Beate Meißner, of the centre-right Christian Democrats (CDU), said the new office in Weimar would both streamline integration of skilled foreigners and facilitate deportations of people whose requests to stay in Germany have been denied.
"We in Thuringia will be - and are even now - reliant on skilled workers from abroad," Meißner explained. "That's why we should make it as easy as possible for everyone working in this field to get to work as quickly as possible."
Meißner said the new office would relieve the burden of administrative casework on municipal authorities. “Our aim is to be able to repatriate or deport people from the state's initial reception facilities,” she said.
Some tasks are set to begin at the new authority on April 15th.
But the proposal was criticised by opposition politicians and refugee charities.
The Refugee Council charity told the DPA news agency that cases being dealt with on a municipal level meant decisions could be taken on a case-by-case basis, allowing caseworkers to “respond to the realities of life and needs of those seeking protection”.
READ ALSO: How delays to get a residence permit impact foreigners' lives
The far-right Afternative for Germany (AfD) said the new office would not go far enough in facilitating “remigration”, the mass deportations the party pledged to undertake in its 2025 election campaign.
Some states, including Berlin, have opened centralised immigration authorities in recent years.
These are intended to process tasks including naturalisation more efficiently than at the municipal level, where local offices often became overwhelmed and waiting times could be years.
In the case of Berlin, a centralised naturalisation office took over from the boroughs in January 2024, increasing staff numbers and introducing a digital application procedure. Since then, the number of applications being processed per year has almost tripled.
The creation of Thuringia's new immigration authority was agreed in last year’s coalition agreement between the CDU, centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) and leftwing conservative Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW).
Like many states in eastern Germany, Thuringia has faced an enduring demographic crisis since reunification. The state’s population has dropped by about a fifth since 1990.
However, the number of foreigners in the eastern state has been increasing gradually in recent years. At the end of 2023, around 170,000 foreign nationals lived in Thuringia, accounting for 8.3 percent of the population.
Comments