The Juvenile Law

For a number of months, I've essayed over the growing German chatter for some type of age-check for incoming migrants/refugees.  ARD, the public TV network in Germany (Channel One), wrote up a piece over a development from yesterday.

So to kinda lay out the background to this.....Germany has a law that says anyone who walks across the border and asks for asylum/immigration chances....MUST be accepted for an evaluation. It doesn't guarantee asylum or immigration....just that paperwork will be generated and months will pass....where an approval or disapproval will occur.

Then you come to a second rule (unrelated to rule one that I mentioned) which says that if you are a juvenile (alone of course) migrant or immigrant....asking for status....then you get the same application, with a highly approved opportunity.  In general....juvenile applicants just don't fail because no one wants to send them back to their original country.

Over the past four years (not just in Germany but around Europe), there's this trend that started up....guys mostly of a immigrant or migrant fashion....arriving and stating that they are juveniles. The old attitude of the Germans (and most European societies) was to just accept them at their word if they said they were 15 years old or such.  Various episodes have come up to suggest that a bit of lying has occurred, and some folks (unknown number) are fake juveniles.  You can sense where this is going.

This became a hot topic, and some political folks (not just the AfD Party) wanted a mandatory test on every single juvenile.  Well....some doctors stepped up and said they'd refuse such an order.....or they'd only do it if the juvenile was charged in some crime.

Some doctors have come out to suggest the test that is often used in the aging prediction....isn't reliable.  Some doctors have countered and said it's fairly reliable (within one to two years).

What the news folks report today is that a coalition deal has been worked up by the CDU and SPD parties, with enough votes to make a new law.

There's some stumbling blocks here though.  The cities, who often run the shelter and processing angles to migration....say they absolutely will not take charge of this ageing test deal.  This dumping act where the German federal government basically tossed all requirements onto the cities has been long discussed, and I wouldn't blame the cities for their attitude.

The youth welfare folks?  They don't want the job.

So everyone is looking back at the very beginning of this cycle....where the juvenile walks into the country and gets sent to the very first introduction-center.  This would make sense, but you'd have to settle on the idea that this juvenile might be sitting there for a number of weeks while this test is applied and completed.  I have my doubts that this is a simple 48-hour type test that you can perform and turn around.

As for the current group of juveniles in the country?  My guess is that the law will find some federal agency and just task them to go and perform a test on every single migrant juvenile....then someone will host a court challenge, and drag this off to a one-year delay while the court system discusses if this is legal or not.

The numbers here for the fake juveniles?  It's a total unknown.  It might be one-percent....it might be fifty-percent.

The curious thing will be what happens in eighteen months when statistics are dragged out, and you come to find that maybe one in three of the juveniles were fake (I'm only suggesting the 33-percent number).  A fair number of Germans will have heartburn over this, and suggest that 'more fixing' is required because they were taken advantaged of or played for some fool.

The one classic case that came up in the Freiburg murder case recently, where a young migrant was the party that the cops focused upon. The young guy claimed he was seventeen.....his father said that the 'kid' was probably closer to 30/31 years old.  The court's test concluded the 'kid' was at least 20, so adult charges was the direction that they were going to go.  In the Freiburg community, it's safe to say that locals are hyped up about the juvenile age business.

Is this whole topic a top twenty issue?  No....but there are dozens of problems now brewing over migration and the way it was handled since 2013.  The coalition government has roughly 3.5 years before the next election, and both parties (CDU and SPD) need to focus repairs and positive actions to recover from this 2017 lackluster win.  Settling the youth issue and assuring the public over the age question would help.