For the fifth year in a row, the number of late resettlers coming to Germany is increasing
As "Russkaya Germaniya" writes, the head of the reception camp in Friedland, Heinrich Hernschemeyer, who has been leading this state institution for a quarter of a century, told journalists about this. It is Lower Saxony's Friedland that traditionally serves as the first place for receiving and processing initial documents for the majority of late resettlers in the Federal Republic of Germany.
Actually, the camp is designed for about 700 places, but currently it houses about three thousand people. According to Mr. Hernschemeyer, the management of the reception center still manages to successfully cope with its duties. For example, the camp tries to initially separate representatives of different nations and ethnic groups, each of which has its own traditions and culture. "This helps avoid unnecessary conflicts among people," notes the head of Friedland, who has extensive experience in receiving late resettlers.
The maximum load on the camp was in 1990, when about 400,000 ethnic Germans from the then-existing "Eastern Bloc" and the USSR arrived in Germany. After this "demographic explosion," the number of late resettlers gradually decreased, reaching its bottom in 2012, when only 1,800 people were accepted.
The turning point was the amendment to the Federal Expellees Law, adopted in the fall of 2013. These innovations in the legislative act regulating Germany's acceptance of ethnic Germans simplified, among other things, the process of family reunification for late resettlers. That is why by the end of 2013, the flow of resettlers with German roots to Germany increased to 2,300. In 2014, this figure was already 5,600, and in 2015, about six thousand people. The significant increase in the number of resettlers occurred even despite new rules requiring applicants to pass a basic German language exam before arriving in Germany, in their home country.
"Most of the people who come to us now have relatives in Germany," notes Heinrich Hernschemeyer. According to him, these are mainly young, active people whose parents already live in Germany, many young married couples who are ready to integrate into German society. According to statistical data from 2014, about 1.8 million ethnic Germans from post-Soviet states live in the Federal Republic.