2023-05-09 16:52:00
Tuesday 09 May 2023
The federal and state governments are stuck on the issue of refugee costs. A look at the data shows that Berlin does not have the one big lever to reduce the number of refugees. There are two countries of origin in particular that raise the migration statistics to a high level.
The word load limit is making the rounds once more. Many see them achieved in the accommodation, care and integration of people who have fled to Germany: in the Bundestag above all the CDU and CSU, the AfD anyway, but also non-partisan institutions such as the German District Association or the German Association of Cities warned of their own excessive demands. The federal government rejects calls for more money for the federal states and municipalities and instead wants to accommodate them with the number of refugees, i.e. limit access to Germany and return people with no prospect of a residence permit to their countries of origin more quickly.
But how big is the leverage of politics anyway? On closer inspection: manageable. Most people who came to Germany in the past and current year also receive protection status. There is hardly anything to shake regarding. The Union also knows this and is therefore calling for social benefits for refugees to be reduced. In an interview with ntv.de, the parliamentary manager of the Union faction, Thorsten Frei, complained of a “pull effect”. People who have to flee their homeland choose Germany more often than other countries because nowhere else in the world do they “get so many benefits from day one”.
Germany is not doing a tour de force alone
The data partially confirm Frei. In absolute figures, according to the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BamF), 217,774 initial applications for asylum were made in Germany in 2022. In absolute figures, Germany is thus far ahead in Europe. Measured once morest the population of the host country, Spain, for example, is at a similarly high level. With a population of just 9.1 million, Austria has even registered 106,000 asylum applications, which is a multiple per capita compared to Germany.
Even with the number of Ukraine refugees not included here, Germany is not in first place with 1.044 million people: Poland has taken in 1.584 million Ukrainians and the Czech Republic with its 10 million inhabitants is granting refuge to at least 504,353 people from the war zone. In terms of population, the Baltic countries and Slovakia have taken in a similar number of people as Germany.
These examples, like the number of 3.7 million Syrian refugees in Turkey or the approximately 3 million Afghans in Iran, show that refugees often remain in neighboring countries for various reasons and do not go to where they can get the most support. If you exclude the Ukraine war, it is also true that many EU countries want to keep immigration as low as possible, offer refugees little support and have therefore actually taken in very few migrants.
Strong rush also in 2023
In contrast, the number of people arriving in Germany is undoubtedly high: in 2022 as a whole, the number of first-time asylum applications was 46.9 percent higher than in the previous year. If you add this number to the people from Ukraine, the Federal Republic took in more people in 2022 than in the crisis year 2015. And the trend for the current year is continuing to rise: although hardly any additional people from Ukraine are coming to Germany, there are around 85,000 initial applications from other non-EU countries in the first quarter of 2023 are twice as many as in the same period last year.
The Ukrainians do not have to apply for protection status, but have full access to the labor market and social system. According to an EU regulation, they have the full right of residence until the spring of next year. How things will continue following that will largely depend on how the war in Ukraine develops. Unlike other refugee groups, the proportion of children is particularly high: around 200,000 children from Ukraine were attending school in Germany at the end of 2022. The burdens on the already thinned-out education system are therefore part of the ongoing conflict between the federal and state governments.
More Syrians and Afghans, more residence permits
As has been the case for years, Syria and Afghanistan dominate the other countries of origin. The people who accounted for almost half of all new refugees who came to Germany in 2022 were allowed to stay here in almost all cases. In 2022, just over 90 percent of 70,976 Syrian initial applications resulted in protection status. Of the 36,358 applications from Afghans, the procedure ended with a protection status in 83.5 percent of all cases.
However, protection status is not the same as protection status: in 2022, only 0.8 percent of all applicants were classified as entitled to asylum because they are individually politically persecuted. Around 70 percent of Syrians with a right to stay were granted so-called subsidiary protection. This means that in their country of origin they are threatened with the death penalty, inhuman treatment or the risk of a violent conflict. Another 20 percent were recognized as refugees because they are threatened with persecution in Syria because of their political or religious beliefs or because they belong to an ethnic group.
