Family reunification for civil war refugees below the upper limit

Berlin (dpa) - The German authorities allow more refugees with limited protection status to join family members.

According to the Federal Ministry of the Interior, a total of 11,129 visas were issued last year for family reunification with subsidiary protection - often refugees from civil war. Germany was thus approaching the politically agreed upper limit of 1000 positive decisions per month, but was not reaching the annual average.

In August 2018, a new regulation came into force, according to which those entitled to subsidiary protection may again bring relatives to Germany. The government parties CDU, CSU and SPD had agreed on an opening after laborious negotiations. The regulation was slow; less than 9,000 visas were issued in the first eleven months.

In the current year, the number of visas issued dropped again, according to information from the Ministry of the Interior supplemented later in the plenary minutes of the Bundestag on a question from left-wing MP Ulla Jelpke. Until the end of April 1925, visas were issued for reunification with subsidiary protection - and with the aggravation of the corona pandemic, fewer and fewer: After 782 visas in February, the German diplomatic missions issued 480 visas in March and only 4 in April.

Jelpke, who is also the political spokeswoman for her parliamentary group, demanded that unused quotas and visas already issued should not expire. "The current suspension of family reunification is a disaster, especially for relatives of those with subsidiary protection rights," she told the dpa. "You have to imagine: These people have been waiting for at least four years, often much longer, to be able to live with their closest family members again - this is about the wife, the husband and their own children!"

Plenary minutes of the Bundestag session on May 27, 2020, cf. Page 120 ff.

Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (Bamf) on family reunification

Bamf on forms of protection