Refugee crisis in Germany 2015/2016

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Initial reception facility : Jenfelder Moorpark tent camp in Hamburg-Jenfeld in July 2015
Total number of asylum applications in the EU (black and white) and in nine European countries (Germany, light purple), source: Eurostat
Refugees according to the Central Register of Foreigners on December 31, 2017 - in total (per 1000 inhabitants)

The refugee crisis in Germany in 2015/2016 is the situation for the state and society that arose in connection with the entry of over one million refugees , migrants and other asylum seekers to Germany in 2015 and 2016. It is part of the Europe-wide refugee crisis and reached its peak in autumn 2015. In 2015 as a whole, around 890,000 people seeking protection were registered with the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) for the first time.

Since the Western Balkans route was largely closed and the EU-Turkey Agreement of March 18, 2016 , significantly fewer asylum seekers came to Germany on a monthly average. Their number fell in 2017 to the level of 2014 and continued to decline in 2018 and 2019.

The large influx of people seeking protection within a short period of time sparked a social debate in Germany about the orientation of the asylum and refugee policy of the European Union and Germany's immigration and refugee policy . There is a broad spectrum of attitudes and behaviors between the welcoming culture and xenophobia when it comes to the reception of migrants by the German population and how they deal with them . While on the one hand a variety of efforts have been made and are the immigrants to help and their integration easier, other efforts include quickly rejected asylum seekers back to deport or to close the country's borders against unwanted immigration. The term refugee crisis as such is also controversial .

The political parties differ greatly in their guiding principles on migration and asylum policy. Important aspects of the debate are immigration control that meets humanitarian requirements and a supplementary immigration law with a focus on the labor market.

The civil war in Syria was one of the main reasons for many people to flee to Germany. According to German asylum law, the majority of refugees from Syria only have a right to subsidiary protection ; comparatively few are also entitled to asylum.

To combat the causes that cause refugee immigration to Germany, the federal government increased the contributions to international aid programs and in 2017 was the second largest donor to the UNHCR . More humanitarian aid has also been deployed by the United Nations and the European Union . In addition to Syrians and refugees from other countries in the Middle East in 2015/16, a large number of asylum seekers in Germany also included Afghans, Iraqis and migrants from Africa and from non-EU countries in the Balkans . From 2015 to 2017, Syria , Iraq and Afghanistan were each among the six main countries of origin for asylum seekers.

Conditions of origin

Jochen Oltmer emphasizes six elements of a complex interdependency as important factors for the drastically increased refugee migration to Germany in 2015:

  • The main countries of origin Syria, Iraq and Southeast Europe were in relative proximity to the EU , which made the flight costs that must always be raised seem manageable.
  • Germany also became the most important European destination for refugees and asylum seekers because there had been well-established networks of migrants from various origins here that could serve as contact points.
  • Since the early 2010s, against the background of demographic change and an emerging shortage of skilled workers in Germany, an increased willingness to accept has been observed - in connection with the acceptance of human rights standards and the right to protection of Syrian refugees in particular.
  • The destabilization of a number of countries bordering the EU in the course of the global financial and economic crisis from 2007 - including Libya , Tunisia , Morocco , Albania and the Ukraine - removed the migration barriers previously negotiated with the respective state leaderships and enabled the increased influx of refugees.
  • The states responsible for the initial reception of refugees at the EU's external borders under the Dublin III Agreement were overwhelmed by the influx, especially Greece and Italy , so that the internal European area with Germany now became a direct migration destination.
  • Since the willingness to accept refugees also decreased significantly in traditional asylum countries such as France and Great Britain , Germany became a replacement country of refuge in 2015.

According to Stefan Luft, the general factors when choosing a destination for migrants include political and economic stability and a country's reputation. Regardless of possible differences between external perception and internal perspective, the Federal Republic of Germany is considered to be "one of the most important economic powers worldwide, as a dominant force in the European Union and as an open, liberal country." In addition, there is the existence of diaspora communities with corresponding networks in Germany , especially from Syrian ones, on which German admission policy also focused. "This should make integration easier and the financial risks (health insurance, etc.) transferred to the relatives." The acceleration of chain migration processes occurred as an unintended side effect.

The decision of the Federal Government or of German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the night of 4 and 5 September 2015, on the Balkan route to take next and stuck in Hungarian refugees, see Marina and Herfried Münkler as the effort to the progress made in European integration to obtained by breaking the current blockage of the Schengen area . “The strategic project that the federal government was pursuing with the admission of refugees in Germany aimed to 'buy time' in order, firstly, to secure the European external borders; secondly, to make arrangements with the states on the European periphery, namely with Turkey, which reduce the pressure of refugees on the external borders of the EU; and thirdly, it was a matter of creating legal access routes to Europe, which on the one hand complied with the requirements of the Geneva Refugee Convention and on the other hand gave the states of the EU - among them Germany in the first place - control over the influx of refugees. "

The theologian Herbert Stettberger assessed Merkel's decision that night differently . He referred to opposing statements by Merkel, who on the one hand described the opening of the border as a one-off exception and on the other hand denied that she or anyone else in Germany had the power to determine how many people actually come to Germany. As a result, at this point in time, she was probably not concerned with continuous and sustainable refugee aid, but rather made a forced exceptional decision with neglected short, medium and long-term consequences.

