🔸 German Social Democratic Party criticizes "family reunification" rules

One year after the suspension of family members’ reunification with so-called “persons with limited right of asylum” in Germany, the Social Democratic Party has said that the regulations set for cases described as “difficult and exceptional” are overly restrictive and has criticized them.

Pouya(n) Nasr, spokesperson for migration affairs of the Social Democratic parliamentary faction, said on Sunday, August 9, in an interview with a German media network that the figures show these regulations are “not effective”.

By pointing to the very small number of visas issued under these rules, he said this small number does not mean that other requests were unfounded. Nasr called this situation “restrictive and toughened regulations” and said the permitted period of separation between children and parents is not “acceptable and family-oriented”.

He said that if the separation of a young child from their parents is allowed for five years and for an older child this period reaches 10 years, then there would no longer be many cases that could be considered “exceptional”.

The German politician from the Social Democratic Party also noted that if an intolerable individual situation is considered a prerequisite for accepting an exceptional case, then crises such as the Gaza Strip, which affects a large number of people at the same time, are in practice ignored.

Last June, the German parliament approved that family reunification for “persons with limited right of asylum” be suspended for two years. This group of refugees has mostly been Syrian citizens who fled the war and sought asylum in Germany.

Under German law, “persons with limited right of asylum” are a category of refugees that, although they do not fully meet the criteria for obtaining political asylum, returning them to their country could severely threaten their life or freedom, for example due to civil war, torture, or widespread violence.

Legally, this group has a weaker status than accepted refugees, and for that reason some rights, including family reunification, are limited or suspended for them.

An amendment to the so-called “difficult and exceptional” cases also provides only limited scope for family reunification with this category of refugees in situations where the separation clearly causes serious harm or an intolerable situation for them.