German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer has announced the government will be cracking down on Syrians with asylum status who go on holiday back to Syria.
Bavarian centre-right leader Horst Seehofer said that the government would be looking to strip Syrians who visit their home country on holiday of their asylum status, saying that those who regularly travel to the country cannot make a serious claim that they are being persecuted there, Kronen Zeitung reports.
“We have to deprive them of their refugee status,” Seehofer added and said that the Interior Ministry was monitoring any such activity from Syrians with refugee status living in Germany.
He also said that the government was watching the situation inside Syria closely and said, “If the situation permits, we will carry out repatriations.”
The revelations of asylum seekers and refugees making holidays in their home countries — where they allegedly fled persecution — are not a new development. As early as January of 2017 it was shown that asylum seekers in Switzerland were using welfare cash to go on vacations to Eritrea, despite claiming they risked death if they were ever sent back to the country.
Syrian Refugee Complains He Did Not Have Time for Syria Vacation https://t.co/SIVtgitrTv
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) July 9, 2019
Later that year the German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) admitted they were also aware of cases in which refugees had travelled to their home countries and lamented that no laws existed at the time to prevent them from doing so.
BAMF even justified some of the trips claiming that migrants may be returning to their countries because of sick relatives or other issues.
Earlier this year, noted Syrian refugee blogger Aras Bacho complained that he would like to go and visit Syria this summer but was unable to and said he knew at least six other Syrians who want for a holiday in Syria.
“Unfortunately, I was unable to go on holiday to Syria because something very important got in the way, and I hope to catch up very soon during the holidays. Germany is stressful and you need some kind of break,” he said.
Story cited here.
