ]. Berlin Institute for Population and Development. April 2009
  20. ↑ Klaus J. Bade / Jochen Oltmer: Normal Case Migration: Texts on the immigrant population and new immigration in the unified Germany since 1990 . Federal Agency for Civic Education. 2004. Chapter 2: Migration in the Cold War ( online )
  21. ^ Nils spoonbone: Political asylum in the Cold War. Czechoslovak emigration after 1968 ( memento of the original from January 26, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Goethe University Frankfurt / Main @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.geschichte.uni-frankfurt.de
  22. ↑ Klaus J. Bade / Jochen Oltmer: Flight and Asylum since 1990 . Federal Agency for Civic Education. March 15, 2005
  23. ↑ Julia Kleinschmidt: The acceptance of the first “boat people” in the Federal Republic . Federal Agency for Political Education . November 26, 2013
  24. ↑ Peter Köpf: Where is Lieutenant Adkins? Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 2013
  25. ↑ Claudia Grimmer: The 90s in Germany. There was something? . Bavarian radio . September 11, 2015
  26. ↑ Klaus J. Bade / Jochen Oltmer: Flight and Asylum since 1990 . Federal Agency for Civic Education. March 15, 2005
  27. ↑ Number of asylum applications (total) in Germany from 1995 to 2015 . Statista. The statistics portal
  28. ↑ Directive 2001/51 / EC of the Council of June 28, 2001 supplementing the provisions of Article 26 of the Agreement for the Implementation of the Schengen Agreement of June 14, 1985: Fines for transport companies . EUR-lex
  29. ↑ Wolfgang Bosswick: War refugees from the former Yugoslavia by destination country (UNHCR estimate, as of March 1995) . European Forum for Migration Studies. University of Bamberg. December 3, 2003
  30. ↑ Capacities of the BEAs and LEAs almost exhausted. In: Badische Zeitung –Online, September 7, 2015.
  31. ^ Government declaration by the Chancellor. Continuing the European way. In: Internet offer of the Federal Government , February 17, 2016.
  32. ↑ Asylum Package Asylum Package I in effect: Overview of the changes in asylum law that will apply from today. In: Pro Asyl from October 23, 2015 - Online on November 17, 2015.
  33. ^ Cabinet adopts stricter refugee laws. In: Spiegel Online , February 3, 2016.
  34. ^ The Asylum Package II - Human Rights in Danger. In: Amnesty International - Online ; accessed on February 21, 2016.
  35. ↑ Asylum Package II - that's it. In: Tagesschau.de , February 25, 2016.
  36. ↑ Focus online: Kinderschutzbund asks Gauck to stop Asylum Package II , March 1, 2016
  37. ↑ Petra Bendel / Marianne Haase: When was that? History of European migration policy up to today . Federal Agency for Civic Education. January 29, 2008