Permanent construction site Migration: Expert opinion: Reform pace in migration policy is too high

From the point of view of the Council of Experts for Integration and Migration (SVR), the new federal government should not present too much speed when reforming legislation on migration, nationality and asylum. Frequent changes in the law placed high demands on the administration “that can hardly keep up with the changes when training the staff,” the current SVR annual report said.

This increases the danger that laws will ultimately be implemented only slowly and inefficiently. In addition, too high speed in legislation complicates the assessment of the effectiveness of reforms.

Understanding for politicians

The Council acknowledges that politics must prove action ability, especially in times of dynamic migration. “At the same time, however, he points out that citizens do not only measure the reaction ability of politics from whether the federal government issues laws” can be found in the report.

New practice at the border

In their coalition agreement, the CDU, CSU and SPD have agreed not to invest any new voluntary federal reception programs for those in need of protection. There should be no family reunification for people with limited protection status for at least two years.

In coordination with the European neighbors, asylum seekers are also to be rejected at the German land borders. A corresponding request to the federal police came last Wednesday by Federal Minister of the Interior Alexander Dobrindt (CSU).

The naturalization of particularly well integrated foreigners mentioned by the Union as “turbo naturalization” will soon no longer exist after three years.

Long waiting times on the way to the German passport

From the expert’s point of view, improvements in administration are necessary to achieve the goals of the reform of the nationality law decided by the traffic light coalition. The waiting period for naturalization was shortened from eight years to five years and the double pass for non-EU citizens was generally allowed. However, the waiting times on the way to the Deutsche Pass are still very long, since the naturalization authorities were overloaded in many places before the reform. In order to reduce uncertainties in the application of the new law and ensure the most uniform implementation possible, the federal government should revise an administrative regulation on the right of the nationality that has been in force since 2001, the SVR advises.

The number of people who became Germans through naturalization was more than ever before with around 194,000 naturalizations. The fact that this trend has increased in 2024 not only has to do with the reform, but is also due to the fact that many Syrian refugees who came to Germany in 2015 and 2016 now meet the requirements for naturalization.

Expenses and hurdles for foreign specialists too high

In order for more specialists to immigrate to Germany in the future, new laws are not primarily required from the SVR’s point of view. Rather, organizational changes should be made to shorten the long, cumbersome procedures. Above all, the Federal Office for Foreign Affairs should also take on several tasks here and thereby relieve the foreigners.

In order to bring refugees to work faster, the Council recommends that refugees systematically introduce them to a qualified activity of a temporarily created assistant activity via part -time after -qualifications. Integration courses should be offered with reliable childcare and part -time to enable the participants to work in parallel. From the SVR’s point of view, this could lead to a higher proportion of employed people, especially among refugees from Ukraine.

Use of the central central register

From the experts’ point of view, a permanent problem is the way in which authorities from the federal and state governments use or do not use the central central register (AZR). For example, data that is collected by the immigration authorities on site would not always automatically fed into AZR, which means more work for administrative staff who would then have to do this manually.

In addition, the immigration authorities would have to document and justify the access of data from the AZR – “this also makes working with the AZR unattractive,” conclude the authors of the report.