A Petition for the Yang Family

November 30, 2013 By Leave a Comment

The Yang family live in Stierstadt, one of the suburbs of Oberursel.  For the past two weeks their story has hardly been out of the local newspapers, and at the last meeting of the Ausländerbeirat on Monday, 25th November, 2013, two representatives from Amnesty International came along to explain what it is all about.

The story begins 10 years ago when Mr. Yang came to Germany from China without a visa, but as an asylum seeker.  Mrs. Yang – at the time no relation – came later by foot!  She also applied for asylum, claiming that her family was discriminated against at home because her parents had had more than one child.

Their asylum applications were turned down, but as they did not have sufficient identification on them to travel back, their presence in Germany was tolerated – “geduldet”. [Read more…]

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From the Ausländerbeirat…

November 20, 2013 By 2 Comments

When the Ausländerbeirat met on Monday, 4th November, 2013, there were a number of guests present.

And it was one of those guests who asked the question, that I have been trying to answer for the past year: “Womit beschäftigen Sie sich immer?” – the ominous “what do you do?”

One of the things that the committee had been dealing with was the issue of taking rubbish to the tip (“Bauhof”), where a policy has been introduced of asking for ID to prove that those going there are also resident in Oberursel. [Read more…]

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A long evening with the Ausländerbeirat

October 3, 2013 By Leave a Comment

If the members of the Ausländerbeirat thought they were in for a short meeting when they met on Monday, 23rd September, 2013, then they had to think again.  Lasting almost two hours, the meeting was the longest that I personally had experienced to date.

Part of the reason for this was certainly down to the questions from the public, two of which led to extensive discussions.

One question that did not was about a new playground in the town next to a building where – according to one of the town councillors who happened to be present – a lot of foreigners live.  The opening times for the playground only list work days, but not Sunday.  So is it closed on a Sunday or just open all day?

Not that the Ausländerbeirat could really be expected to give an answer to this, but maybe they could have passed the question on instead of referring the councillor to the social and culture sub-committee of which, ironically, he is himself a member. [Read more…]

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From the Ausländerbeirat: Good news, Bad news, No news and Forgotten news

August 29, 2013 By Leave a Comment

When the Ausländerbeirat met for the first time after their summer break they had plenty to discuss.

They had received a letter from the Chairman of the town council, Dr. Christoph Müllerleile, which their own Chairman, Dr. Franz Zenker, read out.  It announced that the town’s council of elders had decided that with immediate notice the members of the Ausländerbeirat would not be allowed to sit in on committee meetings if they were closed to the public, unless the topic being discussed was particularly relevant to foreigners in the town.

This affects their participation in the finance, social & culture, and building & environmental sub-committees.  They will also not receive the documents associated with those parts of the meeting, unless the relevant chairperson deems it necessary. [Read more…]

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When the Ausländerbeirat visited the FIS…

April 16, 2013 By Leave a Comment

It was a meeting of the Ausländerbeirat like no other that I have visited until now.  Not only where all the members of the foreigners’ sub-committee present for the entirety of the meeting, but 16 guests turned up as well.

Admittedly those 16 included the press and members of the town council, with all of the parliamentary groups except the CDU represented, but at least half were simply members of the public who had come along to see the committee in action and to pose their questions.

The reason for such interest in a committee whose guests don’t normally make it into double figures was very likely due to the meeting place: Frankfurt International School. [Read more…]

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From the Ausländerbeirat…

March 6, 2013 By Leave a Comment

When the Ausländerbeirat met on Monday (4th March, 2013), they may not have been prepared for the number of guests who turned up to put their questions to them. It may not sound that many, but those 6 (six) broke the record for past half year.

One of the reasons for this was a group from the Ahmadiyya community to ask for the committee’s support for their plans for a mosque in Oberursel. Currently the community have prayer rooms in the Dornbachstraße which they say are now at full capacity for their services with many of those who worship representing the 4th generation of families that have moved to Germany in the past.

If possible they would like to build a mosque in the town, rather than convert an existing building, and added that they were looking for support and not for funding. Franz Zenker, chairing the meeting, promised that the committee would support them and pass on their request to the town’s executive. [Read more…]

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Making progress at the Ausländerbeirat

November 29, 2012 By Leave a Comment

No one visiting the Ausländerbeirat this week was left in any doubt that things are going to be different, something the chairman Franz Zenker made very clear at the beginning of the committee’s meeting.

But his good intentions almost came to a halt when one of the other committee members asked to move the second item on the agenda (“minutes of the last meeting”) to the non-public part of the meeting, or hold the non-public part first.  Considering how long the non-public part actually took later on, it may have quicker to have just done one of those two rather than discuss the possibilities.

In the end, and after much discussion, the agenda was not changed but the approval of the non-public part of the minutes was moved to the non-public part of the meeting.

Moving on to the integration monitoring report and the ominous question of who had actually read it, the change that Franz Zenker had talked about became very clear. [Read more…]

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From the Ausländerbeirat…

November 6, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Yesterday evening the Ausländerbeirat met in Oberursel’s town hall again and once again I went along to observe the proceedings.  I have to say, that I came away with somewhat mixed feelings.

My most positive observation of the evening was that the chairman, Franz Zenker, was more confident in the role and far more well prepared than at the previous sittings.  He demonstrated this in particular by reporting from the finance committee with his impressions of their last sitting, and was able to explain things in some detail.  He was also able to give a list of topics being discussed in their next sitting, although as I have noted previously, the committee just listens to the list without any comment or discussion.

Other members of the committee who were to report on other sub-committees of the town’s parliament were not as forthcoming with their thoughts. [Read more…]

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A first look at Oberursel’s Ausländerbeirat

August 29, 2012 By 5 Comments

The last time that I wrote about the term “Ausländerbeirat” I had just voted in Oberursel to elect a new one in November 2010.  At the time I asked what the point of having one was, especially I did not know any of the candidates and the turnout at the election was only 3%.

For the benefit of readers who are not aware of the Ausländerbeirat (other than a voting slip every 5 years), it is an elected parliamentary body that every town in Hessen has where more than 1000 foreigners live.  And only those foreigners are eligible to stand for election and to vote.

As I understand it they have two purposes.  One is to support the integration of foreigners in the local community, and the other is to look at the decisions being made by other committees and the town parliament in order to comment on whether the non-German communities will be particularly affected by them.

Whether they have any power to block any of those decisions, I have yet to discover. [Read more…]

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