Pregnant migrants bribe Germans to pose as fathers
Women from east Europe, Africa and Vietnam ready to pay men up to £4,350 to claim paternity
PREGNANT migrant women are paying German men to claim to be the fathers of their children so they can stay in the country, it has emerged.
Women from Vietnam, Africa and eastern Europe are offering as much as €5,000 (£4,350) for the service, according to RBB television in Berlin.
An investigation by the broadcaster found some 700 suspected cases in the past few months in the German capital alone.
Angela Merkel’s government is taking the claims seriously. “There are a lot of unreported cases,” said Ole Schröder, an official in the interior ministry.
“We have a lot of evidence from the foreign residents’ authority. The fake fathers do it for money. In other words, we are dealing with serious crime.”
Germany’s constitutional court ruled in 2013 that even highly suspicious claims of paternity cannot be contested by the state.
The court said there was too high a risk that vulnerable children could be left stateless.
But Mrs Merkel’s government believes it has overcome that ruling with new legislation.
Under a law just passed by both houses of parliament, the authorities will be able to challenge claims they believe to be false.
Police and prosecutors say they suspect widespread fraud nationwide in paternity claims for the children of migrant women.
“We have some people who have recognised more than 10 different cases of paternity,” Martin Steltner of the Berlin prosecutors’ office told RBB.
“And it affects a whole lot of cases, a wide variety. We find examples monthly.”
The broadcaster claimed to have found a number of suspicious cases. In one, a known neo-nazi sympathiser claimed paternity for the child of a Vietnamese woman.
The men do not generally pay any child support to the women, who are on benefits.
Most of the women arrive on tourist visas before claiming temporary asylum on the grounds they are pregnant.
Usually, they would have to return home once their children are born, but if a German man claims paternity, the child automatically becomes a German citizen and the mothers are granted leave to remain.
Germany has tightened asylum procedures since the influx of more than one million migrants under Mrs Merkel’s “open-door” refugee policy.
Migrants from areas deemed safe – such as eastern Europe and much of Africa – are deported.
The government has even begun returning rejected asylum-seekers to Afghanistan, although deportations were suspended last week after a suicide bombing left 150 people dead in Kabul.