Grüne on migration and integration

The Greens want to make it easier for skilled workers from abroad to enter the labor market. To that end, qualifications are to be recognized more easily and companies supported in hiring. The platform points to the need for skilled workers for the shift to climate neutrality.

The Greens want to make it easier for skilled workers from abroad to work here. Their degrees and certificates should be accepted more easily. Companies should get help when they hire these workers. Bremen needs many skilled workers.

Recognition of qualifications earned abroad is to become simpler. Businesses are to receive support when they hire foreign skilled workers. The platform counts integrating these workers among the needs the world of work should adapt to. In the party's view, climate neutrality cannot succeed without enough skilled workers.

The Greens want immigrant and refugee children and teenagers to be taught in regular classes quickly. Preparatory courses are to be well equipped and come with educational support. Young refugees are to be able to attend school after turning 18 as well.

Refugee children should join regular classes quickly. Before that, there are preparatory courses. The Greens want to equip these courses well. Experts should help children who lived through terrible things. Young refugees should be able to go to school after 18 too.

The plan includes social and trauma-informed support, an assessment of language level and long-term language help. There are to be many more language mediators, including for parent evenings, school mail and parent meetings. Enough preparatory course places are to be kept ready to respond quickly to large refugee movements. School attendance is also to be possible during lengthy court cases over age assessment.

The Greens want to work to ensure that trainees without secure residency status are not deported, so that companies can plan with confidence. They also want needs-based language support to continue after school, backed by public funding.

Some trainees have no secure right to stay in Germany. The Greens want them not to be deported. This should also give companies certainty. Trainees should also get help learning German. The state should support this help.

The platform justifies language support by noting that vocational schools expect academic language skills and general knowledge that some young people cannot catch up on without help. So far, volunteers provide this support. The Greens consider public funding and defined quality standards necessary to secure learning results and a good start to working life.

The Greens want to keep Bremen a "safe harbor" for refugees and reject deportation detention as well as deportations to war and crisis zones. Immigrants are to settle in faster through quicker recognition of qualifications, language courses and swift naturalization.

The Greens want to keep taking in refugees. They reject deportations to war zones. They also reject detention before deportation. Immigrants should find work and learn German faster. Becoming a citizen should take less time.

Deportations to cold regions in winter are also rejected. The Greens stand by the state admission programs and want to relaunch the programs for extended family reunification and make them easier to access. The "Ankommen im Quartier" program is to run permanently with better childcare, permanently employed teachers and more lesson hours. The naturalization campaign is to continue, with more staff to process applications faster. The platform treats integration as a task cutting across all policy areas.

The Greens want to examine whether Bremen should get its own state office for migration that brings together all responsibilities related to immigration. A guideline would also direct the immigration authorities to use their discretion in favor of the people affected.

The Greens are thinking about a new office for migration. This office would handle everything that immigrants need. The authorities would also get a guideline. They should let people stay when the law allows it.

The office under review would work as an independent state-level immigration authority and combine residence law, basic support, housing and integration courses under one roof. New residents of Bremen and Bremerhaven would get help there as they settle in. A guideline is planned for the Bremen migration office and the Bremerhaven immigration authority. It would instruct staff to focus on participation and protection from violence and to grant a right to stay wherever the law permits. Discretion in family reunification cases should also be used in favor of applicants.

The Greens want to make the counseling program „Ankommen im Quartier“ (Arriving in the Neighborhood) for refugees permanent. Municipal language courses would continue and integration courses would be better organized, to make an independent life easier for immigrants.

The Greens want to keep a counseling program for refugees. It is called „Ankommen im Quartier“. The city's language courses should also continue. The integration courses should get better.

The program's counseling centers help refugees who already live in their own homes, for example with health, education, work, basic income and services for children. For the city-run language courses, quality would be secured and groups set up for different skill levels. For integration courses, the program calls for uniform standards, more teaching hours and individual support. It also calls for qualified childcare and stable employment for the teachers.

The Greens want more space and privacy in initial reception facilities and want especially vulnerable refugees to be housed and cared for appropriately more quickly. The platform bases this on lessons from the pandemic.

The Greens want more space in shelters for refugees. No more than two people should share a room. Pregnant women and single parents should get suitable housing faster. Other vulnerable people should also get help quickly.

The renovation of the reception facility on Lindenstraße would be finished quickly. Pregnant women and single parents would move faster into suitable or private housing; other groups such as unaccompanied minors, traumatized people or people with disabilities would get early counseling and fitting care. Psychological first counseling at the state reception center would keep its funding, and vulnerability would be recorded in statistics. Housing eligibility certificates would be issued generously to refugees. At the federal level the Greens back stronger recognition of gender-based persecution and of human trafficking as grounds for asylum, and at the EU level a minimum of social protection for EU migrants.

