62 Georgians Deported from Germany

Sixty-two Georgian citizens have been deported from Germany, the German media reports.

Twenty-six individuals were refused asylum in Germany’s Saxony region, while others requested asylum in other regions of Germany.

The German media reports that Georgian citizens have been deported from Saxony by three charter flights in the past years.

Georgia hopes that the number of illegal migrants to Germany, after Georgia signed a visa-free travel deal with the EU last year, will decrease as the German Bundestag declared Georgia a safe country on January 18, meaning that Georgians will not be eligible to seek asylum in Germany.

The safe county status means that no one in the country is politically prosecuted and human rights are protected, which minimizes chances for receiving asylum abroad.

The bill now needs to be approved by the Bundesrat, the upper house of the bicameral parliament of Germany.

Georgian Ambassador to Germany Elguja Khokrishvili said that the bill was supported by 509 lawmakers at the Bundestag while 138 voted against.

“The bill will simplify processing of the asylum seekers applications from Georgia and other countries as well as fasten the readmission process of those who were rejected for asylum,” he said.

In 2018, 2,976 applications were registered from Georgian asylum seekers in Germany.

The Georgian Ministry of Internal Affairs says that 339,255 Georgians have carried out 553,748 visits to the EU’s Schengen Zone since the enactment of the Georgia-EU visa-free deal on March 28, 2017.

Most of the visits, 153,884 of them, took place to Germany.

Then came Italy with 80,520 visits.

Greece - 60,807 visits.