Sometimes it only takes only a few words to signal a major conflict. Before Angela Merkel gathered the governors of Germany’s states in the Chancellery three weeks ago to determine tougher deportation measures in the country, she sent out the draft of a planned joint statement to be made with the regional leaders. The statement noted that a “greater national effort” was needed.

By the next draft, those words had already been placed in parentheses. The final official statement by the governors said, “Considerable further efforts are needed from the federal government and the states.” Never has a great national effort seemed to deflate so quickly.

The state of Thuringia, home to a left-wing coalition government comprised of the Left Party, the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Greens didn’t even attend the meeting. Instead Governor Bodo Ramelow of the Left Party sent a note of protest that was half as long as the resolution itself. And although Schleswig-Holstein Governor Torsten Albrig of the center-left SPD approved the statement, one week later he announced his state would stop deportations to Afghanistan. The move prompted the protest of German Interior Thomas de Maizière, who said, “This is not how you work together.”

Divisive Political Issue

The deportation of migrants whose asylum applications have been rejected has become one of the most divisive political issues going into this year’s federal election in Germany. The question now is whether Germany can show as much firmness when it comes to deportations as it showed heart when it opened its borders to refugees during the fall of 2015, allowing hundreds of thousands to enter the country.

The federal government has made it its goal to massively increase the number of deportations. It wants to send a message of deterrence to people outside Germany, but also to show its own citizens that while Germany is generous when it comes to providing protection to people in need, it also moves decisively to remove those that do not need asylum.

This has prompted considerable resistance at the state level. Is it really justifiable, some ask, to deport people to unstable countries like Afghanistan? Does it truly make sense to send migrants who are well-integrated and, in some cases, have already been living and working in Germany for years, back to their home countries?

As a result of this debate, the deportations are being handled in wildly different ways from state to state. While some states governed by the left-leaning SPD and Greens are showing more reserve, from the perspective of the Christian Social Union, the Bavarian sister party to Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), deportations of rejected asylum-seekers cannot happen quickly enough. Baden-Württemberg, which has a coalition government bringing together the center-right CDU and the Greens, is also rigorous about deportations — so much so that courts have already intervened several times all the way up to the Federal Constitutional Court. The high court’s rapporteur, Ulrich Maidowski, is critical, saying “Basically, the military situation there changes daily.”

Is Germany Kicking Out the Wrong People?

For many refugees, their fate is dependent on the state where they have been placed, meaning that who gets to stay and who is forced to leave is decided by chance. Depending on whether an asylum-seeker is placed in Schleswig-Holstein or in Bavaria, they can expect leniency — or toughness.

Things are made even more unfair by the chaos within the authorities and the practical difficulties of deportations. Rejected asylum-seekers who have resorted to tricks or deception to obtain a residence permit in Germany can profit from this state of affairs: They invent convincing stories, produce dodgy medical checkups or simply go into hiding. In the end, it’s often not people who present a potential threat to Germany — those who are violent or are criminals — who get deported, but rather law-abiding, well-integrated people that the country could actually use right now.

Afghanistan is the perfect example. The German government considers at least some parts of the unstable country to be safe enough to return rejected asylum-seekers to. The Interior Ministry and the Foreign Ministry affirmed this in a letter to the states last week. Even liberal countries like Sweden and Norway are deporting people to Afghanistan on a “significantly higher scale,” the letter stated. It also noted that 3,300 Afghans voluntarily left Germany last year to return home. “They see a future in the country and obviously consider the security situation to be tolerable.”

more:    http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/repatriation-of-refugees-emerges-as-german-election-issue-a-1137859.html