“Underground balance sheet”
No Afghans have yet entered the country via the admission program
September 17, 2023, 7:44 a.m
Listen to article
This audio version was artificially generated. More info | Send feedback
There has been an admission program for particularly vulnerable Afghans for eleven months. However, this is probably more of a theoretical nature. According to the federal government, no one has traveled to Germany through this so far, and the visa process has only started for 20 Afghans.
Eleven months after it started, no one has come to Germany through the admission program set up by the federal government for particularly vulnerable people from Afghanistan. In a response from the government to a request from the left-wing faction it says: “The first entries of people with a confirmation of admission as part of the federal admission program are currently being prepared and should take place promptly.”
Available figures indicate that no large number of Afghans will be allowed to enter the country via the program in the near future. According to the federal government, as of September 6th, only 20 people who had received confirmation of admission through the program had started the visa process and conducted security interviews.
“This is an underground balance,” said the Left Party’s refugee policy spokeswoman, Clara Bünger. “I wonder whether the federal government is still interested in seriously implementing the admission program or whether it is waiting for public interest in the issue to wane and then quietly letting it fizzle out.”
Waiting period for relatives is one year
Bünger also criticized long waiting times for Afghans who want to come to Germany to be reunited with their relatives. In its response to the left-wing faction’s request, the government said that the waiting time for an appointment at the application locations in Islamabad and Tehran is currently over a year. The federal government has offered more than 40,000 particularly vulnerable Afghans and their immediate family members the prospect of admission to Germany. This involves a good 24,800 former local employees and their families as well as more than 15,300 other people who are considered particularly at risk because of their commitment to democracy.
Meanwhile, Afghans are still getting to Germany by other means – often with the support of gangs of smugglers. According to the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, 35,798 Afghans applied for asylum in Germany for the first time in the first eight months of this year. After Syria, Afghanistan, where the militant Islamist Taliban have been in power since August 2021, takes second place on the list of countries of origin with the most access. The Union parliamentary group’s domestic policy spokesman, Alexander Throm from the CDU, had called for the admission program to be ended in view of the increasing number of refugees.