For the past two weeks, it's almost nightly now that some commentary or public forum on German public TV carries the Bremen BamF (the immigration agency for the German government) 'scandal'.
So what's the whole deal?
Well, the basic story is that from the various BamF district offices....this shop in Bremen is said to have allowed around around a thousand migrant/immigrants to 'pass' the review' with minimum effort. Somewhere in the middle of this, the accusation of bribes gets brought up.
The opposition parties all sense a chance to draw 'blood' off the BamF Agency, Chancellor Merkel and the Interior Minister (Seehofer). The suggestion of a committee to be called in and review? It's continually brought up, and even the SPD see this as a possibility.
So I sat and looked over everything. What's really missing here? Facts. It's just an accusation. The news folks have muddled this up enough....that you don't even know who first made this accusation.
There are two BamF strategy periods. There is the Manfried Schmidt era....which ended 17 Sep 2015. He was the chief of BamF (the approval/disapproval authority for immigration). He'd managed the agency for roughly five years, and had arrived long before the chaos period started in late 2013. Then you have the Frank-Jurgen Weise era, which started 18 Sep 2015 and carried onto the very end of 2016. There is an odd separation between the two....Schmidt was asked to retire, and Weise was brought in to 'fix' BamF.
What most will say is that by mid-summer of 2014, BamF was getting behind on the approval process. The truth is....so many individuals were applying, without much of an ID or basis for approval, that the agency couldn't handle the flow. So you went from a review period of a couple of weeks, to a review period of a couple of months, and by mid-summer of 2015....you were looking at almost three-quarters of a year for the approval or disapproval.
A number of folks suggested that the process used....was archaic. One management company came to offer its services to review the process, which got a fair number of BamF folks angry. As Weise arrived, he implemented a number of changes, and then brought more employees into the system to resolve the longer times.
Some of this blame being shifted around is that Weise opened the door to change and if they'd only kept the original rules....strict guidelines would have remained in place.
The central accusation? One translator, three lawyers for BamF (contracted out apparently), and one 'mediator' were part of some group with the bribes.
Two weeks ago, Seehofer ordered the Bremen BamF group to halt all paperwork until this investigation is complete. The cops? Well.....they are busy reviewing a lot of evidence collected. So far, no arrests. More offices being reviewed? Yes....roughly ten.
You may very well reach some stage where the bribes and the effort by the five individuals....equals helping on their private time to review package submissions and help the applicants improve the wording in order to meet the BamF standards. This wouldn't surprise me. But until someone states the bribe angle to this....the amount....with charges....none of this really proceeds or wraps up.
In fact, the longer this gets dragged out as some public complaint, the more the anti-immigrant crowd gets aroused over the behavior of the opposition parties, and the operational practices of BamF. In their mind, they are simply proving the complaint that too many migrants were allowed to stay in the country.
A scandal? Maybe. But if the bribe angle doesn't ever play out, then it's a pretty lousy scandal.
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