German Visa Scandal: Foreign Ministry Sidelined Official Who Protested the Relaxed Rules

New details emerge in the German scandal about thousands of visas handed out by Annalena Baerbock’s foreign ministry to Middle Eastern migrants with fake documentation—allowing not only illegal migrants to enter Germany (and therefore the EU), but in some cases foreign intelligence agents as well.

As revealed by further investigations, Baerbock (together with her state secretary, Susanne Baumann) instructed her embassies to speed up visa applications for those coming from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. She significantly relaxed the vetting process for family reunifications and also removed a high-level official who questioned the orders from her position at the Islamabad embassy, the biggest hotspot of the German visa abuses.

Anonymous sources familiar with the personnel shake-up say the head of the Islamabad embassy’s Legal and Consular Section was abruptly removed from handling Afghan humanitarian arrivals early this year after raising concerns about Berlin’s directive to process applications “quickly and favorably.”

Instead, it appears the foreign ministry created an entirely new position for the sole purpose of overseeing Afghan visa applications.

Upon being questioned by a center-right MP a few weeks ago, the ministry revealed that the shake-up was initiated and overseen by Baumann herself, and claimed that the change was necessary to relieve that department head of the “greatly increased workload” of the simplified reception program created for Afghans.

Detlef Seif (CDU), the MP behind the inquiry, commented:

In my opinion, the need for reorganization is a good excuse claimed by the federal government, but the real reason is sidelining a civil servant who was more concerned about Germany’s security than ideological and political requirements.

The official reportedly resisted the government taking away her power over the process, and repeatedly advocated for stricter screening and security protocols, as recommended by the federal police and interior ministry.

After the first allegations of abuse surfaced in June (involving not only technical oversight but also widespread corruption and nepotism among embassy staff), the foreign ministry reluctantly agreed to toughen up some measures, but only at the explicit demand of Nancy Faeser’s interior ministry.

Still, Baerbock kept fighting to keep the relaxed rules of her program up until the last minute, writing in a now-leaked memo to Secretary Baumann:

We should not accept this [pressure from Faeser]. Stand firm here [and] escalate it further, publicly if necessary.

The ongoing scandal is expected to provide a huge boost to just about every opposition party, but especially to those with an explicitly anti-migration agenda: the national conservative Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) and the left-wing populist BSW. Both are looking to multiply their parliamentary presence in several states during the upcoming East German elections next month.

“Under Annalena Baerbock, the Federal Foreign Office has been downgraded to an immigration and smuggling agency. Thousands of migrants were smuggled into Germany in deliberate circumvention of the law,” AfD co-leader Alice Weidel declared earlier this month, after calling for an official inquiry into the motives behind the scandal.

Weidel accused the foreign ministry of “systemic abuse” that has been causing “serious damage to Germany and jeopardizing internal security” and called for Baerbock to be “removed from office immediately.”