Migration: Germany is taking in Afghans again - Union is outraged

Handelsblatt Migration: Germany is taking in Afghans again - Union is outraged Neuerer, Dietmar • 1 hour • 3 minutes reading time Before the federal election, the government stopped two charter planes from Afghanistan at short notice. Now asylum seekers have arrived in Berlin again. The Union is reacting with sharp criticism. The Union and the SPD are arguing about accepting refugees from Afghanistan. The reason is the federal government's decision to resume the entry of people from Afghanistan. On Tuesday, a charter plane from Pakistan with 155 Afghans landed in Berlin. The "Welt" newspaper was the first to report on the flight. The plane took off from the Pakistani capital Islamabad. CDU interior politician Christoph de Vries called it an "outrageous process" to initially suspend the entry of Afghan nationals "for electoral reasons" and then to continue it after the federal election. "Anyone who acts like this is squandering the trust of the citizens and damaging the credibility of the Federal Ministry of the Interior," the Bundestag member told Handelsblatt. SPD parliamentary group vice-chair Dirk Wiese defended the resumption of flights and pointed out that it was about people who had worked for the Bundeswehr in Afghanistan. "Of course we bear a responsibility for those who worked for us there and put themselves in danger as a result," Wiese told Handelsblatt. "I think it is the wrong approach to let the local staff down." According to the Federal Ministry of the Interior, more than half of the Afghans come through the federal admission program for particularly vulnerable people. The remaining passengers entered Germany through other admission programs, it said - the local staff procedure, the human rights list and the bridging program. CDU politician claims claim to the Interior Ministry for the Union Before the federal election last Sunday, the government reportedly temporarily suspended the entry of Afghans and canceled two flights from Islamabad at short notice. "The postponements of the current flights were initiated by the Federal Foreign Office," a spokesman for the Federal Ministry of the Interior said when asked. Reasons for changes could include the current situation in Islamabad, capacities at the airport there or the landing airports in Germany, capacities for interim accommodation before distribution to the federal states or the provision of charter aircraft. According to the Federal Foreign Office, more than 35,000 people have entered Germany since the start of the various admission procedures since the radical Islamic Taliban took power in August 2021. As part of the federal admission program, around 3,000 people have received a confirmation, and 1,000 people have actually entered the country so far. The Federal Foreign Office had expressed concern about the situation of Afghan refugees in Pakistan. Many Afghans are waiting there to enter Germany or other Western countries. Afghans are expected to leave the capital Islamabad and neighboring Rawalpindi by the end of March. Saxony's Interior Minister accuses the federal government of "remarkable impudence" The government's resumption of flights could put a strain on talks about a possible black-red coalition. CDU politician de Vries claimed the Interior Ministry on behalf of the Union. "The whole process shows that the Union must occupy the Interior Ministry in the new legislative period in order to achieve a fundamental change of course in migration policy," he said. De Vries also demanded that all voluntary admission programs be "stopped immediately." In this context, he referred to the deadly attacks in Mannheim, Aschaffenburg and Munich, in which the suspects were Afghans. Saxony's Interior Minister Armin Schuster made similar comments. "We states have repeatedly called for the immediate halt to the admission programs," said the CDU politician. It was a "remarkable impudence" on the part of the federal government to "stop the flights in a media-effective way" before the election, only to allow them to take place again immediately after the election. According to the Federal Ministry of the Interior, 80 of the 155 Afghans who have now entered the country are women and girls, including a former Afghan policewoman. 60 of the Afghans are minors, including 40 children under the age of ten. According to information from government circles in the "Bild" newspaper, only five of those who have entered the country were former local employees. They had worked for the Bundeswehr and the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) until the Taliban took over in 2021. They were accompanied by 22 close family members.