2024-01-08T20:01:23+00:00
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/ The number of asylum seekers in Germany increased last year to 351,915 people, an increase of 51.1 percent compared to the previous year.
Immigration has become a major political problem for the government and a hot topic in Germany, where local communities struggle to accommodate many new arrivals.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who is facing enormous pressure from the opposition and other forces to stop this trend, said that “very large numbers are coming.”
Late last year, Schulz and the governors of the 16 states agreed on new, tougher measures to limit the large number of immigrants flowing into the country, and reached a settlement that included speeding up asylum procedures, restrictions on benefits for asylum seekers and more financial aid provided by the federal governments to states and local communities. dealing with the influx of refugees.
The largest number of asylum seekers came from Syria, with about 104,561 applications (about a third), followed by Turkish citizens with about 62,624 asylum applications and 53,582 Afghans, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees in Germany said on Monday.
Germany has also received more than a million Ukrainians since the beginning of the Russian war in their country.
In the fall, Germany imposed temporary border controls on its borders with Poland, the Czech Republic and Switzerland, going a step further than last month’s move to strengthen checks on its eastern border.
The central European country has been conducting similar inspections on its border with Austria since 2015.
In an additional measure to limit the number of migrants in the country, the government is also trying to facilitate deportations of inadmissible asylum seekers and tighten punishment for migrant smuggling.
Last year’s numbers are still far lower than those recorded in the period from 2015 to 2016, when more than a million migrants arrived in Germany, most of them from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.