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Federal Office for Migration and Refugees: If you extrapolate the number from the Federal Government's response for the entire year 2021, around 95,000 refugees would be expected
Photo: Carsten Rehder / picture alliance / dpa
With the Taliban coming to power in Afghanistan, the debate about the admission of refugees to Germany has flared up again.
The figures for asylum seekers from the first half of 2021 are now available.
According to this, Germany took in 47,400 refugees in the first six months of the current year.
At the same time, 7,360 people were deported and 4,374 others left voluntarily because their asylum applications had been rejected.
This emerges from a response from the federal government to a request from the left in the Bundestag, which the AFP news agency has received.
First, the Funke newspapers reported on the numbers.
The coalition agreement between the CDU, CSU and SPD describes a »corridor for annual immigration to Germany of 180,000 to 220,000 people«.
If you extrapolate the number from the Federal Government's answer for the entire year 2021, around 95,000 refugees would be expected.
This is far less than was stated in the coalition agreement, criticized left-wing interior expert Ulla Jelpke.
"In view of the rise in the number of refugees worldwide, this is shameful news because, as a rich country, Germany is not living up to its responsibility to protect refugees," she said.
Even if Germany took in 50,000 particularly endangered people from Afghanistan, the "arbitrarily drawn upper limit" by Federal Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU) would not be reached by far, complained Jelpke.
"In view of the acute need of the people, we have to act and take in those seeking protection."
In its response to the left-wing parliamentary group, the Federal Government declares that it is fundamentally ready to accept more people for humanitarian reasons.
In particular, she advocates “joint international and European solutions”.
asc / AFP