Temporary stop of the refugee crisis in Germany

The distribution of refugees, who mainly wanted to go to Germany and Sweden, caused a dispute among the member states of the European Union that has not yet been resolved. Various member states tightened their asylum legislation. The refugee crisis was initially stopped when the Balkan route was closed in March 2016. The EU-Turkey Agreement of March 18, 2016 alleviated problems, but also made the EU more dependent on Turkey and open to blackmail.

Federal government measures

On European level

Failure to apply responsibilities under asylum law

The Dublin III regulation regulates which state has to carry out the asylum procedure, but was not applied by the EU member states: According to estimates by the International Organization for Migration (IMO), half of the refugees who ended up in Italy traveled contrary to the Dublin III Regulation without registration and asylum application to other EU countries, such as Germany, where around 40 percent of asylum seekers registered in the EU submitted their applications in the first quarter of 2015 - in contrast, only 8 percent in Italy. Greece behaved similarly to Italy. Chancellor Merkel therefore admitted: "The Dublin Agreement no longer corresponds to the conditions we once had." After a ruling by the European Court of Justice in 2011, German authorities had not sent back asylum seekers of all nationalities to certain countries, contrary to the Dublin system , for example to Greece. At the end of August 2015 it became known that according to an internal guideline of the BAMF , refugees from Syria who had applied for asylum in Germany, contrary to the Dublin III regulation, would in future no longer be returned to those EU countries in which they were first registered . According to the Federal Ministry of the Interior, this is not a binding requirement. It was expected, however, that Syrian refugees can now count on being able to stay in the Federal Republic.

During the Western Balkans Conference 2015 on August 26th in the Vienna Hofburg, the need for a practicable distribution of refugees became clear in view of the increasing flows of refugees on the so-called Balkan route. Against this background and due to the public discussion about the non-binding BAMF guideline, Chancellor Angela Merkel mentioned at the government's summer press conference on August 31, 2015 that, in her opinion, the country was also prepared for an increasing number of incoming refugees. The phrase " We can do that " used there as a repetition of a word coined by Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel has been a synonym for the challenges associated with the number of refugees in the refugee crisis. Since the Western Balkans Conference and subsequently until the beginning of September 2015, there have been misunderstandings and disputes between the governments of Hungary, Austria and Germany.

As a result, the rumor spread that Germany would also allow all other refugees to enter. Various politicians immediately contradicted this; Chancellor Merkel declared on September 1st that the current legal situation, i.e. the Dublin Agreement, applies.

On September 4, 2015, the rules of the Dublin III regulation were again not applied, this time on an international level: Merkel and her Austrian colleague Werner Faymann agreed with the Hungarian government to provide “emergency aid” in an “emergency” Deviation from the rules of the Dublin III regulation, followed, however, by the German Foreign Minister Steinmeier's warning not to “make any practice out of this for the next few days”. According to this, refugees were allowed to enter Austria and Germany without registration through Hungary. In mid-September 2015, the interior ministers of the federal states declared the reception capacities largely exhausted. As a result, the temporary, partial reintroduction of border controls was announced on September 13th. The number of refugees who crossed the German border in Bavaria , however, exceeded the sum of those who had arrived there in the previous eight months with at least 135,000 refugees in September 2015. At the end of September, under the impression of the massive numbers of refugees on the border with Germany, the German federal government changed its stance again, did not apply the Dublin III regulation towards Austria and, in addition to the transports that Austria already carried out itself, started daily to relieve the border region up to eight special trains to bring refugees from Salzburg, Austria, directly to German initial reception centers . When controls were later reintroduced at the German-Austrian border, this did not reduce the number of newcomers. Up to 10,000 people passed this limit every day. The city of Passau reported on October 19 that within three weeks over 100,000 refugees had entered the border between Austria and Passau alone, i.e. more than 4,750 people per day.

On November 10, 2015, the German Interior Ministry announced that it would reapply the Dublin procedure to asylum seekers, with the exception of asylum seekers entering the Schengen area via Greece. According to an evaluation by the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, the other EU states have been deporting many more asylum seekers to Germany as part of the Dublin procedure since January 2016 than vice versa. From January to May, Germany accepted 5,467 asylum seekers, mainly from Sweden. During the same period, the Federal Republic of Germany submitted 18,668 takeover requests to other EU countries. 7,410 of these were rejected, most of the others failed because the asylum seekers went into hiding. A takeover actually took place in only 1,453 cases. Because Hungary is the most reliable when it comes to immigration registration, most takeover requests were made there. However, Hungary has unilaterally set a quota for takeovers under the Dublin procedure to 12 asylum seekers per day.

