Kosovar relates how he married a German for letters

Ten thousand Roma left Kosovo in 2014-2015, most of them sought asylum in Germany. Most today have returned with grace or regret, and only those remain here who want to stay at any cost.

Shortly after the war in June 1999, Valon (Pseudim) had also tried to come as a refugee to Germany. He had given money to a smuggler, but he had deceived him. Unlike his friend, who brought him to our meeting at a Berlin mall that had come then and now has documents, Valon wandered through Serbia for some time until he obeyed his mother's desire to marry and returned home to Prizren. But he did not feel well there, for not only is he a Roma, but he had also been at war on the side of Serbs.

I didn't want to go into the army”, he tells me with a clean Albanian. “But they found me on the street and they took me under a compulsion”. When the war began in March 1999, we were sent off with tanks in the direction of Podujevo. “I didn't kill anyone,” he believes. And he puts two photos before me where he has appeared in Serbian Army uniforms. He also tells me an official confirmation in Serbian about his military participation. And a confirmation by the Union of Santi and Roma in Germany, where it is confirmed that it belongs to Roma nationality.

He had presented all these documents to the Federal Office of Refugees in 2014 when he applied for asylum. It was in Serbian to facilitate the confession before German officials. Because as he says, he hasn't told anyone in Prizren that he was at war. But it turned out otherwise: “The translator was Muslim from Bosnia, and when I told her that I had been in the Serbian Army during the war, almost as much as she ate with her eyes”, she recalls. A hatred he has often felt even in Kosovo when he encountered someone who knew his history, though he never spoke of it himself.

Life in Illegality and Everlasting Fear

A life of illegality and eternal fear. Is that what you want? Vallon no longer wanted to live with a lie, wanted to be equal to others, not discriminated against because of his participation in war as a soldier of regular forces. A legitimate but insufficient request for the German state to recognise the right to political housing. So his first request was rejected.

Nearly 400,000 citizens from Kosovo have sought asylum in Germany in 2014-2015. It was Syria's war season, and Germany had other problems. Therefore, the government reacted with a package of measures for quick refugee flow management, one of which was the proclamation of Balkan countries as safe “”. One hundred thousand demands for political housing had been submitted from these countries in 2015 alone. 90 percent were refused once. Most refugees returned willingly, others under compulsion.

Waiting for up to three years

Only those who saw no prospect in their country remained. Most minority members, such as Roma, or who did not feel secure about personal causes. Vallon had both, so he did not give up and complain about the matter in the second degree.

Three years usually last the procedure until the final answer comes. The time he used as much as he could: learned the language and volunteered for nongovernmental organizations helped whom he could until he found a job at a car washing company, and his wife at an elementary school as an educator. They broke off from the state's addiction, got out of their shelter, rented their own homes, paid their taxes, and all seemed to be okay until the second negative response came, and expectations waned: Their work rights were lifted, and both he and his wife were forced to leave immediately. Vallon made an effort and presented his case to the commission of extraordinary cases without success.

Petition, then...

Now he's counting on the word of the people: Berlin Parliament, Petition Commission. The licenses for residence permits placed first on the panel's list of petitions in 2016. Expressed in numbers: 243 requests of a total of 1,500 Berlin citizens submitted last year were requests for residence permits from denied asylum seekers. Half of them were from Balkan countries, and most of them were Roma. The petition stretch procedure is very easy, it can be done online within minutes. But only about 15 percent of requests receive positive answers.

The chances of Vallon receiving a positive response are not too big. And he knows. But to return to Kosovo, this is not even about discussion. What are you gonna do and ask? I have three months to break up with my wife and marry a German, he tells me. That easy? I tell him. I'll let him go too, 'cause I'm gonna get rid of him.” give him back to me. /DW/