Unease in Germany over migrant numbers
Print Edition
GERMANS are growing increasingly uneasy over the record number of migrants and refugees entering the country, costing Chancellor Angela Merkel voter support, according to the latest poll.
Just over half of respondents, 51 percent, said the arrival of so many newcomers made them fearful, according to the survey for public broadcaster ARD.
The result marked a 13-point rise compared to early September, a month in which 280,000 crossed the border into Germany — more than in all of 2014.
However, 47 percent said they were not afraid of these developments.
Merkel, who has attempted to rally Germans to the task of welcoming hundreds of thousands of people fleeing war and persecution, saw her approval rating sink nine points over the last month, to 54 percent.
Meanwhile, support for the chief critic of her asylum policies from her own conservative camp, Bavarian state premier Horst Seehofer, surged 11 points to 39 percent.
Fewer than half of respondents — 48 percent — said they were satisfied with Merkel’s government, down five points.
Berlin is now stepping up action to deter economic migrants from trying to obtain asylum in the country, in a bid to free up resources to deal with applicants from war-torn countries such as Syria.
On Tuesday, the government said it would add Albania, Kosovo and Montenegro to a list of so-called safe origin countries, which would result in swifter deportations of migrants from there.
Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel admitted that many towns and cities were “already overwhelmed” by the task of housing refugees.
“We are quickly hitting the limits of our capabilities in Germany,” he told news website Spiegel Online.
Gabriel noted that there was no upper limit for the number of asylum-seekers under German law “but there are practical limits to the capacity of local communities.”
Some 168,000 migrants and refugees made the perilous journey across the Mediterranean to Europe in September, marking the highest monthly figure on record, the United Nations said yesterday. “That’s the highest monthly figure ever, and almost five times the number seen in September 2014,” said UN refugee agency spokesman Adrian Edwards.
He said the September figure was more than two thirds of the total number of arrivals in 2014, when 219,000 migrants and refugees crossed the Mediterranean to Europe.
So far this year, almost 530,000 people have made the voyage, with nearly 400,000 of them arriving in Greece and 131,000 arriving in Italy.
Around 3,000 people have died attempting the journey since January.
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