The overloaded office pushes 15,000 unanswered inquiries in front of it. This has existential consequences for the applicants. Now trainees should help. But the authority needs more specialist staff – and could be separated from the controversial regulatory office.
Commerzbank headquarters in Frankfurt: The supervisory complaint by a department head at the institute against the immigration authorities has attracted a lot of attention.
The conditions in the completely overburdened Frankfurt immigration office finally seem to be getting a little more attention from the top of the city administration, the magistrate. City councilor Annette Rinn (FDP), who heads the responsible department for order, security and fire protection, wants to present measures to counteract the catastrophic situation at a committee meeting at the beginning of this week, according to the NZZ.
In the eyes of employees of the immigration office, however, this is mainly about plugging holes, as can be heard from the office. The measures would at most help to alleviate the distress in the immigration office. This is not independent in the Frankfurt administration, but is subordinate to the regulatory office. That seems to be part of the problem, because nobody in the magistrate has wanted to hear the authorities’ calls for help for years.
«Help» by trainees and temporary workers
According to reports, eight temporary workers are now to help in the immigration office until the end of March 2023, and then around twelve trainees are to support the authority for a total of around six months. In addition, the regulatory office of the foreigners authority wants to temporarily assign staff from other departments. The interim mayor Nargess Eskandari-Grünberg (Greens) has also announced a task force, but its task is still unclear.
However, the new measures are hardly suitable for improving the performance of the foreigners authority in the long term, according to the authority. Non-specialist employees of the public order office, trainees and temporary workers would first have to be trained intensively before they could represent any real help. At best, they could relieve the full-time employees of routine activities.
For a sustainable orientation of the foreigners authority, two things are needed from the inside perspective of the office: firstly, more specialist staff and secondly, a repositioning of the authority. The immigration authorities can only fulfill their tasks with permanent specialists who are offered a reasonable working environment.
In addition, the foreigners authority could be separated from the regulatory office and run as an independent authority, as in many other German cities. So far, the needs of the immigration authorities seem to have been lost in the regulatory office, because its head, Karin Müller (CDU), has known about the serious problems since she took office in May 2020. Since the coalition in Frankfurt’s city hall, the Römer, wanted to further develop the immigration office anyway, this would be a plausible step in the right direction.
Regulatory office at the center of failure
In mid-November, the NZZ reported on a disciplinary complaint by Commerzbank against the entire immigration office and about 15,000 unanswered e-mail inquiries, most of them applications. This caused a lot of media coverage, because hundreds, if not thousands, of applicants run the risk of not being able to prove their right of residence and therefore losing their jobs.
A media conference called in response to the report made the problems obvious. The head of department, Rinn, who has been in office since autumn 2021, and the head of the regulatory office, Müller, gave the impression that they had started the conversation without a clear message and strategy or a clear goal, which was correspondingly planless and helpless.
“The regulatory office does not have its tasks under control,” says Kerry Reddington from the municipal representation for foreigners (KAV). This affects not only the deficits in the immigration authorities, but also those in the city police, which also belongs to the regulatory office. For example, they primarily look on at open street prostitution and the open drug scene in Frankfurt’s Bahnhofsviertel instead of fighting them. “For years, the regulatory office has lacked the political will and the necessary fighting spirit to stand up for the citizens,” says Reddington. That made him increasingly stunned.
Indeed, since the pandemic, the problems in the train station district have worsened, driving restaurant, shop and other business owners to despair. For at least a year and a half, many of them have been hiring private security to protect staff and customers, or just to keep the sidewalk in front of the store free of drunks, junkies, prostitutes, or aggressive beggars.
Improvement probably only in a few months
Companies are now realizing that complaints can create pressure. The immigration authorities quickly resolved the case of a Commerzbank employee after receiving the administrative complaint. As can be heard from the office, however, there is now an increasing number of complaints as well as other supervisory complaints, for example from a stonemason company and a company for electrical and safety technology.
There will probably only be an improvement in months, when at least the 23 advertised positions are filled and the immigration office puts its new website into operation, which will make it much easier to structure and process inquiries.
You can contact the Frankfurt business editor Michael Rasch on the platforms Twitter, linkedin and Xing follow.