German authorities are undecided about whether HIV-positive immigrants with temporary residence permits are allowed to stay in the country despite the often poor availability of life-saving treatment back home.
Every three months, Maureen faces a terrifying task: making a trip to the local foreigners' office in Frankfurt to find out whether she can stay on in the country.
The Kenyan, who has a precarious residence status in Germany, is in danger of deportation despite the fact that she has AIDS and has been undergoing treatment for several years. Every three months, the German authorities rule afresh on putting off her deportation.
The uncertainty of her situation is taking its toll.
"When I go with her to the foreigners' office, then she [Maureen] often hasn't slept the night before," said Iris Hufnagel, a social worker with an AIDS campaign group in Frankfurt. "She's sick with worry that she will be directly sent off to a detention center for deportees."
At the mercy of immigration laws
Like Maureen, there are some 170,000 foreigners in Germany who have been living in the country for more than 15 years and still have a temporary residence permit. In German bureaucratic language, they are said to be "tolerated."
Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: A long line of immigrants at a foreigners' office in Germany
In theory, these people are obliged to leave Germany. But they are allowed to stay on humanitarian grounds if they face persecution in their home countries. In practice, they can be sent home anytime because their residence permit is usually extended by just three months each time.
Maureen thus has to spend her life at the mercy of Germany's complicated immigration laws. For over five years, the authorities handling Maureen's case have been examining whether there's a "significant, concrete danger for the physical well-being and life," as the law says, if they deport her.
Effective AIDS treatment in Kenya?
Immigration officials are in particular checking whether Maureen could die if she was sent back to Kenya because of lack of sufficient treatment. The German embassy in Nairobi says that AIDS infections can be treated effectively in Kenya. Therapy is expensive but it's possible to have it for 200 euros ($276) a month.
Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Getting access to AIDS treatment in Africa is not easy
But not everyone buys that argument.
"I just can't imagine it," Hufnagel said. "How will she take medicines there when she's lacking other things?"
The social worker added that Maureen also faced the risk of being mugged in Kenya since the medicines were so expensive.
Besides, the therapy would also mean a privilege, Hufnagel said.
"Imagine being in a family, knowing that the brother too is HIV positive and he doesn't get the medicines… that's an absurd situation."
AIDS a reason to stop deportations?
German courts seem to be confused about whether AIDS is a reason for freezing deportations. While a few have ruled in the past that breaking off AIDS treatment poses a real danger to life, others have argued it doesn't since the illness is long drawn out and doesn't directly lead to death.
Volker Beck, a parliamentarian of the opposition Green Party, said it's scandalous that these legal questions are discussed at the cost of those affected -- a group, he says, faces a double stigma.
"Firstly they are migrants, in most cases with a precarious status, and in addition, they have an ailment that leads to societal exclusion," Beck said. He added that since the number of affected was not high, Germany could afford to be much more humane towards them than is currently the case.
Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Some migrants first learn of their HIV-positive status in Germany
Authorities in Germany fear that if AIDS was recognized as a valid reason to stop deportations, it would give a free ticket to many African AIDS patients to come to Germany.
Beck rebuffed those concerns, pointing out that according to the EU's current Dublin agreement, asylum-seekers are sent back to the EU nation through which they entered the bloc. Besides, it's much more likely that asylum-seekers would discover their HIV status for the first time in Germany, said Beck.
Uncertain fate
"The people who come here are those who are strong-willed and in good health," Hufnagel said. She added that the diagnosis of an HIV infection is usually traumatic for them. "The fact that they face so much change could also be the reason why some things then rise to the surface once they're here."
Learning about her illness was an additional shock for Maureen, too. Lured to Germany by the promise of marriage, she was abused by her future husband. When she suffered a serious lung infection, he threw Maureen out.
Thanks to good medical treatment, the Kenyan is on her feet again. But it's essential that she continues to receive treatment if her health is to remain stable.
