If repatriation is problematic, send migrants to Rwanda: German migration commissioner

BERLIN

Taking a page from a discarded British playbook, a top German official on migration said Friday that if there is trouble repatriating migrants to their own home countries, they could be sent instead to the East African country of Rwanda.

Amid heated debate over migration policies, Joachim Stamp, Berlin's special representative for migration agreements, told German media outlet Table Briefings that the possibility of deporting migrants to Rwanda should be considered, a controversial policy the British Conservative government ousted by voters this July had pursued unsuccessfully.

He added that deportation procedures of people who come via Russia and Belarus could be outsourced to the African country.

The capacities in Rwanda originally prepared for an agreement with Great Britain could be used, with the only fundamental difference being the refugee agency UNHCR carries out the procedures, said Stamp.

Russia and Belarus are accused of deliberately smuggling migrants into the EU in order to cause destabilization.

Stamp said that with the Rwanda model, their alleged propaganda would no longer catch on with Iraqis, Syrians, and Afghans. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko could no longer tell them “Come, we will take you to Europe,” he added.

Under the British scheme, migrants reaching Britain illegally would have been sent to Rwanda to make their case for asylum, but even if they did so successfully, would still stay in Rwanda, with the UK covering the costs. The plan was meant to discourage irregular migration.

Stamp branded the flow of migrants from Russia and Belarus part of Putin and Lukashenko's “hybrid warfare” against the West.

Both leaders are "deliberately sending migrants across the eastern border of the European Union," Stamp said, adding that it was likely part of a plot to lure Syrian, Iraqi, and Afghan refugees to reach Europe by way of Moscow and the Belarusian capital Minsk.

Germany’s largest opposition group of Christian Democratic Union and Christian Social Union have long been calling for asylum procedures to be outsourced to third countries. ​​​​​​​

Chancellor Olaf Scholz had vowed an audit of asylum procedures by December. ​​​​​​​