Dear visitors,
On these pages you will find current information all about asylum and migration in Germany (in the near future also about other countries). The information is permanently updated and compiled by the group Stadtratte. We are, - presently all in possession of German passports, and one Swiss passport holder - working together, with alternating personnel, for about eight years. Up until the summer of 1996 we published a Munich urban magazine 'die Stadtratte', hence the name of our group. Since the summer of 1997 we have been building up a network pertaining to migration. We have called this project unlimited.
We are still in the initial phase, but we hope that soon other refugee and migration projects in Europe will inform us (e.g. by e-mail) about the situation in their countries. We intend to collect and prepare this information for further reference. At this point therefore we wish to stress our appeal...: If you have material that is appropriate for our pages, even if only parts of reports, send it to us! We depend upon information, especially upon information about the situation outside of Germany.
Since the information database currently contains information about Germany only you should visit the Danish Refugee Council site.
There you will find a wealth of country-specific information relating to migration (in English and Danish only), for instance; books about the legal and social conditions in the western European countries, 'safe third country' policies etc.
In each section we attempt to represent the current situation, nevertheless we cannot guarantee that our pages are absolutely up-to-date. If you receive these pages in indirectly in photocopy form, make sure that they are up-to-date by a comparison at our internet address.
Our aim is to inform groups, lawyers and individuals who are assisting refugees and migrants (also, where possible, the individuals directly concerned), about the legal situation, methods of procedure and the regularly occurring changes. It often occurs that when deportation is close at hand, the chance of inner-European asylum exists, or perhaps of still-untried legal avenues. We also try to point out other possibilities of 'entry' and 'stay'. Knowledge itself, of legal rights and their interpretation may well be advantageous.
The legal information compiled by us here is no substitute for legal counselling. Where a case or situation concerns your rights of stay in the FRG, it is of the utmost importance to hire the services of a lawyer!
We're not demanding new, more liberal laws nor the recognition of new groups of refugees, nor nation-state policies for nobody, but simply nothing less than 'Migration unlimited'. Nevertheless, the utilisation of laws and regulations or their circumvention is one of the few possibilities presently at hand. However, we are alarmed at the remorselessness of these regulations and judicial categories. New identities are created with each new category and others are made untenable. Each official recognition of a group of persons as 'having the right of residence' lays down this identity as a provision and establishes it to the exclusion of others.
Political against economic refugees, civil war refugees against emigrants, etc., is the logic of this system that attempts to prescribe to people who they are to be and where they have to live. This is why we set down in our text the categories and judicial conceptions in imaginary quotation marks. If, for instance, we write of 'quota refugees', then on no account do we adhere to the ideology of segregation and management hidden behind this term. Legalistic inventions create realities. We have no intention of accepting this reality of the racists and the servants of law and order. However, a certain manoeuvrability within this reality, an exploitation of this remaining elbowroom for migration we consider as being useful.
Therefore, we believe it is also necessary to consider more explicitly the existing groups of persons in order to completely utilise all legal possibilities. In the categories 'Women', 'Sexual minorities', 'Children'... various power relationships converge that often have aggravating conditions as a consequence. In some states these aggravating conditions may be acknowledged by the creation of regulations guaranteeing protection. In consequence in some states various legal categories exist. Since quite often we don't know these categories it is important for us in this respect to explicitly enquire and to listen carefully. Please inform us about who in your countries has to be a human in order to stay.
We hope that you find our pages helpful for your day to day tasks. Please inform us of your criticism and also approval. Send us information, take part in our project either virtually or in person... contribute!!!!
In order to maintain our enterprise we need money. A standing order of a few German marks or more, or perhaps much more will help us forwards. Apart from donations we have no other sources of income.
With our hearty Greetings,
die 'Stadtratten'
© unlimited - Stadtratte, 99-02-27 - www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/migration/