Reverse migration is more common than we realize. BBC reports that two Iraqi girls have returned to Iraq from the UK. People want to go home again.
A migrant waits for further transport in Hamburg Germany©Getty
Asu Hassan is throwing in the towel. Frustrated by bureaucratic hold-ups, money troubles and months spent living in an overcrowded gym, he is leaving his new home in Germany and returning to Iraq.
“Since I was a child I dreamt of Germany,” the 31-year-old mechanic says. “Now my dream is never to have to see it again.”
Mr Hassan is one of hundreds of Iraqis who reached safe haven in Berlin after a perilous, months-long journey to the heart of Europe but are now heading in the opposite direction. It is a measure of his disenchantment that he is willing to trade a new life in one of the world’s richest and most stable countries for the violence and insecurity of his homeland.
“In a year there will be no Iraqis left here,” Mr Hassan says.
In Berlin’s Tegel airport, queues form at the check-in counter for Iraqi Airways, which operates three weekly flights from Germany to Iraq. Andesha Karim, an airline official, says around half the passengers — 150 people a week — are returning refugees. Demand is growing: plans are afoot to double the number of flights.
The volume of returnees is a mere trickle compared to those staying. More than 30,000 Iraqis applied for asylum last year, the largest number after Syrians, Albanians, Kosovars and Afghans.
But the outflow reflects growing disenchantment with life in the west, where social services have been stretched to breaking point by the massive influx of foreigners. Even in Germany, a country that prides itself on its reputation for efficiency, authorities are struggling to cope.
For the German government, the reverse exodus is a small piece of good news in what has otherwise been a confounding crisis. Chancellor Angela Merkel expects large numbers of migrants to return home once peace was restored in Syria and Isis defeated in Iraq. Some 70 per cent of refugees fleeing the wars in Yugoslavia for Germany in the 1990s ultimately went home.
The German government has encouraged people to return by offering to pay for their tickets home. Last year, some 37,000 people signed up for its voluntary repatriation programme, nearly three times as many as in 2014. More than 700 were Iraqis. (Syria is not included in the scheme because it is too dangerous).
Meanwhile, hundreds of other Iraqis are leaving under their own steam. The Iraqi embassy in Berlin has issued some 1,400 one-way travel documents for returnees since the end of October.
Alaa Hadrous owns a Middle East-focused travel agency and jewellery shop in Berlin, where some Iraqis sell their last remaining valuables to pay for the €250 ticket home.
Sa’ad Rubeyi, a former soldier in the Iraqi army now about to board a flight back to Baghdad, says he lost patience after waiting five months to obtain asylum. He says that for the last two months he’s received none of the pocket money all refugees are entitled to.
There is no evidence so far that recent Iraqi migrants are less able to adapt to life in Germany than other newcomers from the Middle East. Some suspect the affordability and availability of direct flights home has played a role in their decision to leave.
The returnees’ problems are often specific to Berlin. The city’s State Office for Health and Social Affairs, known by its German acronym LaGeSo, has become a byword for administrative chaos.
For four months, he says, he lived in a “dirty, overcrowded” school gym together with 300 others. There were three showers and three toilets for all and only intermittent hot water. “I lost all hope of getting out of there,” he says. By the time of his departure he was still waiting for a residence permit and ID. “We didn’t run away from Isis to be treated like this,” he says.
The complaints are seeping back to Iraq and could be one reason fewer people are making the trek to Germany of late.