afp | Almost half of the 2,308 Afghans living in Pakistan who were accepted to be accepted from the time of the traffic light government should no longer be allowed to come to Germany. Corresponding promises have been withdrawn, according to a response from the federal government published on Tuesday to a request from left-wing MP Clara Bünger. This criticized the federal government’s actions as “irresponsible, shabby and humanly intolerable”.
According to this, 788 Afghans have entered Germany since the black-red federal government took office in May last year. around 410 other people are still in the exit process.
However, according to the federal government, all commitments under Section 22 of the Residence Act for people on the human rights list and the bridging program were withdrawn on the grounds that they were not legally binding. There is no longer any political interest in admission. The government had the first response Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung reported.
A total of 37,652 Afghans have already been admitted to Germany between May 2021 and the end of 2025 through the various admission programs. There are currently numerous lawsuits pending before the administrative courts against denied admission decisions. The answer to the left-wing faction does not contain a list of the proceedings and previous judges’ rulings; According to its own statements, the Left wants to call on the federal government to submit these figures.
Bünger also criticizes the way the local staff is treated
After the catastrophic withdrawal of NATO, the federal government had and the radical Islamic Taliban came to power in Afghanistan in August 2021, people who had worked for the Bundeswehr or other institutions in the country were accepted. There were also commitments for people who were classified as particularly at risk for other reasons – such as women’s rights activists or human rights activists.
However, after the change of government in Berlin, the new federal government severely restricted recordings. Since many of those affected had already fled from Afghanistan to Pakistan, they are now stuck there.
The Left condemned the withdrawal of the admission commitments. The federal government is “simply abandoning” the affected Afghans, Bünger criticized. For years, those affected have been accommodated and cared for with German support against the background of the planned admission to Pakistan. “The federal government cannot simply claim that it bears no responsibility and leaves the people to the Taliban’s arbitrary regime, which is inhumane and contemptuous of women,” said Bünger.
Contrary to a promise to the contrary from Federal Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt (CSU), the federal government is also abandoning half of the remaining local staff, explained Bünger. The old acceptance commitments were only maintained for 81 of 218 local employees and their relatives. “The reference to necessary security checks is a pure diversionary tactic, because from the authorities’ perspective, actual or supposed security concerns arose in only three percent of the interviews,” explained Bünger.
Since June 2023, Afghans have had to undergo so-called security interviews before moving to Germany; As of early January this year, more than 5,400 such interviews had been conducted, according to the government response. In only three percent of cases were safety concerns raised. This small number “does not explain the large number of revocations of the original admission commitments,” criticized Bünger.