The head of the Saxony Interior Ministry, Albrecht Buttolo, recently called for considering the integration of children as a key point for obtaining a "normal" visa status. He demanded "clearly and strictly limiting" the right of foreigners to legalization, namely, granting such a right only to families "with children attending school." "Single, childless, and parents of preschool children can perfectly well reintegrate in their countries of origin," he assured. Local colleagues supported Buttolo's idea. Bavarian Interior Minister Günther Beckstein noted the "irrationality" of the federal Interior Ministry's project to grant permanent residence to persons with "indeterminate status," when "already over the last six months, 50,000 people received it." Brandenburg's Jörg Schönbohm hinted at the need for applicants to "be integrated above average," in particular, to perform socially useful work. "Above average," believes Bundestag deputy from the Schleswig-Holstein district of Pinneberg, Ole Schröder, should also be the school performance of the so-called immigrant children, and their parents must "have sufficient command of the German language and support the family on their own."
This topic, as one aspect of the issue of "foreigners without status" (according to the human rights organization Pro Asyl, there are more than 275,000 such people in Germany today), was supposed to be discussed at the September Conference of Interior Ministers (IMK). As well as another "children's" topic – the fight against fictitious paternity. The problem of fictitious marriages has been solved, one might say, after a fashion: the January initiative of the head of the federal Interior Ministry, Wolfgang Schäuble, to "counter prostitution" by raising the age limit to 21 for foreign women saying the solemn "yes" to Germans, found understanding in practically all political camps (despite some prejudice from fans of the text of the German Constitution, namely its Article 6 on the protection of the family). Now it is time to deal with fictitious fathers. That is, individuals who, for selfish purposes, declare a baby they have never seen and whose biological mother they do not know, to be their own flesh and blood. And not even with these individuals, but with the ladies who are ready to pay a stranger a certain sum for recognition of parental rights (and obligations). Moreover, the stranger has a German passport in his pocket.
Why did this topic agitate Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries this autumn? Because the work of the special commission convened by the previous IMK has been completed on time, and its statistical results cry out for justice: in the period from April 2003 to May 2004, 2,338 foreign women "changed their status of stay in the country through establishing family ties with a German citizen," 1,694 of them while under threat of deportation. "Where there is neither genetic kinship nor social attachment, it can only be a case of deliberate data manipulation," states the expert opinion.
According to information received by Brigitte Zypries, apparently from deeply secret sources, the crime scheme looks roughly like this: a foreign single mother, accidentally noticing that her visa is expiring, goes to the nearest beer kiosk, picks a marginal type, pays him (somehow the sum is known!) about €5,000, waits for him to sober up, and takes him by the hand to the district registry office, where the said marginal signs a document acknowledging paternity. Then it's simple: under §4 of the Law on German Citizenship, a child who has one parent who is a German becomes a citizen of Germany (at least until adulthood); §28 of the same law guarantees the foreign mother a residence status "for the purpose of personal care" for the heir. And since the marginal performed a noble deed to save female honor and himself has no material means to "personally care" for the child, the mother who has obtained status goes to the social welfare office with a ready application for benefits for herself and the baby. Happy ending. Tears of tenderness, a fresh sticker in the passport, new toys for the child, a collective drinking binge at the beer kiosk, another burden on the taxpayer's neck.
So, gentlemen, that is the root of evil. Which must be destroyed, contrary to the ideas of Wolfgang Schäuble, which are too liberal for our troubled times, about "normalizing" the status for almost all refugees living in Germany for more than six years. Some, of course, were outraged. For example, the Greens and the Left in the Bundestag and the FDP representative, former Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, who called Brigitte Zypries' plans "an encroachment on children's rights": "Imagine what it will be like for the child when uncles and aunts from authorities come into his room and ask: do you know your daddy well?" she asks in horror.
But what times we live in, Mrs. Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger... Terrorism lurks around every corner, in every unclaimed suitcase, in every fellow passenger in a compartment – look, he seems to have a rosary sticking out of his pocket... An Islamic fundamentalist! And toddlers with alien dark eyes, even if they have a German father, are they not tomorrow's fundamentalists, already studying bomb-making instructions in kindergartens? Law enforcement agencies have neither the strength nor the means to track these instructions on the Internet and translate them from various obscure languages. And therefore, it is necessary to stop the very possibility of the spread of "foreign" terrorism in Germany, the interior ministers decided, and gathering in Berlin, they pushed the "children's" and "status" topics to the background and merged into ecstasy over the "anti-terrorism database" – a police registry that will include information about migrant residents "potentially dangerous to the country."
Finally, an agreement was reached – after five years of debate over whether it is constitutional to archive information about religious affiliation. The database was divided into two parts – one accessible to all law enforcement agencies (with names, addresses, marital status), and a closed one containing data on suspects of belonging to terrorist organizations, such as religious views, foreign travel, and weapons possession; access by police, prosecutors, and counterintelligence will only be possible via a special request. The ethical issue was resolved quite elegantly: according to Günther Beckstein, data on the religious affiliation of tolerant and liberal representatives of the Muslim community in Germany will under no circumstances be entered into the computer memory, only about the “views of truly dangerous fundamentalists.”
The electronic database, initially costing €50 million, is a good thing, probably very useful in the context of the constantly growing threat of Germany becoming a new place for terrorism to run rampant – especially if parts of the Bundeswehr are sent to the Middle East for “peace settlement.” It is not entirely clear, however, why “tolerant and liberal” Muslims should be entered into the police register. Solely on the basis of faith? As if being a Muslim is in itself dangerous or at least suspicious? Oh, it’s been done before. Not with Muslims, though, with others.
And what about the “fathers and children,” seemingly forgotten by the IMK participants? Everything is fine! The corresponding law “On Contestation of Paternity” was quietly approved by the Bundestag last week, and the states have already been tasked with forming the necessary expert commissions. They can be quick when they want to.
The next aspect of “foreign topics” that the Conference of Interior Ministers intends to consider this year is the issue of easing the entry of foreign specialists into Germany. In 2005, only 900 of them came to the country, which is in acute need of highly qualified personnel – half as many as in 2004. A corresponding bill, which provides for a reduction in the mandatory annual income for obtaining permanent residence (at least €84,000) or a million-euro investment in the German economy, is currently being prepared by a government working group led by SPD domestic policy expert Dieter Wiefelspütz and his colleague from the CSU, Hans-Peter Uhl. As Albrecht Buttolo emphasized at the IMK meeting, restrictions regarding “having school-age children” will not apply to professionals in high-tech fields.