Germany extends suspension of refugees' right to family reunification

BERLIN, Feb. 1 (Xinhua) -- The German Federal Parliament, Bundestag, on Thursday extended controversial measures to suspend the right to family reunification for refugees with subsidiary protection status until July 2018.

Unlike refugees who have received political asylum under the international legal framework of the Geneva convention, subsidiary protection is mainly awarded to individuals who have been displaced by violent conflict and only grants them a temporary right to remain in the host country.

LEGISLATIVE COMPROMISE

The legislation was approved by the 376 votes in favor, 298 against and four abstentions. Parliamentarians hereby adopted a legislative compromise which was recently agreed during final stage "grand coalition" talks between the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Christian Social Union (CSU) and German Social Democrats (SPD).

The breakthrough in negotiations was widely seen in German media as potentially paving the way towards the formation of a new government. According to the new joint proposal, the current ban on family reunification will be lifted by Berlin on July 31, 2018. After this point, a total of up to 1,000 close relatives of refugees with subsidiary protection will be allowed to follow them to Germany each month.

SPD leader Martin Schulz praised the agreement as a constructive compromise, emphasizing that his party had only lent its support in exchange for a guarantee from the CDU and CSU that a generous hardship provision would continue to apply. As a consequence, migrants would be able to circumvent the numerical limit on family reunification when justified by extraordinary circumstances, such as in cases of unaccompanied minors and serious illness.

However, some CSU and CDU officials have since challenged this reading of events, arguing that there would be no change to the status quo. The legislation enacted on Thursday by the Bundestag includes a vague formulation that humanitarian exceptions would "continue to remain untouched" by the cap of 1,000 family members per month. The CDU, CSU and SPD have all admitted that the new policy's finer details still needed to be addressed in an additional law.

DIVIDED VIEWS

The measures to suspend the right to family reunification for refugees with subsidiary protection were first adopted in March 2016 and originally scheduled to expire two years later. Addressing to delegates after the successful parliamentary vote, Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere (CDU) defended the extension of the ban.

"Our compromise reflects a dedication to humanity and responsibility, integration and limitation, generosity and realism", de Maiziere said.

He added that "some idealists" may still find the legislation "too strict", but noted that hardship cases would still be considered. After all, "a little bit of compassion" was also needed.

Eva Hoegl, Vice-President of the SPD parliamentary faction, stressed that her party would continue to put its weight behind a more generous interpretation of hardship clauses which also took child welfare and the related United Nations convention on the rights of the child into account. She complained that only a few dozen family members of refugees with subsidiary protection had benefited from humanitarian exceptions to the ban in 2017.

"It is our shared task to interpret these hardship cases differently so that they include more than 66 individuals," Hoegl said.

Nevertheless, several other parties criticized the new law heavily during the Bundestag debate.

"This law is arbitrary, morally dubious and inhumane", Dietmar Barsch, Left party (Linke) parliamentary faction leader lamented.

Similarly, Green party (Gruene) faction leader Katrin Goering-Eckardt accused the SPD of having surrendered its values to the CDU and CSU by agreeing in principle to a fixed limit on family members.

"You are giving in on the question of families", Goering-Eckardt said, adding that each politician should try to imagine the horror of being separated from their own children and ask themselves "what it would be like."

By contrast, AfD parliamentary delegate Christian Wirth expressed his opposition towards any form of family reunification. If desired by refugees, it should take place outside of Germany, "for example in safe zones in Syria which has been largely pacified." Enditem