June 19, 2022

Germany's racially biased asylum system

topic:	Refugees and Asylum
located:	Germany, Ukraine, Russia, Syria, Afghanistan
editor:	Abby Klinkenberg

In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February, over 4.9 million Ukrainian refugees have fled to safety across Europe. As the continent grapples with its greatest humanitarian crisis since World War II, it is becoming increasingly evident that not all asylum-seekers are treated equally. While it is understandable that such a rapid and urgent influx of Ukrainians has strained the social and bureaucratic systems across Europe, the disparity in care between Ukrainian refugees and those who have fled from other conflicts is a blight on Europe’s humanitarian record. Case in point is Germany’s recent decision to evict hundreds of Afghan refugees to facilitate the welcoming of Ukrainians.

Since Germany accepted 1.1 million refugees in 2015 - 40 percent of whom were fleeing the Syrian war - it has held the status of the country housing the most refugees on the continent. At a global moment when other European states closed their borders, erected fences, and employed disparaging rhetoric towards refugees, Germany chose to welcome them. Since then, immigration and integration issues have contributed to the rise of the German far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and haunted the country’s political landscape. It came as no surprise, then, that Germany took in a much smaller number of refugees than its reputation may have suggested when, last August, Afghan refugees sought safety from the Taliban. That wave of 12,000 Afghan refugees was the last before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine upended Europe.  

Over the past three months, over 780,000 Ukrainian refugees have entered Germany - and, instead of making more room, the German state has chosen to displace Afghan refugees in order to accommodate them. Across the country, hundreds of Afghans have been evicted with as little as 24-hours’ notice. According to Tareq Alaows, a board member of the Berlin Refugee Council, “the evictions purposefully weren’t publicised. Some people had lived in their homes for years and were ripped out of their social structures, including children who were moved to locations far from their respective schools.” He emphasised that evicted individuals were afraid to speak up out of fear that their immigration status would be compromised if they resisted.

While the Berlin’s Senate Department for Integration, Labour, and Social Services has stated that its decision to move forward with the evictions was “based on operationally necessary and difficult considerations,” it has admitted that its operations aimed at accommodating Ukrainian refugees have “caused additional hardships to the Afghan families,” which they “regret.” The government has asserted that it has provided new, comparable “permanent” accommodation to the evicted refugees, but the itinerant experiences of evicted individuals and families run counter to this assertion.

In a piece published by Foreign Policy, one individual shared his experience of being separated from his brothers and mother; a mother shared that she was having difficulty finding a kindergarten in her new neighbourhood to accept her daughter.

In part, the chaos is a product of bureaucratic challenges: while the temporary residency of new asylum-seekers is typically re-evaluated every six months, Afghans who entered Germany from August 2021 were automatically granted a three-year residence permit. Consequently, their position in the German system has been advanced to a point comparable to those “who have already been living in Germany for years, able to speak the language and to navigate the system.” These Afghan refugees have not been offered the same assistance because, “according to [their] immigration status, [they] should have been living in Germany for years.”

Ultimately, the German state has chosen to destabilise the lives of already-precarious refugees by evicting them in what has been described as “racial discrimination” that prioritises the plight of Ukrainians. The fact remains that all individuals fleeing conflicts around the world are deserving of fair and equitable accommodation - Germany must correct its double standards and better regulate its treatment of all refugees and asylum-seekers in order to live up to its reputation as one of Europe’s leaders in humanitarian affairs.

Photo by Maria Teneva