The situation is different for people from Afghanistan: every fifth applicant was admittedly recognized as a refugee. Most Afghans with protection status, around 60 percent, are simply not allowed to be deported because their country of origin is generally classified as unsafe. In 2019, before the Taliban finally took power, the protection rate for Afghans was still 38 percent. In 2022 it was 83.5 percent – with four times as many applications as three years earlier. The number of Syrian initial applications in 2022 was almost twice as high as in the pre-Corona year 2019.
What are the benefits of asylum procedures at the EU’s external borders?
While Germany is hardly questioned as a place of refuge for Ukrainians, there are definitely opportunities for the federal government for people from Syria and Afghanistan: In theory, the countries would be responsible for the asylum applications in which the refugees first set foot on European soil. These are mostly Mediterranean countries, above all Greece. But the people don’t want to stay in Greece, they don’t make any applications there and are silently waved through by the authorities in the direction of Germany.
The Mediterranean countries insist on fairer burden sharing in the EU and have been demanding binding redistribution quotas in which all member states participate for years. The federal government is also striving for such an agreement in connection with preliminary asylum examination procedures, which are still to be carried out at the EU’s external borders. It is unclear what that would mean for Afghans, for example: their prospect of refugee status is slim – but once they have entered the country, they should not be deported under the current regulations.
Turkey is another example: the number of Turkish refugees has been increasing for years. With 10,582 initial applications, they were the third largest country of origin in the past quarter. Last year there were a total of 23,938, while the protection rate for applicants from Turkey was only 27.8 percent. Here, people usually had to prove individually that they were personally threatened under Erdogan’s government. The protection quotas for people from Iran, where the mullahs’ regime persecutes critics with great severity, are similar. Would people with a 25 percent chance be sorted out in advance at the EU’s external borders? Probably not, so everyone would first come to the EU to go through a proper asylum procedure here.
Exclude Georgians from asylum opportunities
In other important countries of origin, the protection rates are no lower. On the contrary: For years, the civil war countries Somalia and Eritrea have ranked in the top ten of the BamF. Almost all applicants from there receive a protection status. Georgia has been an outlier – also for years: Since people from the Caucasus state have been allowed to enter Europe without a visa since 2017, thousands of them have stayed in Europe every month and applied for asylum. In Germany alone there were 6,867 last year. The protection rate for Georgians has been stable at under one percent for years.
The federal government now wants to declare Georgia and Moldova safe countries of origin. As a rule, people from these countries have no chance of being granted residency status. This would at least relieve the application process somewhat: 3.7 percent of the initial applications in 2022 were submitted by Georgians, around 1 percent by Moldovans. CDU politician Frei calls for Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia to be added to the list of safe countries. But even these countries account for only 1 percent or less of all first-time asylum applications.
What to do with 250,000 tolerated people?
Another approach to relieving immigration authorities and local authorities is the large group of people who are only tolerated. According to the Federal Ministry of the Interior, 304,308 foreigners are required to leave the country. Of these, however, 248,145 are tolerated for a variety of reasons. These include unsafe countries of origin, the countries of origin not being willing to take them back, missing documents, responsibility for minors living in Germany and health restrictions. Those affected have to go to the authorities several times a year to have their toleration extended. They live in constant uncertainty, while the authorities have to use scarce capacities to handle the cases.
With the right of residence that has been in force since the beginning of the year, tolerated persons who have been in Germany for more than five years should be able to qualify for a regular right of residence by showing that they have a job or training. So far, people with a toleration status have hardly been able to work or take advantage of integration offers. That should now change, at least for some of them. For people without a toleration status, on the other hand, the federal government wants to simplify deportation, for example by expanding police powers. The BamF explains that the number of deportations is currently stagnating at the level of the pandemic years with the current overload of the authorities responsible for implementation.
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