ST. PETERSBURG (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 21st April, 2021) An initiative group of Russian Germans have sent the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) and the International Human Rights Organization a letter asking to grant a refugee status to ethnic Germans who have been denied German citizenship while seeking relocation from Russia and Kazakhstan, a group representative, Albert Breininger, told Sputnik.
In January, the group submitted to the ruling Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party a list of proposed amendments to the German law on "late immigrants," which they say is discriminatory against ethnic Germans.
"The initiative group was recently created to eliminate discrimination against Germans from Russia and Kazakhstan. ... I sent a letter to the OSCE, to PACE and to the International Human Rights Organization asking them to recognize Germans, who in Germany were denied the status of a late immigrant, as refugees," Breininger, who is also an Alternative for Germany party member, said.
According to the activist, a copy of this letter was sent to German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
"I hope maybe the European organizations will force Merkel and her ruling party to turn their face toward the Russian Germans," he said.
Breininger went on to elaborate on a list of law amendments the group is pushing for, noting that they are still awaiting a CDU reply.
The group demanded, among other things, that an applicant who has been recognized by the German Federal Office of Administration (Bundesverwaltungsamt) as a "late immigrant" be automatically recognized as a German descendant with the right to obtain permanent residence in Germany, regardless of where they are currently residing, be it Russia or other former Soviet republics.
The group also highlighted that children and grandchildren of Germans with documentary evidence of their German origin, including those whose parents did not pass a language proficiency test, should have the right to submit immigration paperwork and take the German literacy test on their own and, in case of a successful outcome, should be recognized as "late immigrants" with the right to move to Germany.
Another issue is the right of eligible applicants to first come to Germany and then take a language course there if they do not have such an opportunity at their place of residence, for example, in remote Siberian regions or hard-to-reach areas of Kazakhstan.
According to Breininger, a key problem is that the immigration agency does not have clear criteria for determining eligibility for residence permits and citizenship, with processing of cases often dragging on for years.
Sputnik has reached out to both the OSCE and the PACE but has not got any substantive response.
Imperfections of the German migration law toward certain categories periodically come under the spotlight of the German public. However, despite the fact that in 2013 the country adopted amendments which, according to the authorities, were expected to facilitate immigration and naturalization procedures and to increase the inflow of migrants with German roots up to 100,000 per year, in reality the number of people coming from the former USSR has still remained significantly lower.
