According to Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, the planned measures for faster returns are necessary in order to maintain social acceptance for the protection of refugees.
“With our legislative package, we are ensuring that people without the right to stay have to leave our country more quickly,” said the SPD politician to the “Rheinische Post”. A number of innovations will prevent people from going into hiding before they can be deported.
Faeser defends the law
The draft for the so-called Return Improvement Act, which the Bundestag is debating today, is intended to simplify procedures to ensure that more people without the right to remain are deported.
To date, deportations have often failed at the last moment, for example because those affected cannot be found. For this reason, for example, the maximum duration of detention on departure should be extended from the current 10 days to 28 days. In addition, officials in shared accommodation should also be allowed to enter rooms other than the room of the person being deported.
“These restrictive measures are necessary so that we can continue to live up to our humanitarian responsibility for the people we have to protect from war and terror – like the 1.1 million refugees from Ukraine,” said Faeser. “And these restrictive measures are necessary so that we maintain social acceptance for the protection of refugees and successful integration.”
Criticism of the proposal
The co-chair of the Green Youth, Katharina Stolla, warned against this: “The deportation law means an incredible disenfranchisement of people who actually urgently need protection,” she told the “Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung”. From their point of view, the federal government is being driven by the right.
The Green European Parliamentarian Erik Marquardt had already questioned the draft law on Wednesday. The reason for this was several reports from lawyers who fear that sea rescuers and other people who help refugees cross a border free of charge could be prosecuted in the future. This legal system follows “a right-wing agenda that can criminalize humanitarian aid.” This is a completely wrong signal, especially in times like these. Marquardt called on his party to renegotiate the law.
There were also critical words from the Union. “The Greens are writing an obligation into the law to inform lawyers about the measures before they are taken into custody to leave the country – but this means that those who are obliged to leave the country will be out of the woods if they are to be taken into custody,” said the Union parliamentary group’s domestic policy spokesman, Alexander Throm (CDU). The repatriation improvement law is in reality a “repatriation deterioration law”.
