In February, Madina A. was almost deported to Hungary. The 22-year-old Afghan was already in the patrol car on the way to the airport. Now she can stay and start an apprenticeship in an inn near Augsburg: “This apprenticeship is very good for me at the moment. They are very nice people,” she says in the surprisingly fluent German that she has learned in the last few months. And then: “I waited almost a year for the training permit.”
This senselessly wasted time also annoys her new boss Jan Hiller: “For a year she could have done an apprenticeship and made a living from her own work,” he says. The owner of the Gasthof Adler in Ziemetshausen is urgently looking for employees. It has been three years since a trainee has applied for service with him. His wife is alone behind the counter with a few helpers.
The case of the young Afghan woman, who was to be deported even though she had looked for an apprenticeship herself, is one of many that time and again have also angered Bavarian business representatives against politics. “I don’t know what’s going on with us,” says the former head of education at the IHK Schwaben, Josefine Steiger, who had also campaigned for Madina A.. “Every second company in Swabia was unable to fill their training positions this year, and almost 40 percent of the companies didn’t even get an application.” Nevertheless, motivated and talented young people are pushed away.
From a legal point of view, the authorities initially acted correctly in the case of Madina A. True, there was never any doubt that the family needed protection. The father worked for NATO. After the Taliban took power, his life was in danger. The parents, Madina A. and three other siblings saved themselves in a plane that flew them to Budapest. From there they fled to Germany, where an older son already lives. However, since they entered the EU via Hungary, Hungary is also responsible for their proceedings. That’s where they should go back to. A separate procedure was carried out for Madina A., who is already of legal age. So in February she was supposed to be deported alone to Budapest.
An urgent application by the Munich lawyer Franz Bethäuser prevented this at the last minute. The federal police should not deport people to Hungary, he argued. The country has already been condemned several times by the ECJ due to deficiencies in the asylum system, he explains to the SZ. The court agreed with him. Due to systemic deficiencies in the Hungarian asylum system, it considered deportation to Hungary to be inadmissible.
The Petitions Committee deliberated on her case
For Madina A., this verdict is a great opportunity. Now her lawyer is complaining that her application for asylum will be examined again in Germany. As long as this procedure is running, she can work and also start an apprenticeship.
The government of Swabia took its time with the approval, so that in the meantime the petitions committee of the state parliament has also dealt with the case. Now the approval is there. And those who do an apprenticeship in Germany are usually allowed to stay afterwards.