Bureaucratic error

Home threatened with closure due to ten deportations

A German nursing home is threatened with closure as a third of its staff are to be deported to Colombia (symbolic image).

(Bild: stock.adobe.com/ stock.adobe.com - Peter Atkins)

Like Austria, our neighboring country Germany is also struggling with a shortage of nursing staff. Now one home is even threatened with closure. The reason: a third of the staff are to be deported to Colombia because their asylum applications have been rejected ....

The ten care assistants did not have to apply for asylum, but should have registered with the skilled worker immigration office. A mistake that can no longer be rectified, according to the German Ministry of the Interior in Hanover.

The first deportations are already imminent, as reported online by Bild on Saturday. "I have six decisions here (...). It clearly states: You have 30 days to leave the country. They can do this independently or they will be picked up," said home operator Tino Wohlmacher (59). The facility in Wilstedt near Bremen (Lower Saxony) cares for people with severe dementia, for whom new places would then have to be found. 

Operator: "The state cares nothing"
"The state cares nothing," Wohlmacher criticized in an interview with Bild. According to him, the ten care assistants from Colombia pay taxes and duties in Germany. They would not top up, both they and their children are integrated. "Then the German bureaucracy monster comes around the corner and ruins everything," says the operator, who wants to fight for his patients.

Then the German bureaucracy monster comes around the corner and ruins everything.

Heimbetreiber Tino Wohlmacher

Wave of solidarity
After the case became known, the Colombian embassy in Berlin and the consulate in Bremen got involved. They wrote to the Ministry of the Interior in Hanover stating that the deportation should be prevented in the interests of the patients. The employees can also appeal to the Hardship Commission of the state of Lower Saxony.

Here you can see a picture of those affected.

Relatives of the nursing home residents and the staff have already started a petition to keep the nursing staff, which can be signed online. "The insanity of Germany's authorities leaves us stunned (...). While homes and hospitals in our country are groaning under the nursing crisis, we are simply deporting experienced nursing staff for bureaucratic reasons," it says. As of Saturday, November 16 (5 p.m.), almost 42,200 people had signed the petition.