Asylum applications in Germany: number is increasing again

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BAMF in Nuremberg (archive picture)

Photo: Christoph Hardt / Future Image / imago images

The number of asylum applications in Germany increased again this year.

As the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) shows in its statistics, the authority received 100,278 initial applications by the end of September.

That is 35.2 percent more than in the same period last year.

However, this was strongly influenced by the corona pandemic, the closed borders and the extensive cessation of air traffic.

From 2016 to 2020 the numbers had steadily decreased.

Of the first-time applicants this year, around 19.5 percent were children under the age of one who were born in Germany.

According to the Federal Office's overview, the number of follow-up applications rose by 162 percent to 31,454.

The BAMF thus received a total of 131,732 asylum applications from January to September (an increase of 52.9 percent).

Most of the asylum seekers who sought protection for the first time came from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq again this year.

40,472 initial applications came from people from Syria (plus 57.1 percent), 8531 from people seeking protection from Iraq (plus 22.2 percent).

The number of applicants from Afghanistan increased particularly strongly, with the BAMF registering a total of 15,045 initial applications by the end of September (plus 138 percent).

In August, the militant Islamist Taliban took power in Afghanistan.

Even before that, the situation was considered extremely unstable.

In the whole of 2020, the Federal Office recorded 9,901 initial asylum applications from Afghans.

The number is significantly lower than in 2016, when more than 127,000 applications were received from Afghans, as shown by the BAMF statistics.

EU-wide trend

According to the EU asylum authority EASO, the number of asylum seekers across the European Union has increased significantly this year, also due to a new high of Afghan asylum seekers.

EASO director Nina Gregori told the newspapers of the Funke media group that around 40 percent more asylum applications had been made in August 2021 than at the same time in the previous year.

The EU states registered around 56,000 international protection requests.

"We are almost at the level of the time before Corona in Europe in terms of the number of asylum applications," said Gregori. Afghan nationals alone had around 10,000 asylum applications in the EU in August. Some of the applications came from the evacuees who had come through the Kabul airlift. Afghans who had lived in Europe for a long time now also applied for asylum again, said the EASO chief.

Hundreds of thousands of Afghans sought refuge in Afghanistan's neighboring countries.

"We have to prepare for a difficult situation of the migration movement from Afghanistan to Europe," warned Gregori.

Your authority works closely with the EU Commission and the authorities of the EU member states and is building up reception capacities in the Balkans, for example.

In addition, a resettlement program for Afghanistan in the EU is being prepared.

New route through Belarus

In addition to the onward journey of asylum seekers from the EU countries Italy, Spain and Greece to Germany, which has been going on for a long time, another route via Belarus has been added since the summer.

From there several thousand migrants have tried to cross the border into the EU member state Poland since August.

The EU is assuming retaliation by the Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko for sanction decisions taken in Brussels.

It is believed that the Belarusian authorities are deliberately bringing migrants from the Middle East into the country and smuggling them to the border.

wit / dpa / Reuters / AFP