With a joint communication sent on 9 November, the President of the German Bishops’ Conference (DBK), Cardinal Karl Lehmann, and the chairman of the Council of the German Evangelical Council (EKD), have appealed to the ministers of the interior and the internal affairs senators of the Länder, who are called to decide (between 16 and 17 November) whether to regularise the right to permanent residence in Germany of almost 200,000 foreigners with no particular status that would legitimise their presence. Many of these are refugees from Afghanistan, Palestine or Kosovo who have lived for years in Germany. Their applications for asylum have been rejected, but their repatriation to the countries from whence they came is impossible for personal or humanitarian reasons. These persons may remain in Germany as tolerated persons by virtue of short-term residence permits with a duration of just a few months. In their joint communication the two leaders of the German Churches express satisfaction about the probable reaching of an accord on residence rights for those who have lived in this precarious condition for many years, though emphasising that “some proposals still give rise to serious problems from a humanitarian point of view”. They warn the authorities to take into account “not only the legitimate interests of State and society, but also the existential situation of the individuals involved. The regulations on permanent residence must be to the benefit of persons who are not responsible for the fact that they cannot leave Germany”. Therefore, the Churches expressly support the proposals calling for the granting of a residence permit with unlimited access to the labour market “on a probationary basis”, also taking into consideration exceptional solutions in the case of disabled, sick or traumatized persons. According to Lehmann and Huber, the criteria for exclusion “must respond to the principle of proportionality”; they therefore condemn the hypotheses of excluding a priori the citizens of some States – such as Iraq – from the right to residence out of fear of terrorism: “To combat terrorism”, they object, “German law offers other and more suitable means than the blanket suspicion of whole groups of people”. In particular, the Churches regard with concern any projects that would deprive whole families of permanent residence permits due to shortcomings on the part of one of the parents: “In such cases, the good of the children must be paramount”.
