On Procedural Red Tape

To continue with this motif of eye opening experiences, it is necessary to discuss the events of today especially.  Throughout the week, I have been absorbed in the administrative processes of employees attempting to assist the refugees under their care.  Therefore, the earlier days of the week have been relatively benign.  Today, however, was quite different; my colleagues and I interviewed the current director of our NGO, a young woman who shall, from this point on, be referred to as LB.  We asked her several questions regarding her job, the inefficiencies in the current system, and what she though could be done to improve it.  Her insight was, for a lack of a better word, incredible. 

The first thing we discussed was what some of the critical issues were that she or other people in her position were facing.  Her first critique was in regards to a system by which the German government uses to classify refugees by country; she referred to it as the “big 5” country system.  It can be boiled down to this simple statement, “If you were a resident of Iraq, Iran, Syria, Somalia, or Eritrea you get some level of preferential treatment towards your asylum application; regardless of your desire to be in Germany, or your willingness to contribute to its social system.”  The problems within this statement are flawed by their very nature.  The first problem with this logic is how it precludes a hierarchy of emergency as relegated by the nation-state that one comes from.  Second, it lumps every refugee from a nation-state into one, unfalsifiable category, instead of paying attention to an individual’s status within the nation-state.  At face value, this statement seems rather confusing therefore, there is a necessity to provide an example that can be observed by spending even the smallest amount of time with most NGO’s that have a stake in this situation.  The example will be that of the Nigerians coming to Germany.  Nigeria is not considered part of the “big 5”, therefore, the people from there do not receive any form of special status, meaning they have a smaller chance of having an asylum request accepted.  According to LB, the German government considers Nigeria to be safe, regardless of any recent activity from Boko Haram, an Islamist militant organization terrorizing Nigeria.  The last part of that statement is especially important because one cannot argue that Borno State, an area wrought with violence attributed directly to Boko Haram, is even remotely as safe as the Nigerian capital city region.  A Nigerian coming from the capital is, by their very nature, going to be in lesser immediate danger than a Nigerian coming from within Borno State.  It is rather careless of the German government to overlook the location of the migrants when making a decision of migrants not from a “big 5” nation state. 

There is considerably more to talk about when it comes to the interview with LB.  However, I have packed this post with more content than I have pictures, thus creating an awful content-to-picture ratio.  Therefore, I will conclude here with the knowledge that there is more to come.