Late repatriates in Germany: AGDM publishes statement

For months now, the German minorities in Eastern Europe have been concerned about one issue: the admission of Germans from the successor states of the former Soviet Union as so-called late repatriates has for some time no longer been taking place in the form envisaged by the Federal Expellees Act. Reports about the increasingly restrictive admission practice are accumulating, especially in cases where applicants were given a non-German ethnicity, such as "Russian" or "Ukrainian", in identity or civil status documents during the Soviet regime.

The FUEN Working Group of German Minorities (AGDM) has published the following statement on behalf of its spokesperson Bernard Gaida (photo):

The Association of German Minorities in the FUEN (AGDM), in its function as a solidarity community of the German minorities in 25 countries in Europe and Central Asia, is following the current developments in the processes of admitting ethnic German immigrants from the Russian Federation and Ukraine with great concern.

Without wishing to question the provisions of the Federal Expellees Act (BVFG) and other legal frameworks, the AGDM is concerned to draw attention to the fact that every rejection of an application for admission as a late repatriate affects a large number of people's fates. It is not only our compatriots from Ukraine, who are seeking refuge in the country of their ancestors due to the inhuman war, who are rejected by the authorities as a result of the stricter requirements in the late repatriate procedure. The stricter requirements in the point "Confession of German nationality" affect all applicants from the entire area of the former Soviet Union.

For more than a year, a large number of our compatriots in the Russian Federation have been living in great fear! Their commitment to being German makes them live in a reality that is strongly marked by uncertainty about their and their children's future. It is therefore understandable that many families decide at short notice to emigrate to the country of their ancestors, to Germany. The political public in the Federal Republic has been aware of this situation for several months and we would like to take this opportunity to thank all political actors who have supported the concerns of Germans from the Russian Federation and Ukraine in this context and who will soon campaign for a change in the law.

However, we, as the Working Group of German Minorities in FUEN, will not resign ourselves to the current situation and call on the political decision-makers to redress this injustice. We therefore ask all political forces in Germany for their support in amending the Federal Expellees Act (BVFG) as soon as possible, so that our compatriots and their children in the Russian Federation and Ukraine are assured a future in which they can profess their Germanness without fear of the consequences!

We are aware that the procedure of amending the law will take a lot of time, all the more we ask the authorities to create a provisional regulation that will take the cases in the ongoing procedure more favourably in view of the situation.

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