Dresden (dpa/sn) – For Saxony’s Interior Minister Armin Schuster (CDU), the imminent deportation of a Vietnamese who has been living in Germany for 35 years and his family has not yet been finally decided. From the words of the Hardship Commission, he could not see any “fundamental rejection” of the case, he said on Tuesday in Dresden. However, the Commission cannot reopen the same case without new arguments. At the moment, as Minister of the Interior, he lacks the legal basis for a decision, the matter would first have to be presented to him by the Hardship Commission. Schuster confirmed that the Vietnamese concerned never had a criminal record.
The former Vietnamese contract worker Pham Phi Son came to what was then East Germany in 1987. He lives with his family in Chemnitz and is now to be deported because he stayed in his home country for a long time for medical treatment in 2016 and thus violated deadlines in Germany. Courts upheld the decision.
The Saxon Refugee Council had made the case public and started a petition asking the family to stay. By Tuesday evening, almost 68,000 people had signed the online petition, a good 15,000 from Saxony. The required quorum has thus been met and the Parliament’s Petitions Committee can deal with the case.
On Tuesday, the parliamentary groups of the Greens and SPD called for the deportation to be waived. “We Alliance Greens don’t want to put up with the imminent deportation of the Pham/Nguyen family. The father of the family has lived in Germany for 35 years, both parents can and want to work and the little daughter goes to kindergarten here. A formality has led to the settlement permit has expired and there is an obligation to leave the country,” said Petra ?agalj Sejdi, member of the state parliament.
“People who have found a home here in Saxony and are part of our society must be given the prospect of staying. The responsible foreigners authority has a duty here to provide this family with all possible support and advice in order to legalize further residence,” emphasized SPD domestic politician Albrecht Pallas. In doing so, all discretionary leeway in the right of residence should be exploited and the integration achievements appropriately acknowledged.
