A shed made of boards, behind it a space of six square meters, without windows. A family of four from Ukraine lives here - mother, father and two children. Claudia Kruse, who for eight years has been responsible for integration in the small municipality of Odenthal, not far from Cologne, feels pain that she has to accommodate people in such a miserable way. But he sees no other way out.
Buildings that are not suitable at all
Every week, the regional administration in Cologne sends new and new asylum seekers to the municipality. “Sometimes, when a mother arrives with a small child, we have to move other people, which represents a huge logistical challenge for the municipality,” says Kruse in an ARD report on the subject of migrants.
Odental, a municipality with a population of about 15,000 in western Germany, is currently hosting 565 refugees - three times more than in 2015 - at the time of the great refugee wave, the publication said. These people have the right to language courses, as well as a place for their children in kindergarten or school - at least in theory. In practice, however, local authorities are only concerned with “accommodating people in some way”, says Kruse – sometimes in buildings that are not at all suitable for it.
Degrading conditions
The municipal commissioner for integration does not approve of this and says: “It has nothing to do with human dignity when a family with two children has to live in the dark, without windows. And where is my dignity left if I have to compromise my personal values every time to accommodate people in this way?“, says Kruse.
The non-party mayor of Odenthal, Robert Lennerts, believes that Germany has failed in its refugee policy. He took office in 2015, organized the first major influx of refugees, created structures and sheltered people decentralized to integrate them more quickly. Today this is already impossible. This is another reason why Lennerts does not want to run for mayor again next year.
An entire neighborhood of people with rejected asylum applications
He is particularly annoyed by the fact that many people with rejected asylum applications are transferred to the municipality, who - therefore - have no prospects of staying in Germany. About a quarter of the people admitted to Odenthal have precisely this status. And the people who have been sent back to their homeland can be counted on the fingers of one hand, Lennerts says. This is also felt by the local people and causes increasing dissatisfaction among them, he assures. “We feel that the mood has changed. And it makes it difficult for us to secure new accommodation. If we decide to buy some property for this purpose, we are already facing huge resistance, including on social media,” says the mayor.
But why do people whose asylum applications have been rejected continue to be distributed among the municipalities, asks ARD. The Ministry of Integration of North Rhine-Westphalia refers to paragraph 47 of the Asylum Act. According to him, anyone who has lived up to 18 months in a state accommodation center is then allocated to a municipality. This also applies to “persons who, at the time of their transfer, have rejected applications, that is, they must leave the country”.
An exception is made for asylum seekers who come from safe countries of origin, such as Turkey. They remain in the state accommodation center until they leave the country permanently. Another exception applies to minors and their families: they are allocated to the municipalities after six months at most - regardless of how far the asylum procedure has reached.
Speeding up border procedures
Against this background, Germany is determined to speed up extradition procedures under the Dublin Agreement, that is, for the authorities to more quickly establish from where an asylum seeker arrived in Germany. According to the Dublin Regulation, he must apply for asylum in the country through which he entered the territory of the EU, the publication recalls.
For this purpose, the Federal Police will conduct on-the-spot interviews with asylum seekers and will be able to draw information from the EU's central identification database EURODAC. In addition, the police will have to prevent attempts by the affected persons to abscond – for example by placing them in places of temporary detention in close proximity to the relevant border crossing. To this end, the police must obtain a court-approved detention request, and federal state courts will be required to act as quickly as possible.
There are currently 800 places in Germany to temporarily hold asylum seekers pending their extradition, which German Interior Minister Nancy Fesser says is woefully insufficient. According to her, the return of people directly from the German borders complies with national law.