In Germany, Almost Half of Lawsuits Against Asylum-Denial Successful

Some 44 percent of lawsuits brought by rejected asylum applicants have won in German courts, leading politicians on the Left to criticize the evaluation process for asylum seekers.

A remarkable 273,000 lawsuits were filed in the first nine months of 2017, and judgments have been handed down in roughly 100,000. Of these decided cases, 44 percent were won by migrants, while the numbers are even higher among those coming from countries such as Syria (69 percent) and Afghanistan (61 percent).

These statistics reflect only court decisions based on substantive content and do not include suits alleging formal or procedural error.

The Left Bundestag MP Ulla Jelpke used the high number of successful lawsuits to criticize the federal government in its review of asylum applications, declaring to the Süddeutsche Zeitung that “politically deliberate deterrence of these refugee groups” is leading to bad decisions.

Jelpke called on the Federal Office for Migrants and Refugees to independently review negative asylum decisions. “That could relieve the overburdened courts more than anything else quickly and effectively,” she said.

Among those who succeed in court are a number of migrants dissatisfied with subsidiary protection status who wish to be recognized as refugees. Here the issue of family reunification plays an important role, since the families of recognized refugees are permitted into the country, while the families of those receiving subsidiary protection are not.

Currently, almost all of the negative decrees of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) are being contested in court.

The total number of lawsuits contesting BAMF’s decisions in 2017 doubled compared to the previous year.

During the first nine months of 2017, some 20,000 asylum-seekers left Germany on their own accord, before they had received a judgment on their asylum application. The number of these voluntary departures was higher than that of deportations during the same period, which was approximately 18,000.

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