http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/article20601204.html
MAY 9, 2015
Rift forms in Germany over asylum seekers, refugees
By MELISSA EDDY
The New York Times
A bronze statue of St. Joseph, bending protectively over the Holy
Family, stands at the center of a bubbling fountain outside the St.
Joseph Roman Catholic church in this Bavarian village.
Across a cobblestone courtyard, parishioners show up regularly at the
church community center to teach German and math to asylum seekers and
refugees. During a recent weeknight service, Ali, a young Afghan,
demonstrated his progress, reading aloud a prayer for peace to the
congregation.
This tranquil place is also the backdrop for a bitter debate between
Germany’s government and its Roman Catholic and Protestant churches
over the fates of hundreds of migrants seeking asylum here.
Just before Christmas, Ali and another young Muslim moved into the
two-room guest apartment on the parish grounds, invoking a Christian
practice of seeking protection within a church, a form of asylum known
in German as Kirchenasyl, to stave off their imminent deportations.
The practice, while largely limited to Germany these days, speaks to
wider questions about how officials across the European Union are
handling the wave of humanity struggling to reach its borders, and the
challenge of housing, employing, legalizing and integrating the
newcomers – often in the face of resistance from nationalists.
In April, about 426 migrants were living in parishes across Germany –
more than three times as many as last year – according to Asylum in
the Church, an ecumenical organization that helps parishes with legal
and logistical questions. The practice began in Berlin in the 1980s,
inspired by the Sanctuary Movement in the United States, in which
churches sheltered immigrants from El Salvador and Guatemala.
While the rise of anti-immigrant demonstrations and recent arson
attacks of refugee shelters reflect some Germans’ resistance to the
arrival of more than 200,000 asylum-seekers last year, the tradition
of church asylum represents another side of Germany.
The movement has infused Germany’s Roman Catholic and Protestant
churches with a newfound sense of social purpose, after years of
losing members because of sex abuse scandals and growing secularism.
But the government, which has repeatedly called for Germans to welcome
the refugees, considers the practice illegal and sees the recent
explosion of church asylum cases as a rebuke to European policy.
“It cannot be that church asylum is being used to criticize a
difficult political situation,” said Katrin Hirseland, a spokeswoman
for Germany’s federal office for migration and refugees.
Stephan Theo Reichel, a retired international businessman who counsels
Lutheran parishes in Bavaria trying to take in asylum-seekers, said
nonreligious Germans, mindful of the country’s Nazi past, had
supported church asylum cases out of a sense of political
responsibility.
“Given our history, we should be honored to help these people,”
Reichel said. “We should be proud that they come to us and should do
more for them.”
The cases of Ali and Abdullah Zadran, the Afghan migrant who joined
him in the St. Joseph apartment, are typical. The pair have been
threatened with deportation to the country where they entered the
European Union. They are so-called Dublin cases, named after the
recently recast Dublin Regulation, which specifies responsibility for
asylum claims across the 28-nation bloc.
Ali, who gave only his first name because he says he is a minor, and
Zadran both entered through Bulgaria last year. Neither wants to go
back there.
Zadran said he had spent two months in a Bulgarian jail, a common
destination for migrants arriving without authorization in that
country, then fled to Serbia. After 10 days in a Serbian prison, he
was released, and he hid in a truck headed north, he said.
“Here, life good,” Zadran, 21, said in a recent interview.
The asylum seekers’ plight has put them squarely in the middle of
growing tensions over Europe’s handling of the many migrants fleeing
conflicts and chaos in places like Afghanistan, Eritrea, Syria, Iraq
and western Africa. Last year, 570,800 claims for asylum were
registered in the European Union, more than a third of them in
Germany, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.
Whether migrants travel on foot, as Ali and Zadran did, or in boats
crossing the Mediterranean from Africa, many arrive in the countries
on Europe’s southern and eastern rims, only to find insufficient
support and legal systems to process their applications for asylum.
>From there, they press north and west, into Europe’s wealthier
nations, such as Germany, Denmark or Sweden.
But EU regulations require anyone applying for asylum to submit their
application in the first country they entered. While Europe has
adopted a common legal system for refugees, standards for housing and
public benefits vary widely. Aid workers say complaints about
overcrowding and new arrivals being beaten, jailed or left to fend for
themselves are common in some countries, including Bulgaria, Hungary
and Italy.
The German authorities are committed to the European policy. But
asylum seekers who manage to remain in Germany for six months become
eligible to apply for permanent asylum there, regardless of how they
entered the European Union - which is why more migrants are confining
themselves to church grounds, hoping to safely wait out that time
period.
Ali said he fled Afghanistan on foot after the Taliban murdered his
father. In Bulgaria, he spent nearly a month in jail, he said. When he
arrived here, his one wish was for a tube of gel to style his hair. He
claims that he is only 17, but German authorities who interviewed Ali
estimated that he was older than 21.
German law prevents deportation of unaccompanied minors, even to
another European country. But the legal process to establish Ali’s age
could take months, and he was ordered to return to Bulgaria in
December.
Only a third of those who applied for permanent asylum in Germany last
year met the criteria. The others were ordered to leave or allowed to
resubmit their applications.
The Rev. Dieter Müller, who runs the Jesuit Refugee Service for
southern Germany, has helped settle dozens of asylum seekers in
parishes across Bavaria. Like many in the church, he disputes the
government’s contention that the practice is illegal.
“The purpose of a church asylum is to ensure a fair application to
gain recognition as a refugee,” he said.
In February, Thomas de Maizière, Germany’s interior minister, came
under fire when he compared Christians protecting asylum seekers with
Muslims practicing a strict form of Islamic law.
De Maizière later retracted the statement and agreed to work with
church leaders to evaluate extraordinary cases, before church asylum
is considered necessary.
For Angelika Pfaffendorf, 65, a volunteer at St. Joseph who became a
den mother for the two young Afghans, it is a simple matter of
humanity.
In the months the young men spent in the church, she watched over
their progress and made sure that Zadran got out of bed in the morning
and left the apartment he shared with Ali.
After psychological treatment for trauma, Zadran began taking part in
life around the parish, shoveling snow, helping to set up and clear
away chairs for meetings and taking daily lessons in German and basic
math.
“He can’t go back to Bulgaria,” Pfaffendorf said. “He would wind up on
the street and slip into a life of petty crime.”
After more than two months on the parish grounds, Zadran was granted
the right to apply for permanent asylum in Germany. Ali was still
waiting.
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Received on Sun May 10 2015 - 14:03:09 EDT