Despite the fact North African migrants are almost never granted asylum in Germany, the country managed to deport just 166 citizens of the Maghreb states in the first half of this year.
Although less than two per cent of asylum applications from Moroccan, Algerian, and Tunisian migrants are successful in Germany, the Maghreb countries have yet to be recognised as safe countries of origin due to opposition from the Green party.
The federal government expelled 13,743 migrants from January to June this year. The six countries in the Western Balkans accounted for 75 per cent of the deportations. Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Kosovo and Albania were added last year to Germany’s list of safe countries of origin.
The metropolitan commissioner of the Bundestag’s Union faction, Kai Wegner, said: “It is difficult to understand why we allow people, whose probability [of having their asylum bid rejected is] 98 per cent, stay in our country”.
“We need a deportation summit with the federal and state authorities so that they can jointly and consistently deport people with a legal obligation to leave. The federal government has a duty to support state forces logistically, and to ensure uniform deportation,” Mr. Wegner told Die Welt.
The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party politician said foreigners who threaten public order in Germany and the country’s security should be deported as soon as possible. Mr. Wegner recommended that legal obstacles to deportation should be lowered.
North Rhine-Westphalia state premier Hannelore Kraft called for more support from the federal government for deportations. Around 20,000 North Africans live in Ms. Kraft’s state alone.
State Interior Minister Ralf Jäger, of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), has also been critical of the rate at which Germany is deporting Maghreb citizens. In June he commented: “If [deportation of North Africans] continues at this pace, the pending deportations will take another 25 years.”
Over twice as many migrants left Germany voluntarily than were deported in the first six months of 2016. Of the 34,005 failed asylum seekers who left the country’s central register 84 per cent were from the six Western Balkan countries. Only 378 people who left voluntarily were Algerians, and 341 were Moroccans.
Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière stated in May that 220,000 people in Germany who’d been asked to leave could be legally deported. Another 52,000, he said, lack even temporary toleration from the state and so ought to be deported immediately.
Die Welt reported that reasons migrants remain in Germany despite being obliged to leave range from lack of proof of identity to refusal of countries of origin to accept them, to feigned illness.
In the first six months of 2016, 121 deportations failed due to “acts of resistance”. Eritreans and Iraqis were heavily represented in this category, where pilots refused to transport fiercely resisting migrants on 67 occasions.
Left Party political spokesman Ulla Jelpke accused the European Union (EU) and German government of having failed to give a warm enough welcome to migrants, and criticised deportations.
In January, police figures revealed that North African migrants in Germany are more criminal than other migrant groups. Forty per cent of foreigners from Maghreb countries got into trouble with police within twelve months of arriving in Germany.
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