TIRANA, Nov. 29 – In face of the dropping number of migrants and asylum seekers agreeing to voluntarily return to their countries of origin, Germany only recently engaged in a new advertising campaign aiming to encourage voluntary returns by offering migrants and asylum seekers a monetary reward.
The German interior ministry, led by Angela Merkel’s ally and Bavarian Chancellor Horst Seehofer, decided to call on potential repatriates with an allegedly bright future to voluntarily go back to their home countries by offering them a sum of money in return.
The ads, which have been put on for display in all the main German cities during November 2019, show a motivation slogan reading: “Your country! Your future! Now!”
The ad also promises to those who take up the offer to return home before the end of 2018, that the German government will be paying the housing rents in their origin countries during the following year.
In turn, asylum seekers should revoke their asylum applications and give up further legal proceedings to stay in Germany.
According to data, 29,000 people joined the voluntary return programs in 2017, a number which drastically dropped to 14,000 by the end of this year’s October.
While the ads’ results are still expected to be seen, the idea itself has caused contradictory stands on the matter.
“The Interior Ministry’s recent campaign looks like adverts for winter sales and that’s cynical,” Konstantin von Notz, the deputy chairman of the Bundestag Green Party, told reporters of the Berlin Morgenpost newspaper. “It is apparently intended to conceal the ministry’s failures and to improve figures related to people who voluntarily left the country before the end of the year.”
A big part of common citizens, on the other hand, have not appreciated the initiative as many have translated the campaign’s real meaning to be: “ Germany is not your home and your future is not here.”
Others have simply called it “terrible,” labeling the initiative as “inhumane,” while thousands have signed an online petition asking for an end to the campaign.
Regardless, offering money to migrants so they return home is not a completely new approach of Germany, which has been struggling with its big number of migrants and asylum-seekers since Merkel’s 2015 “open door policy.”
In 2017, Berlin offered compensation to refugees who were denied a residence permit and who would accept the government’s decision. Each voluntary returnee usually receives 1,200 euros from German authorities, however local media reported the new program offers them at least 3,000 euros.
