According to a new report, North Africans are rarely approved for asylum – but Germany is having a difficult time getting them to leave.
The migrant report released Wednesday by the German government showed that only one out of every two migrants who were supposed to be deported actually left the country.
According to the report from the Federal Agency of Migration and Refugees (BAMF), in the entire year of 2015 only two migrants who came from North Africa were accepted as candidates for asylum, Die Welt reports.
The right of asylum in Germany is granted to individuals who are politically persecuted by the government of their country of origin. Economic migrants — or even those affected by war — are not candidates for asylum according to Article 16 of the German Basic Law.
The German government has used other agreements in order to facilitate the asylum process for migrants, such as the Geneva Convention and the European Union’s (EU) Dublin Regulation which has broadened the scope of who can be approved for asylum.
Even with these additional agreements BAMF could only approve two migrants for asylum status out of a total of 2,605 North African migrant applications.
This past Friday the German Bundestag decided overwhelmingly to classify Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia as safe countries for migrants, though the legislation has not yet been formally adopted as law. The issue for Germany is that in 2015 an estimated 26,000 migrants came from North Africa and in the first quarter of this year the government has only managed to deport 57 of them.
Citing the previous reclassification of Serbia and Kosovo as “safe”, the head of the supreme determining authority, Frank-Jürgen Weise, stated: “As the Western Balkan countries have been designated as safe countries of origin, the access of asylum has practically gone down to zero.”
Further, he said that the government needs to be clear to prospective migrants about the realities of travelling to Germany for asylum, and that the dreams people smugglers sell them will not be reflected by reality once they arrive.
Long waiting times for asylum mean that the process of rejection and deportation is even tougher for the government; 28,510 migrants have been waiting over two years for decisions on their cases.
It is unlikely that the processes will speed up given that some estimate that between 300,000 to 400,000 migrants are still waiting to start their asylum claim, some reports saying that the country may be missing up to 600,000 migrants altogether.
Deportations are also non existent when it comes to underage migrants as the government will not send them back.
The question as to whether deportations are successful when they are made can be answered by citing the cases of migrants who have been deported on multiple occasions only to re-enter the country.
Indeed, some migrants who have a long list of crimes under their belts have been deported several times only to re-enter Germany, as was the case with one North African drug dealer who was deported over ten times.