For rejected asylum seekers, the Greens rely on voluntary departure and want to limit deportations in Bremen and nationwide. They reject detention pending deportation; undocumented people who have lived in Bremen for years would get a right to stay through a cutoff-date rule.

The Greens want as few deportations as possible. Rejected asylum seekers should leave voluntarily. Nobody should be deported to a war zone. The Greens reject detention before deportation. People without papers should be allowed to stay if they have lived in Bremen for a long time.

Bremen would continue to see itself as a safe harbor and take a more active part in city networks such as „Solidarity Cities“. The platform rules out deportations from schools, universities and workplaces, which would apply to the whole family, and deportations to war and crisis zones such as Afghanistan, Syria or Ukraine. It also calls for a general winter halt on deportations to cold regions. At the federal level, the Greens support an immigration law with a „Spurwechsel“ (lane change), meaning a switch from the asylum process to regular immigration.

The Greens want to relaunch Bremen's admission program for family members from Syria and Afghanistan in an improved form. Existing restrictions would be reviewed.

Bremen has its own program for refugees. It lets family members from Syria and Afghanistan come and join their relatives. The Greens want to restart and improve this program. They want to review the hurdles that exist so far.

The review would cover in particular the age limit and the declaration of commitment, under which relatives vouch for the living costs of those who join them. The Greens also support the resettlement program of the UN refugee agency. That program relocates refugees at particular risk and gives them permanent residence permits.

The Greens want to make Bremen's naturalization campaign permanent so that more people become citizens and waiting times fall. Anyone who has lived in Bremen long enough would be approached directly by the authorities.

The Greens want more people to get German citizenship. The waiting time should get shorter. The office should write to people on its own. This applies to everyone who has lived in Bremen long enough.

The existing campaign would be made permanent, aiming for a higher naturalization rate and the shortest possible waiting times. To that end, the Greens are examining how additional staff positions can be created. People who meet the conditions because of their length of residence would automatically receive a letter and also be contacted in person.

The Greens call for a European refugee policy based on solidarity that guarantees people seeking protection a fair, individual asylum procedure. They want border protection to follow the rule of law under the European Parliament's control, and they reject pushbacks at the external borders as unlawful.

The Greens want Europe to protect people who flee war and violence. Every person should get a fair asylum procedure. The law should apply at the EU's borders. The European Parliament should oversee border protection. Bremen should support a civilian rescue ship with donations.

The party criticizes that so-called pushbacks at the EU's external borders are increasingly treated as normal. In its view, the border agency Frontex has not met rule-of-law standards so far, and it favors a European debate on the institutional changes needed. EU cooperation with non-EU countries should be tied to human and fundamental rights. Bremen would sponsor a civilian sea rescue ship through donations.

The Greens call for safe routes for refugees with admission quotas and a fair distribution of arrivals. They reject closed camps, transit zones, external camps in third countries and cooperation with the Libyan coast guard. Bremen should also take on a donation sponsorship for a civilian rescue ship.

The Greens want safe routes for people who flee. They are against closed camps at the EU's borders. The EU should stop working with the coast guard of Libya. Bremen should collect money for a rescue ship.

The platform rejects sealed-off mass camps in the EU, transit zones, camps in third countries and deals to send people back to third countries, arguing that they violate human rights and strengthen autocratic governments. It also opposes funding repressive governments along escape routes. Instead of designating safe countries of origin, returns should rest on readmission agreements that respect human rights; cooperating countries would get visa facilitation or training partnerships in return. The EU should give the UN refugee agency UNHCR better and steady support. The party condemns the criminalization of private sea rescue groups and wants Bremen to influence European legislation early on.

The Greens want people who have to leave their homes because of the climate crisis to receive protection in other countries. International law should be developed further for this purpose, and Bremen should push the federal government to act. Industrialized countries should keep their financial pledges to poor and heavily affected countries.

Some people have to flee because of the climate crisis. The Greens want them to get protection in other countries. For this, the rules between countries should change. Rich countries should pay poor countries the money they promised.

The platform argues that droughts, extreme weather and sinking island states force people to migrate. According to the party, industrialized countries bear a special responsibility because they have historically emitted most greenhouse gases. At the same time, the energy transition should not create new injustices: mining of raw materials in the Global South should be subject to global minimum standards for labor and the environment.