Swedish study of similar program calls it “risky and best avoided.”
The German traffic light coalition is considering paying “financial travel support” to asylum seekers set to be deported to Afghanistan, Bild reports. Critics question why the country would reward foreigners with no residency rights to do what they are supposed to do anyway—leave the country.
Providing rejected migrants with ‘start-up money’ for food and housing is intended to encourage them to leave, but also to help avoid legal challenges, Germany’s interior ministry said. Failed asylum seekers have in the past challenged deportation orders on grounds of being returned to abject poverty.
Programs already exist in different German states to assist rejected asylum seekers who return to their home countries voluntarily. Amounts can range from a few hundred to “several thousand euros,” Bild says—amounts that are still small compared to the cost of having the migrants remain in Germany.
Whether the proposed program would apply also to dangerous criminals under deportation orders appears unclear. A spokesman for the interior ministry told the newspaper that how to handle the payments—and who would be eligible for them—would be up to the states.
Since the Taliban took power in Afghanistan in 2021, Germany has halted deportations there. But an epidemic of knife attacks in Germany, disproportionately committed by Afghan and Syrian criminals, has led to public outrage, forcing the Scholz government to reevaluate. Other problems persist, however: different legal jurisdictions—including four higher courts—have come to different conclusions on whether deportations to Afghanistan can be legally carried out.
Last year, over 51,000 Afghans sought asylum in Germany—an increase of 41% compared to the previous year. Around 15% of the country’s first-time asylum seekers in 2023 were from Afghanistan.
Whether a lump sum of startup money will prevent migrants from fighting deportation remains to be seen. At least in the German state of Saxony, prospective deportees who resist don’t appear to have much to fear. Instructions to airport police, referenced by Apollo News, say they can simply be released:
If the individual refuses to board the plane or attempts to resist deportation in any other way (active/passive resistance), they can be released and allowed to return to their assigned accommodation on their own.
Other EU countries have tried paying migrants to leave, with varying success. Denmark pays qualified immigrants around €20,000—plus costs of medicine and education for minor children—if they return to their country of origin. In Sweden, a voluntary return only nets a migrant 10,000 Swedish kronor (about €870).
Joachim Ruist, an economist tasked by the Swedish center-right government with researching ways to get migrants to voluntarily return to their countries of origin presented his report on August 14th. His final comment on the report was that “the inquiry has concluded that no such methods are to be found.”
