Germany Takes Step on Refugee Problem

Germany took a tentative first step Thursday toward changing its constitution to stop a swelling tide of impoverished asylum-seekers from Eastern Europe and the Third World.

Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s three-party governing coalition adopted a draft resolution to tighten Germany’s liberal asylum laws, but it failed to muster opposition support required for the necessary two-thirds vote in the lower house of Parliament, or Bundestag.

The opposition Social Democrats plan to draft a more liberal proposal of their own at their party convention next month, and decided to boycott Thursday’s vote.

The result was a non-binding resolution that may serve as the basis for a stricter asylum law. A parliamentary debate on the issue is widely expected before the end of the year.

The draft measure by Kohl’s conservative Christian Democrats and their governmental partners, the ultraconservative Christian Social Union and the centrist Free Democrats, would speed deportation of unqualified asylum-seekers.

Certain countries would be declared free of political persecution, so that no new asylum applications from their citizens would be considered. Applicants already in Germany could be deported without a court hearing if they faced “no irreparable damages” at home.

Up to 500,000 asylum-seekers are expected to converge on Germany this year, and experts say the number could easily double next year. The foreigners have become the target of violent neo-Nazis, skinheads and other right-wing extremists who firebomb refugee shelters on an almost nightly basis.