Berlin.
It is time for a change in refugee policy – governments can learn from climate policy. A comment.
Asylum policy is missing what climate policy has learned long ago. Governments are creating policies that make living in a warmer world possible. Municipalities create cities that build more water storage for record summers and turn heat into energy. Emergency plans for climate catastrophes are being trained, farmers are breeding plants that are more resistant to heavy rain or drought. The key is “resilience” – the ability to endure a strain. To learn from it in order to come out of a crisis stronger in the end.
Also read:German municipalities are reaching their limits when it comes to housing refugees
The German refugee policy has overslept the development of “resilience”. The burden has been there for years, but naivety, blame, isolation and fear-mongering still characterize the debates on migration and flight. There is still no plan to organize long-term migration policy – neither at the top of the EU in Brussels, nor in the federal and state governments in Germany.
But migration and flight cannot be ignored. More people than ever have fled their homes, more than 100 million people worldwide. The war in Ukraine has aggravated the situation in Europe. Flood disasters and droughts drive those affected from their regions to safer areas. We live in the age of flight – and yet we talk about it as if a few million euros in funding and a few changes in the law could repair what was destroyed over decades.
100 billion for the Bundeswehr – but little money for refugee policy
In Germany, the burden of migration and flight is primarily borne by the municipalities. In many places, immigration authorities are at their limit, there is a lack of accommodation and apartments for those seeking protection, as is care in day-care centers and schools. The municipalities are Germany’s smallest administrative unit – and yet they have to shoulder the world crises. It can’t stay like this.
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In the short term, the local towns and communities need more help from the federal government: money, staff, know-how. The Bundeswehr has already helped with the registration of asylum seekers in 2015. Why not now? And if the Scholz government promises 100 billion euros for the Bundeswehr in a special budget, it shouldn’t just provide three or four billion for improvements in asylum policy.
The federal government is making it easier for skilled workers to immigrate, giving rejected asylum seekers better chances of still getting a job and thus a right to stay in Germany. The traffic light sets up special programs for Afghanistan and Turkey, some of which are bureaucratic monsters. But above all, what is decided in Berlin must be implemented locally by the district administrators: supply, accommodate, integrate people.
Permanent shelters instead of rebuilding with every new movement of refugees
Long-term concepts are just as important as short-term help. Instead of wanting to break down resistance from countries like Poland or Slovakia when taking in refugees, countries in Europe that are willing to take them in must show solidarity. You will have high costs. But they will be rewarded with more skilled workers in the long run. No EU nation will remain strong without immigration.
Instead of announcing that deportations have failed every year, politicians must do more to promote voluntary departures. And instead of dismantling asylum accommodation en masse after a refugee crisis like in 2015, permanent facilities must be built – integrated into a network of local volunteers. What Germany needs is a robust, resilient asylum policy.
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