The German government has announced that Syrian migrants will be allowed to travel back to Syria for a holiday without the fear of losing their refugee status.
The measure is intended to motivate Syrians, who have sought refuge in Germany, to eventually return to their country of origin voluntarily.
According to the federal office of statistics, around 712,000 Syrian asylum seekers were living in Germany at the beginning of last year.
The measure, as rightly pointed out by the centre-right Christian Social Union (CSU), is an absurd one.
The CSU, which will take control of the interior ministry from the Social Democrats as soon as the new German government is elected, said people who are considered to be in need of protection shouldn’t be able to take holiday trips.
As the publication Junge Freiheit points out, the new regulation also contradicts the law, according to which refugees lose their protection status if they voluntarily return to their allegedly dangerous country of origin.
German media revealed last year that thousands of Afghan citizens who had claimed asylum in Germany flew back to their home country for holidays and then returned to Germany.
