In Germany, Merkel welcomed hundreds of thousands of refugees. Now many are suing her government.
BERLIN — The refugee wave that buffeted Germany in 2015 is now crashing down on the nation’s courts, as migrants seeking relief from the Syrian civil war challenge efforts by one of Europe’s most welcoming states to limit their rights.
Some 250,000 asylum appeals are pending across Germany, according to estimates from an association of administrative court judges. Nearly 13,500 are ongoing in the capital alone, part of a tenfold increase over the past year.
Stephan Groscurth, a spokesman for Berlin’s administrative court, said the appeals — filed by the growing number of migrants who have been denied protection or given less than they were seeking — make up two-thirds of court business. “This will paralyze us for years,” a judge told Der Tagesspiegel, a German daily based in Berlin.
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The surge of appeals reveals the precariousness of policies adopted by the European Union’s largest state to address the most extreme displacement of people since World War II. It comes as the German government pivots to limit migrants’ rights, spurred by public opinion that has turned against an open-door policy following attacks carried out by militants from Muslim-majority countries.
The cases reflect the resistance of asylum seekers to a reinstatement of Europe’s old border regime. And they point to the critical link between migration and family reunification, knotted issues also under scrutiny in American courts weighing the legality of the Trump administration’s travel ban.
But the backlog in German courts also shows how policy changes geared toward efficiency — the goal pursued by Germany in signing a 2015 contract with McKinsey & Co. to streamline its asylum procedures — can backfire, trading one bureaucratic morass for another, with high stakes for people, such as Amira Suleiman, caught in between.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/merkel-welcomed-hundreds-of-thousands-of-refugees-now-some-are-suing-her-government/2017/07/20/2d9e13aa-68a7-11e7-94ab-5b1f0ff459df_story.html
