More and more cities are calling for the deportation of illegal migrants. So there is a lot to do for the new migration officer Joachim Stamp. But how much can the FDP man actually do?
Christian Engelhardt is district administrator of the Bergstraße district in Hesse, a respected man from the CDU, elected with 63 percent of the vote. Now he’s calling for help: It’s not possible to take in more refugees, most of them come from third countries like Turkey, and the recognition rate is low. The federal government must ensure that more are deported.
16 of his colleagues from across the parties, who have just written a one-and-a-half-page letter of desperation to the Chancellor, are also demanding the same thing. “Take a close look at who needs our help and who doesn’t,” says the letter available to FOCUS Online. “You should also actively bring back the people who are illegally staying in the Federal Republic.”
Since Wednesday there is someone who is responsible for this in the federal government. Nevertheless, the local politicians, who have to pay for what Berlin and Brussels have gotten them into, should not get their hopes up too high. When it comes to deporting illegal migrants, little or nothing will happen at first, as has been the case up to now.
Joachim Stamp is an experienced politician, the Rhinelander was the deputy head of government in the most populous state of North Rhine-Westphalia and integration minister under his boss Armin Laschet. So a professional who changed sides after his FDP left the state government. Stamp used to be able to blame the federal government for the poor results of the deportation, but now he is the federal government himself.
The federal government’s new “migration commissioner” is actually the deportation commissioner, which can also be put like this: Joachim Stamp is the government’s rubble man for those who have failed to integrate. Such as the possibly (no one knows exactly yet) stateless Palestinian who recently stabbed two people in Brokstedt.
So Stamp will approach the Palestinian Authority in Gaza to negotiate with them – whether the government of President Mahmoud Abbas will take back the Brokstedt stabber. If the Palestinians reject this, the case is over and Germany can henceforth see for itself how it can cope with this blatantly failed case of integration.
Ibrahim A., who has been in Germany since 2014, has survived 20 investigations, including one for serious bodily harm, without even being threatened with deportation. For a serial offender who has been living in Germany for eight years and has now become a (presumed, as long as not convicted) murderer, a remarkable “achievement”.
In general, stabbings by migrants have increased significantly in recent times, about which the federal police recently gave alarming information: The proportion of non-German suspects in cases of serious physical injury, robbery, murder and manslaughter is now 55.5 percent.
Very few perpetrators have to fear deportation. Stamp is supposed to change that – but he can’t do it on his own. Whether Germany can send migrant criminals home is not in Germany’s power. A circumstance that has been known for a long time and was swept under the table for just as long. What happens when integration fails so blatantly as it did with Ibrahim A. has been consistently taboo in the Merkel governments since 2014/2015. The “loss of control” complained about by Interior Minister Horst Seehofer did not only apply to immigration, but also to non-emigration.
Joachim Stamp defines Angela Merkel’s “We can do it” promise for his new job as follows: “We can only do this in cooperation with the countries of origin.” That is a significant limitation of the old promise. Cooperation with the countries of origin means that you have to negotiate with villains. Sorry: should.
Because Stamp has already ruled out the possibility of negotiating a deportation agreement with the Taliban government in Afghanistan. The same applies to the Syrian government of the butcher Assad. However, Afghanistan and Syria are two main countries of origin for refugees.
Another is Turkey – from where, District Administrator Engelhardt said, most third-country nationals come from – with little chance of recognition. Classic candidates for deportation. What we know about the Turkish potentate Recep Tayyip Erdogan since his deal with Merkel is that he charges billions for every concession on asylum issues – if he is even willing to do so.
Another problem for Joachim Stamp is its reach. How much power the migration commissioner can wield remains to be seen. The Foreign Office of the Green Party Annalena Baerbock and the Development Ministry of the Social Democrat Svenja Schulze will be suspicious that Stamp doesn’t interfere with them. Should the free democrat think about threatening the home countries of illegal migrants with the withdrawal or even a reduction in development aid, Schulze would scold him because the development aid budget is their business and not his.
But not only Berlin is mined terrain for Stamp – Brussels is too. “The European Union is paying hundreds of millions in support to the Palestinian territories, then you have to demand that people be deported there.” That’s what CSU domestic politician Ulrich Lange says, and it’s easy for him to talk. What Brussels spends money on is simply not a matter for the German Bundestag.
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Stamp can only plead – and hope that his own government does not stab him in the back. For example, the German Minister of the Interior, who only recently thwarted the European Commission’s plans for easier deportations. Nancy Faeser also denied any responsibility for the apparent assassin, Ibrahim A. “The judiciary” should have checked whether the Brokstedt assassin should not have been expelled long ago. For Faeser, “the judiciary” has the advantage that it is not responsible for it. A classic free charge for the gallery.
And otherwise? There is a European summit next week. Main topic: Migration including deportations. However, a turnaround in deportation is not on the agenda so far. The border protection agency Frontex might get its own department for deportations – that’s it.
At the same time, the Europeans – not just German district administrators and mayors – are suffering enormously from the problem. 924,000 asylum applications were made in the EU in 2022 (more than 220,000 of them in Germany) – an increase of 47 percent within just one year. Around three quarters of the migrants will stay in Europe, according to the realistic estimates in Brussels, which are based on experience – including those who are obliged to leave the country.
Stamp says after years of dealing with the issue, deportations are a long and difficult business. Quick solutions are not to be expected. And if Germany’s fourth-largest deportation airport, Berlin, simply shuts down from March, one can expect even less from the migration officer. It’s not his fault, because it’s not his responsibility.
For the time being, Germany’s cities have little choice but to somehow come to terms with the problems of failed integration. This leads to strangely helpless actions. The City Council of Stuttgart has just decided to ban knives in the city center at the weekend. Something like this already exists in Cologne, Bremen and Hamburg.
The federal government wants nothing to do with the obvious idea of curbing the immigration of young men from oriental, Islamic countries if deportation alone does not work. Social Democrat Nancy Faeser prefers to give a German passport to immigrants who have lived in Germany for many years but still do not speak German properly. She just wants to be with the good guys.
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