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For foreigners, the German state wants to know exactly. Could be that something is wrong with them. The so-called Ausländerzentralregister collects heaps of data about non-Germans, where they live, with whom they are married, which the doctor says. A total of more than 10.6 million people are registered there, with over 26 million "personal records". It is one of the largest data collections in Germany. Where would we go if foreigners moved freely in the country without state registration? Unthinkable.

In addition a little history:

The Central Register of Foreigners - known in the official German as AZR - was established in 1953. The idea was not new: in 1938 the National Socialists had introduced a "Ausländerzentralkartei". Only a few years after the Nazi regime came the foreigners registration again. First in the form of index cards, automated from 1967.

Actually, it is like this: During National Socialism, we did not really have any good experiences with the central recording of people - especially minorities. As a lesson in the Federal Republic intelligence agencies and police informational were separated and federally structured. Excluded are only - calculated - foreigners.

After a ruling of the Federal Constitutional Court in 1983, it was clear that this is not so easy with the foreigners registration - so in 1994 the legal basis was created for it: the Foreigners Central Register Act. Nevertheless, the blanket data collection remains questionable among foreigners in the federal territory.

Hardly anyone knows about this costly bureaucratic monster, although the federal government has been dealing with it lately. Currently she wants to expand it even further. Big boss of the data collection is the Federal Minister of the Interior, thus Horst Seehofer (CSU), and which holds it after the motto: more data, more security. The coalition agreement states that "the foreigner central register should be" trained to obtain more reliable information, to enable all relevant authorities to have uncomplicated access and to use it also for better control of repatriation and voluntary departure ".

The numbers are wrong in the back and the front

An "easy access" of authorities to personal data? Does not sound so reassuring if you ask me. According to the Federal Administration Office, the AZR serves 14,000 authorities and organizations with over 100,000 users, including the secret services.

Among other things, the current bill for the "Second Data Exchange Improvement Act" stipulates that it is not necessary to document meticulously who accesses the sensitive data and when. "Uncomplicated access" means less control.

Thilo Weichert, lawyer and former data protection officer of Schleswig-Holstein and probably just about the only person who has been dealing with the AZR for decades, finds this wrong. He warns in a statement before a "abuse-prone" "total control". Exchange of information between authorities - fine and good, but protection against abuse should also apply to foreigners. Or right now.

The register is intended not only to reassure migrants and state control fans, it is above all the central source of residence or exit visas, asylum data and much more. However, this very source of information is extremely flawed. The numbers are wrong in the back and the front.

For example: 10.6 million foreign citizens are registered here - that is a good million more than the population statistics. The Federal Statistical Office explains diplomatically ruined on one side, how to do that. Translated this means that some of the people in statistics have long since died, emigrated or naturalized and still in there. There is apparently no escape from the AZR. Chief official Frank-Jürgen Weise had 2017 with the factor "human" explained: responsible for the data maintenance are now times the stressed and congested officials of the immigration authorities.

In the local history column, Ferda Ataman writes about migration, politics and society. Subscribe to the newsletter directly and for free here:

And, especially piquant detail: We do not even know how many people really need to leave the country and can be deported. Nonetheless, some members of government behave as though the nation's future depended on numbers. The Left Party in the Bundestag and MPs like Ulla Jelpke have been bothering to check the details of this mess for years. The latest response from the German government shows again: the data are unreliable.

More than 230,000 foreigners would have to leave the country, according to AZR. Of these, however, almost 37,000 are still in an asylum procedure - so they can not legally be "exempted". Or: Of the alleged more than 50,000 people who need to leave the country directly without being tolerated, many are apparently no longer in Germany, as the authorities themselves confess. Erroneous information from the AZR have a tradition: Already in 2011 came out after a request from the left that 40,000 allegedly obliged to leave the country without stating had to be deleted from the statistics, because in the legal sense they were not obliged to leave.

I rarely have an opinion with our federal minister of home affairs. But last Wednesday, Horst Seehofer said, according to those present in the Interior Committee of the Bundestag about the Central Register of Foreigners and admitted that it is "not helpful", if a register does not provide an approximate overview of the actual circumstances.

He is right.