Official: Germany migrant arrivals down sharply
Print Edition
GERMANY expects up to 300,000 asylum seekers to arrive this year, less than one-third of the total during 2015’s record influx, the Federal Office for Migrants and Refugees, or BAMF, said yesterday.
BAMF chief Frank-Juergen Weise told Bild am Sonntag newspaper that Germany’s healthy economy and improvements to refugee services over the last year meant the country was well-placed to absorb new arrivals, particularly as their numbers have dropped off.
“We are preparing for between 250,000 and 300,000 refugees this year,” he said. “We can ensure optimal services for up to 300,000. Should more people arrive, it would put us under pressure, then we would go into so-called crisis mode. But even then we would not have conditions like last year.”
Nearly 1.1 million asylum seekers arrived in Germany, Europe’s top economic power, last year, putting a strain on the country’s bureaucracy to process claims and testing confidence in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition government.
The closure of the so-called Balkan migrant trail and an European Union deal with Turkey to keep migrants from reaching Greece — a main entry point into the bloc — has driven down arrivals from the Middle East and Afghanistan.
Weise said his agency had made major strides in working through a large backlog in asylum claims but that it would not manage to clear the remaining 530,000 cases by the end of the year.
He was upbeat about the long-term prospects. “We can do it,” Weise said, echoing Merkel’s rallying cry during the crisis.
Public sentiment is nevertheless sharply divided when it comes to Merkel, who has not yet said whether she will stand for a fourth term in a general election expected next September or October.
Bild am Sonntag cited a poll by an independent research group showing 50 percent of respondents opposed another four-year term for Merkel, while 42 percent said they wanted her to stay.
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