No easy life in Germany for asylum-seekers

FROM the outside, there is little to distinguish the drab, four-storey house on a Berlin side-street from its neighbouring buildings. There is no sign on the scuff-marked door or, unusually in Germany, below the doorbell, but a large burglar alarm offers a hint that security is an issue here.

This is a hostel for young asylum-seekers, many of whom gather every evening at a small playground nearby or around the bank of telephone boxes across the road. Most are from what remains of Yugoslavia but others come from Turkey and Iraq or as far away as China and Vietnam.

If this hostel was outside Berlin, in the badlands of Brandenburg, it would be surrounded by barbed wire fences to keep out skinhead gangs who regularly attack refugees, sometimes with fatal consequences.

But here in the western inner city, asylum-seekers can blend in easily with the large immigrant population and there are few violent incidents.

Inside, the young asylum-seekers share dormitories and use a communal kitchen. Families are usually housed in self-contained units within hostels and in some cases are allocated private apartments.

But life is not easy for asylum-seekers coming to Germany and Ms Barbara John, the official responsible for foreigners in Berlin, believes that Germany has succeeded in creating a system that is both inefficient and unfair.

"Because we are not able to send better signals to the people we ought to be helping, we treat everyone as if they are a phoney asylum-seeker. We make it unpleasant for everyone and that's wrong," she said.

Some 136,000 asylum-seekers entered Germany last year but fewer than 4 per cent can expect to be granted refugee status. Ms John believes the problem lies in the fact that Germany waits for asylum-seekers to arrive in the country before considering their applications, a policy which favours those who can afford to travel in the first place.

"You need to have a system like in Canada and the US where you don't force people to come to your country to apply for asylum. You should do as the Australians do and work with the UNHCR who can point you in the direction of people who need help."

Asylum-seekers arriving in Germany are taken first to a reception centre where they are registered, given food and shelter, access to medical care and a small sum of money. From there, they are dispersed throughout the country, with each federal state accepting a proportionate number depending on the state's population.

The authorities believe that dispersing applicants throughout the country is essential to avoid overburdening the bigger cities, where it is impossible to prevent asylum-seekers from working on the black market.

However, asylum hostels in remote parts are more vulnerable to attack by right-wing extremists and rural communities tend to be less accepting of racial diversity.

While their request is being processed, asylum-seekers receive a monthly payment of £166 but for the first three months only £32 comes in cash.

The rest is given in food packages and coupons which can be exchanged for food, clothing and toiletries.

Refugees from countries Germany considers free of political persecution, such as Romania, can expect their applications to be rejected almost immediately and are usually deported within weeks. However, applicants from other countries often live in asylum hostels for more than six years while their cases progress slowly through the courts.

"The courts are completely overburdened. There is a backlog of hundreds of thousands of cases and you can't tell the judges to move more quickly," said Ms John.

Conditions in asylum hostels vary but there have been a number of officially-acknowledged cases where buildings were infested with cockroaches and food packages contained items well past their sell-by date. Organisations defending the interests of asylum-seekers complain that food packages fail to take account of cultural differences and dietary preferences, a fact which can lead to malnutrition among recipients.

Ms John believes a key element in creating a humane and efficient system is to process applications as quickly as possible and she believes that applicants from "safe" countries should be processed within six months. Germany now receives few asylum-seekers from Romania because Berlin has agreed procedures with Bucharest for the swift deportation of failed applicants.

"Since they can be deported so quickly and easily it's not worth their while to come to Germany because it costs them more money than they can afford to make.

"The longer people stay, the longer they can make money. And in migration you always have a network effect so that, once you have a larger group in your country, more of the same group - relatives, friends and so on - will come," she said.

If Ms John were advising the Irish Government on how to deal with asylum-seekers she would suggest a more active approach than Germany's - working with the UNHCR to help genuine refugees rather than waiting for applicants to arrive.

Once people arrive, she believes their applications should be processed quickly but fairly and she urges against setting up detention centres or attempting to deter asylum-seekers by making conditions unpleasant for all applicants.

"There are better ways to keep away people who are seeking a better life for themselves and their children. That's not a deplorable ambition, it's just not covered by the asylum laws," she said.