The Berlin Refugee Council has criticized the emergency plan for accommodating refugees put into effect by Integration Senator Katja Kipping (left). The core of the plan is to open a large tent with around 900 sleeping places, which has so far been a reserve on the premises of the Ukraine arrival center in Tegel.
Tents are unsuitable for accommodating people seeking protection, said the spokeswoman for the refugee council, Almaz Haile, on Thursday. She called for holiday homes and business apartments to be rented for refugees instead. In addition, the Senate must allocate all vacant and vacant apartments in urban societies to people from collective accommodation. Refugees would have to receive a residence entitlement certificate (WBS).
“Berlin reached a low point in the admission of asylum seekers with the use of the hangars of the disused Tempelhof Airport as accommodation for newly arriving refugees in the years 2016 to 2018,” Haile continued. “It’s more than disappointing that the Senate can’t come up with anything better than housing people in former airports and in tents.”
Kipping put the first stage of an emergency plan into effect on Wednesday because only a few of the approximately 24,500 accommodation places for refugees are still available. As a reason for the development, she stated that most federal states had recently stopped accepting asylum seekers.
Therefore, the distribution of the newcomers to the countries according to the so-called Königsteiner key no longer works properly. But since new asylum seekers continue to arrive in Germany, many of them in the capital, Berlin now has to accommodate more. This exacerbates the already tense situation here.
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Kipping appealed to other countries to pull together when taking in refugees and to return to the principle of solidarity. As a possible next step in the event that the situation does not improve, she held out the prospect of determining a “dangerous situation” as stage 2. Then the acquisition of ready-to-move-in accommodation could go faster, and the renting of hostels or hotels would then also be examined.
The spokesman for migration of the AfD parliamentary group, Gunnar Lindemann, explained: “The city cannot bear the migration burden for all of Germany.” The problem is also home-made. Around 15,000 people are currently legally obliged to leave the country.
“If Berlin finally acted according to the law and deported these people, the city would not have a housing problem either.” Lindemann also called for Berlin to refrain from its own admission programs, for example for people from Afghanistan.
Foreigners who do not have a residence permit are considered to be required to leave the country – for example because their asylum application was rejected. For humanitarian or other reasons, such as missing documents or illness, they are allowed to stay for the time being. That’s called tolerance.
