Germany - Country of Immigration?
On January 1st, 2005, a new immigration law came into force.
It includes some improvements for immigrants. However, there still are quite a few
shortcomings concerning migrants and refugees in Germany.
Some of these are:
There is no regulation concerning the legalisation of more than 150,000 immigrants
who have been living with an exceptional leave to remain in germany for more than
five years and who are not granted a residence permit.
There is no point system (§20 of the Law on Immigration provided for a
selection procedure considering several factors such as age, language skills,
qualification, family links… This article was canceled due to a compromise with
non-ruling political parties).
Immigration chiefly depends on current labor requirements.
The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is still being violated
(parental care, child is not a legal representative in person,
no right to education and family reunion, no equality under the German Children and
Youths Assistance Law ...)
The separation of families (deportation of individual family members) violates
the European Convention on Human Rights and the Basic Constitutional Law of Germany.
In the law, integration of immigrants is mainly reduced to language
acquisition.
There is still no anti-discrimination law implementing EU guidelines for
non-discrimination.
The provisions of the new immigration law regarding labor migration are still far
too restrictive (self-employed persons have to invest one million € and add ten
new jobs; the right to immigrate is narrowed to a few highly qualified employees,
etc.).
We believe that the new immigration law at best means a first step towards the
shaping of a country of immigration and may not constitute the last say on that
subject.
We therefore support all claims for a settling of above mentioned deficiencies.
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