Germany’s Interior Minister Proposes Centralization of Data Storage on Asylum Seekers
Germany’s Minister of Interior Horst Seehofer has proposed registering all data related to internationals that remain in the country in the Central Register of Foreign Nationals, which would include data from all persons from countries worldwide.
The register would also include scanned ID’s asylum decisions and other relevant documents obtained by internationals living in Germany, AtoZSerwisPlus.de reports.
Minister Seehofer said that the proposal “speeds up the asylum procedures and protects of misuse and identity deceit,” adding that “the reform was a long-overdue step on the path toward a modern administration.”
On February 24, Germany’s government enacted a draft law from the country’s Interior Ministry’ which would grant the federal government as well as 16 federal states and municipalities access to the relevant documents through the Central Register of Foreign Nationals.
However, such an idea is not considered much adequate by critics, according to which the system could lead to improper usage of data.
Germany’s Left Party parliamentarian, Ulla Jelpke, stressed that “It’s superfluous and dangerous to turn the Central Register of Foreign Nationals into a mega data dump of the foreigners’ offices.”
Jelpke believes that digitalization has created the opportunity to save a lot fewer data in a central location.
At present, the Central Register of Foreign Nationals (“Ausländerzentralregister,” known as AZR) keeps data from foreigners who have lived previously in Germany as well as those who are currently living in the country and administered by the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF).
The majority of the data is stored by one of 600 local internationals’ offices in the country, even though some information is currently saved at AZR, such as fingerprints from the applications for asylum.
Lawmakers believe that keeping the provided information in a central location would facilitate internationals’ process from giving their data to different authorities several times.
It also would minimize the efforts to present at the local internationals’ office when wishing to move to a different municipality.
German federal statistics office, in a report published back in September, stressed that among AZR’s problems is that data is not kept up to date, highlighting that the register “tended to build up excess data.”
The report emphasized that such estimation was evident by “the last comprehensive data correction” of the register in 2004 as well as the census in 2011, particularly departures of internationals were considered to be underrated.
“Already now, the foreigners’ offices don’t manage to keep their data in the AZR up to date. How will things unfold when even more data is saved there?” parliamentarian Jelpke pointed out.
On March 1, the German Federal Ministry of the Interior, Building and Home Affairs marked its first anniversary of the Skilled Workers Immigration Act while announcing that over 30,000 visas had been given to third countries’ trainers and specialists from March 1 until December 31, 2020, amid the Coronavirus outbreak.
