More Good News

The German government has now amended its laws to make it easier for ethnic Germans in the former USSR and eastern Europe to settle in Germany. In 2005 the German government imposed draconian restrictions that reduced the migration of Spaetaussiedler to only a couple  of thousand people a year. The remaining nearly 600,000 ethnic Germans in the Russian Federation and over 200,000 in Kazakhstan thus became largely ineligible to settle in Germany after 2005. The liberalization of the Bundesvertriebenengesetzes (Federal expellee law) will place a greater emphasis on family reunification and reduce the importance of the language test. These changes will allow more of the remaining ethnic Germans in Siberia, Kazakhstan, and Central Asia to settle in Germany.