Will all Balkan immigrants who have been granted asylum have to leave Germany? No, that's not true: Germany is introducing a tougher asylum policy, as the German Cabinet approved on October 25, 2023, a legislative proposal that would ease the deportation of rejected asylum-seekers. Immigrants who successfully obtained asylum, though, would not be deported, and the draft legislation still has to be approved by parliament in order to be implemented.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) published on TikTok on October 28, 2023, with a graphic overlay (translated from Croatian to English by Lead Stories staff) that read:
The cleansing of Germany has begun. Bundestag has made its final decision. All Balkans immigrants with asylum status must leave Germany.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Tue Oct 31 09:11:55 2023 UTC)
Germany intends to tighten its immigration rules by speeding up the removal of unsuccessful asylum-seekers. The new draft legislation is not final, though, as claimed in the TikTok: It is yet to be approved by the Bundestag, Germany's parliament. A vote is expected in November, according to Deutsche Welle. It is intended to give more powers to authorities to enforce deportations, but it does not specifically target Balkan immigrants. Its main points are:
- No advance notification of deportation will be necessary, except for families with young children.
- The police will have the right to search every room in a shared accommodation, in order to avoid deportees hiding in rooms other than their own.
- The authorities will be allowed to search private belongings and documents to identify an individual who claims to have no passport.
- The pre-deportation custody will be increased from 10 to 28 days.
- Members of organized criminal and human trafficking groups can be deported even if they have not been convicted of a crime.
Immigrants who have been granted asylum will not be affected by the new legislation.
According to the Federal Statistical Office of Germany website there were more than one million Balkan immigrants in Germany as of December 31, 2022.
