Separate refugee families: German asylum policy is hostile to children

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Afghan Rahela with husband and children on Lesbos: They did not meet the criteria for the humanitarian admission program

Photo: Nikos Pilos / Der Spiegel

13-year-old Nasir from Afghanistan is one of the children that Germany took from the Moria refugee camp last year.

One might think that he was very lucky.

However, his story is in truth an example of how misogynist, child-friendly and family-hostile German asylum policy can be.

For Nasir, the new life in Germany has a catch: the teenager has to get along here without his family.

He is not allowed to catch up with his mother, who stayed behind in Iran with his eleven-year-old brother.

Just like his sister and her family, with whom he was once stranded on Lesbos.

The young woman and his brother-in-law did not meet the conditions for the humanitarian admission program through which Nasir came to Germany in April 2020.

To do this, you had to be a minor and without parents.

Hoping to be able to bring his family to Germany from Germany, Nasir got on the plane.

His asylum application was recently decided in Hanover: Although he is allowed to stay due to a so-called deportation ban, he does not have the right to family reunification.

However, the German state pays him for braces.

There has to be so much care.

SPIEGEL asked Federal Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU) what his interim balance sheet looks like with regard to the admission of refugee children from Moria.

His answer: »We have brought order to migration policy.

This is important, because without order, acceptance among the population wanes.

We take in those who are in need of protection, and those who do not have the right to stay have to go. "

Orthodontics instead of family reunification?

In relation to the Nasir case, that is cynical.

What »order in migration policy« should that be?

Orthodontics instead of family reunification?

What a thirteen-year-old boy whose father died of cancer, whose house was said to have been torched by the Taliban and who had to sell chewing gum on the street for a while, certainly needs more than braces is: his mother.

Or at least his big sister.

Nobody can expect that Germany will accept everyone.

But the laws governing migration must also be well thought out.

Regulations that would mean the most humane solution in individual cases can, by and large, do more harm than good.

Seehofer doesn't want to send the signal out into the world: Send your youngsters on a dangerous journey, the younger the better, so that they can catch up with the rest of the family from Europe.

That is understandable so far.

But whether the solution can be that Nasir has to stay alone?

The answer is no.

In any case, there is one thing that cannot be moved: European states must protect human dignity.

Anyone who does not manage to end the catastrophic conditions in the refugee camps must at least get the children out.

And those who bring children must also enable them to be with their families.

Everything else is child hostile.

As a rule, the social prognosis for young people should be significantly better if they have their parents or at least someone in the family around them.

Some of those affected had traumatic experiences in their old homeland and while they were fleeing.

The whole system is sick

After Nasir left Moria, the European states set up further contingents to evacuate minors and families from the Greek islands - especially after a fire destroyed the camp.

Rahela and her family have not yet been able to secure a place for any admission program.

The whole system is sick.

Every couple with children who set out on their way has it harder from the first moment than a single man.

Crossing the Mediterranean with small children or even babies is more difficult to master - as is the attempt to illegally get past the official Greek reception centers to Germany in order to apply for asylum there directly.

The basic rule is: be strong, be rich, have a hand in hand, that is an advantage when it comes to coming to us.

Those who are weak are left behind.

Women, children, the elderly, the sick.

Nasir's mother with diabetes, for example.

Or his eleven-year-old brother who is currently working on construction in Iran so that they can stay afloat.

Nasir says that the two of them often have nothing more to eat than a piece of bread.

The stories the boy hears from his sister Rahela from Lesbos also weigh heavily on him.

There is no heating in the family tent in the new refugee camp on Lesbos, they make do with hot water bottles.

Rahela's little daughter recently scalded herself with boiling water.

Your son fell and cracked his skull.

However, the family still does not have the prospect of getting a place in a humanitarian admission program.

There are now so many refugees living in need in Greece that it is difficult to attract attention with your own suffering.