At the beginning of the year, Germany's coalition government partners, the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Christian Democrats (CDU) with their sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), had agreed to introduce family reunifications starting August 2018, limited to 1,000 cases per month. The new rules would, however, would only extend to spouses, underage children as well as parents of minors, who would be allowed to join their families in Germany on humanitarian grounds. Grandparents, siblings or other relatives would not be allowed to be part of a reunification.

This was all that was known at the time. The two coalition partners spent weeks ironing out their differences and disagreements to lay down the groundwork for a path forward to implement the plans. The new draft law is expected to be ratified by the Bundestag before it enters summer recess.

The numbers game

One of the major bones of contention between the SPD and the CDU/CSU was their approach to managing those numbers: the SPD called for any shortfalls under 1,000 cases per month to be made available and migrate over to the next month. The CDU/CSU bloc rejected this notion and demanded a monthly cap.

In the end, the two coalition parties agreed on a compromise: in the first five months of the reunifications, leftover contingents would be allowed to migrate from one month to the next.

As of 2019, the 1,000 cases per month will be capped. Some politicians, however, remain skeptical about the approach. Boris Pistorius, Minister of the Interior of the state of Lower Saxony, said that his party, the SPD, would not "tolerate any administrative tricks" to keep the number of processed applications low.

How many migrants under subsidiary protection will end up making use of the change in law is unknown. At this point, there are 26,000 applications waiting to be processed when the law takes effects.

BAMF gets a break

There was further disagreement about what government department would be put in charge of processing family reunifications. After debating several approaches, the SPD and CDU agreed on letting the Immigration Department deal with the implementation of the cases in Germany, while Germany's diplomatic representations abroad will assist with assessing the background of family members hoping to come to Germany.

However, decisions on who gets to come join their family members in Germany first will be in the hands of the Federal Office of Administration (part of the Interior Ministry) while the visas issued will remain a responsibility of the Federal Foreign Office.

The SPD had originally wished for the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) to be involved as well, preferring them as the authority to decide on applications, while the CDU/CSU had wanted the Federal Foreign Office to be in charge of nearly all aspects.

BAMF has been in charge of administering nearly all issues pertaining to the arrival of migrants since the onset of the refugee crisis in 2015. As a reaction to the unprecedented influx of migrants arriving in Germany in the past few years, the government suspended family reunifications for those placed under subsidiary protection for two years until March 2018, extending the deadline to July 2018 at the beginning of the year in order to present a comprehensive solution for managing family reunifications.

Some 250,000 foreigners are presently living in Germany under subsidiary protection provisions.