Status: 08/19/2021 8:33 p.m.
Federal Interior Minister Seehofer wants to bring Afghan local workers and their families to Germany as soon as possible. This is a “moral responsibility”. In total, more than 1,000 people have been flown out to date.
Federal Minister of the Interior Horst Seehofer has expressly committed to accepting local Afghan workers and their families. After his appearance in the Interior Committee of the Bundestag, he assured:
It is completely undisputed that the local workers and their family members should come to Germany and that there is also a moral responsibility for this.
At the same time, he emphasized the possibility of carrying out visa procedures and security checks only after the person concerned has entered the country. Seehofer admitted that this involved a certain security risk, but emphasized: “If you want a solution here, you have to take this risk.” In addition, the necessary security check is not a matter of days or weeks, but just a matter of seconds.
Horst Seehofer, Federal Minister of the Interior: “Local employees are not refugees or asylum seekers.”
tagesschau24 4:00 p.m., August 19, 2021
It is not possible to forecast the number of refugees
He did not want to give a forecast of the total number of Afghan refugees to be expected as a result of the Taliban’s takeover of power. The range of estimates ranges from a few thousand people to a few million, according to Seehofer. In this context, he warned against a loss of confidence in Western values:
The western community failed in Afghanistan. If the western community and the European Union, which I would like to mention here in particular, also fail in dealing with the consequences, then we would have a huge problem of trust in our community of values.
Federal states ready to accept Afghans
In Germany there is a great willingness to take on local staff. For example, the chairman of the conference of interior ministers, Thomas Strobl (CDU), said that the federal states want to support the federal government with the admission. “There is a great willingness in the federal states to take care of these people,” said the head of the Baden-Württemberg department.
Evacuation flights are in progress
The Bundeswehr has so far brought more than 1200 people from Kabul to Germany. In Kabul, several Bundeswehr machines set off for Uzbekistan on Thursday evening.
A total of 244 German citizens have already been flown out of Afghanistan – far more than originally expected. And there could still be several hundred in the country. “A middle three-digit number” of Germans has now been registered on the Foreign Office’s crisis list, as the German Press Agency learned from the ministry.