Germany’s federal migration commissioner Joachim Stamp suggests asylum-seeking migrants should be sent to a third country such as Rwanda, in situations were returning them home could jeopardise their well being. Stamp blames Russia and Belarus for deliberately encouraging migration to the EU, a ploy he attributes to their “hybrid warfare”.
Germany is currently in the grips of a fierce debate about its deportation policy.
Stamp accused President Vladimir Putin and Belarusia’s Aleksander Lukashenko of “deliberately sending migrants across the eastern border of the European Union”, claiming it was a plot to entice Syrian, Iraqi, and Afghan refugees to reach Europe via Minsk and Moscow.
A member of the neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP), Stamp suggested that the German government “could utilise the existing structures that were originally prepared” when the UK’s run of Conservative governments were pursuing a deal to send large numbers of asylum-seekers to Rwanda. That plan was scrapped once Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the Labour Party came to power.
Stamp told a podcast yesterday that were Germany to endorse a similar plan, the federal government would have to amend some of the country’s deportation laws. Currently, migrants can only be deported to a country beside their homeland if an existing connection exists, such as relatives residing there. Adding to the complications of deportations to places like Syria and Afghanistan is the requirement that a person’s homeland has to be both willing to receive them and considered safe.
Deportation and the migrant issue in general have become an even more controversial topic following a deadly knife attack carried out in the city of Solingen by a rejected Syrian asylum-seeker who had been slated for deportation. Since the attack, Chancellor Olaf Scholz has vowed to present new draft laws to speed up deportations by the end of this year.
