EU-Project | |
Frankfurt Seminar May 25th - 27th 2001 |
Psychological Support for people with HIV/AIDS
Case
# 1: Mr. NN
Mr. NN is a gay Turkish migrant, 46 years old and has been living in Germany for more than 18 years – although legally he has only been in the country for 8 years . For a long time he lived here illegally. Now, due to the fact that he has got AIDS, stadium C3, CDC-classification, and treatment is not possible in Turkey, he has obtained a temporary short-term residence permit which needs to be renewed every 3 to 6 month . This temporary permit, the so called „Duldung“ is based on § 53 sub-section 6 AuslG (Ger-man law concerning aliens). Having a „Duldung“ means, that a person will be deported as soon as the reason for which deportation is temporarily not possible ceases to exist. A per-son with this legal status is obliged to leave the country and is only „tolerated“ temporarily for specific reasons. In Mr. NN´s case the reason is that a deportation to Turkey would pose a threat to his life as he would not be able to survive for a very long time without treatment. This legal status has a lot of implications for his living conditions. His stay is insecure. He is not allowed to have a regular part-time or full-time job but can only legally earn about 630 DM a month. As the cost of living in Germany is about 1400 DM a month, he either has to obtain additional funds from social security or from other sources. In Mr. NN´s case his partner pays for most of his expenses, though both men are hiding their homosexuality and their relationship. They live in separate apartments, and Mr. NN´s partner is legally married to a niece of Mr. NN and is cohabiting with her. Thus, the support of Mr. NN can be justified as the support of a relative and the relationship need not be disclosed. In conversations concerning that topic
Mr. NN pointed out that he regarded his homosexual-ity as something he
was ashamed of . Furthermore he talked about incidents in Turkey were homosexuals
had been beaten or even killed. He was afraid that someone from his family
in Turkey could find out and frequently spoke about situations were family
members wondered why he still wasn´t married. He told us, that he
usually said it was because of the different culture or because he simply
couldn´t find a woman he liked, and added that some close relatives
probably realized what was going on, but that nobody would ever talk about
it openly. The topic was a tabu, and it took also a long time before he
talked about it openly with us in our office.
Mr. NN earns the amount he is legally allowed to earn (DM 630), and has thus obtained regular health insurance as well. With the help of his partner he found a job in a catholic church. Furthermore, there seems to be some other sources of income. One day Mr. NN visited us in our office, because he was in severe trouble. He had been caught on a parking lot by the police while he was dressed up in women´s clothes and had been having sex with a truck driver. He was accused of illegal prostitution and posing a threat to public health because of AIDS. After the incident, the local authorities had decided to withdraw his temporary permit to stay and wanted to deport him to Turkey. It was very difficult for Mr. NN to talk about this incident, he was ashamed of having been caught in women´s clothes. Furthermore he was shocked because he was regarded as a „threat to public health“ by the authorities and said that he was always practising safer sex in order to make sure that others would not get infected. He was very depressed and angry and threatened to commit suicide, because he would rather kill himself then be deported and left to die in Turkey. While he said that, he was crying and seemed to be in great despair. He could not imagine at all to live in Turkey as all his relationships were in Germany and he wouldn´t be able to afford medical treatment as he wouldn´t qualify for any health insurance scheme and was in no physical condition to work either. At the same time he said that he was no longer taking his medication, because it didn´t make any sense to him anymore. Also he was very annoyed about a certain person at the local au-thorities in charge of aliens (Ausländerbehörde) as he felt discriminated by that person and said that he was thinking about killing that guy, if he would deport him and kill him that way. There wasn´t anything to loose anyway. The loss of the temporary permit meant,
that Mr. NN neither was entitled to any social wel-fare benefits, nor could
he work to support himself, because he had no legal status whatso-ever.
Also his health insurance was in danger. So, he was completely dependent
on the help of his friends.
In the opinion of his lawyer this fear was justified. He tried to get a temporary injunction to stop the deportation but the court rejected his motion. Mr. NN spent several weeks in an ab-solutely insecure and almost illegal situation with no funds of his own whatsoever. Because of his extremely bad condition and the life-threatening consequences a deportation would have a petition was sent to the local government. With the help of medical certificates and a statement from a Turkish hospital according to which the patient would not be able to receive treatment, the Home Office decided to overrule the court decision. On these grounds Mr. NN was again given a „Duldung“. As said before, this does not enable the client to lead a normal life. He can not have a regular job to support himself, can not leave the federal state of Hesse without a travel permit of the authorities and not leave Ger-many as he would not be allowed to come back into the country. Exceptions are hardly ever made. Thus, it is very difficult to maintain contact with family members or other people in dif-ferent areas or countries. Furthermore, the client can not choose his place of residence freely – the area in which the client is allowed to live is also decided about by the local authorities and another community has to agree, before a person with a „Duldung“ can move there. In the case of AIDS-patients of course they usually disagree because of the high medical costs. As our client came to Germany illegally, there is very little chance for him of ever getting any other residential status. That means, he will have to live with these restrictions under these conditions as long as he lives. However, with the „Duldung“ he could at least stay and his psychological and physical condi-tion gradually began to improve again. After some time he was stable again and also contin-ued his antiretroviral therapy, although the living-conditions and restrictions constantly caused problems.
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Praxis Psychosoziale Beratung |