Moderator Klaas Heufer-Umlauf used the current edition of his show “Late Night Berlin” (ProSieben) to draw attention to the Pham family, who are threatened with deportation. Pham Phi Son and his attorney Jenny Fleischer were guests on the show. Although the Vietnamese has been living and working in Chemnitz for more than 35 years and has a wife and child, the family is to be deported. The reason: In 2016, Mr. Pham stayed three months longer than legally permitted in his native Vietnam. For medical treatment, he explained. The deportation has only been prevented so far thanks to the great media attention and the commitment of the Saxon Refugee Council.
Right at the beginning of the conversation, he makes it clear whose side Klaas Heufer-Umlauf is on: “I want to ensure sustained attention, because first of all that means protection,” he says. It’s clearly noticeable how much the story moves him: “You have to imagine it: you’ve lived here for more than 30 years, have friends, work, family and then suddenly it’s all gone,” he says. Heufer-Umlauf wants to find out from Mr. Pham how he is doing now. The 65-year-old man looks a bit lost on the large sofa: “I’m feeling really bad, I’m scared, I can’t sleep,” he replies in broken German.
Heufer-Umlauf digs deeper into lawyer Jenny Fleischer: “And is there really only a threat of deportation because of these three months that he was in Vietnam longer than allowed?” The lawyer affirms and at the same time criticizes this legal provision: “It’s a bit out of date,” she says. Mr Pham is also by no means an isolated case. “There are a lot of people where that happens.” But: immigration authorities always have room for maneuver and have to check the proportionality carefully. “They can, if they want to!” Fleischer is convinced. Heufer-Umlauf is angry: “What else do you want to check? It’s not an isolated case! It happens all the time.”
What the lawyer also criticizes: While Germany is again desperately looking for skilled workers from abroad – as in the case of Mr. Pham in the 1970s in the GDR – at the same time well-integrated people like her client are threatened with deportation. Jenny Fleischer: “People are bringing in people from abroad again, but then you shouldn’t deport those who are here, that’s just absurd”
But how does a deportation actually work? Attorney Fleischer answered this question as follows: “In the middle of the night, up to eight police officers can be in the house and cart you onto the plane. The deportations usually take place unannounced, it can happen at any time.” Klaas Heufer-Umlauf therefore turned to the Viewers with the request to become active: “You can sign petitions, write to members of the Bundestag.”
After devoting almost 20 minutes to the serious topic, he says goodbye to his guest Mr. Pham in the usual moody mood: “I hope that we’ll see each other again here more easily – unless you think the show sucks, then you can go somewhere else,” says he and grinned.
In the end it got political again: singer Elif, who has Turkish roots, dedicated her song “Do you know how it is?” the victims of the earthquake in Turkey and Syria. She had previously rewritten the lyrics to her song (“Do you know what it’s like when you’re a father and can’t let go of your daughter’s hand?”) and during her performance opened her cape, which read: 46,000 dead, millions homeless. “I ask you to donate!”, Elif’s urgent request.