Reintroduction of internal border controls

On September 13, 2015, Germany was the first Schengen state to reintroduce border controls at the internal border with Austria . Denmark, Sweden, Austria and Norway followed suit with their own controls at their borders. The federal police set up five border crossing points to regulate the border crossings of refugees and migrants from Austria to Germany: Freilassing , Laufen an der Salzach , Neuhaus am Inn , Passau and Simbach am Inn . The reintroduction of border controls took place in accordance with the Schengen Borders Code , which explicitly provided for the possibility of temporary reintroduction of border controls at the internal borders of the Schengen states (in Art. 23 to 26a Regulation (EU) No. 1051/2013). Border controls are limited in time and can be extended if necessary in consultation with the EU Commission .

The instruction to reintroduce controls at the border to Austria from Sunday, September 13, 2015 at 6:00 p.m., to temporarily interrupt train traffic from Austria and to reject refugees who want to come to Germany from the safe third country Austria, was already given by the Those in charge of the grand coalition were decided in a conference call on September 11th. The aim was to trigger a domino effect to move the states along the Balkan route to close their borders. From 2 p.m. on September 13, however, according to journalist Robin Alexander in the situation center of the interior minister, there were again disagreements with the senior officials about the implementation of the instruction, so that the minister telephoned Chancellor Angela Merkel again, who no longer spoke wanted to set. The deployment order was finally changed by the Minister of the Interior, and people who wanted to apply for asylum were still allowed to travel from Austria without valid identity documents. Alexander describes that the Federal Minister of the Interior deliberately kept the following statement briefly to the press and did not allow any inquiries. First, the false report spread in the national and international press that Germany was rejecting refugees at the border without entry documents. The number of refugees fell for a short time, but smugglers quickly corrected that, and governments on the Balkan route also spread the information about the more open border to Germany so as not to create a backlog of asylum seekers in their countries. The German border remained open because no one in the federal government wanted to take political responsibility for the closure.

Despite border controls, there were unauthorized entries . In the case of a migrant from Libya who fled to Germany for fear of criminal prosecution for robbery and could not receive subsidiary protection either under asylum law or as a refugee, the Koblenz Higher Administrative Court ruled on February 14, 2017 (file number: 13 UF 32/17): “Although has the person concerned has made himself liable to prosecution by entering the Federal Republic of Germany without permission in accordance with §§ 95, Paragraph 1, No. 3, 14, Paragraph 1, No. 1, 2 of the Residence Act . This is because he cannot invoke Section 15 (4) sentence 2 of the Residence Act or Section 95 (5) of the Residence Act in conjunction with Article 31 (1) of the GFK . However, the rule of law in the Federal Republic of Germany has been out of force in this area for around a year and a half and illegal entry into the federal territory is currently de facto no longer prosecuted. "

At home

Use of the Federal Armed Forces for crisis management

Cologne / Bonn hub arrival area, October 5, 2015

From June 2015, the Bundeswehr responded to 850 aid requests from federal states and municipalities in its longest and most labor-intensive domestic deployment to date. 170,000 accommodation places were made available and 200,000 asylum seekers were transported. After the wave of refugees subsided, staff were transferred to the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees.

Reforms to registration, data exchange and identification

Registration and comparison of fingerprints
BAMF headquarters in Nuremberg, 2014

According to information from the Police Union (GdP) and the German Police Union, only a fraction of the foreigners who entered Germany uncontrolled were recorded by fingerprints in the last months of 2015 . In October 2015, had European Commission to Greece, Croatia and Italy formal notice addressed and the correct application of Regulation (EU) No 603/2013. ( Eurodac - Regulation ) asked. Two months later it was found that the Member States concerned had not complied with the letters of formal notice. As a result, the EU Commission asked these countries to comply with this EU regulation again in December 2015.

As recently as February 2017, only 10 percent of the German immigration authorities had the technical means of capturing fingerprints electronically and comparing them with the core data system (KDS) of the central foreigner register operated by the Federal Administrative Office . In the context of the digitization of the asylum procedure u. a. KDS expanded to include fingerprints as memory content, around 13,900 authorities from the areas of residence and asylum, police, security and justice as well as other users are connected. The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) has been able to take fingerprints from all refugees and compare them since autumn 2016. The scans are sufficient for establishing identity, but are sometimes unusable for forensic investigations.

At the end of May 2017, the BAMF found that several thousand people had already been granted asylum without having previously identified them. In May 2018, Die Welt published an article that quoted from an internal letter from the BAMF's quality assurance department dated May 11, according to which applicants' identification services were not regularly made up.

Registration systems and data exchange

In December 2016, the suspect in the criminal case Maria L. - a sex crime that was committed on October 16, 2016 in Freiburg im Breisgau - was arrested. In the course of this, the media reported on gaps in German and European IT recording systems for refugees on the one hand and for offenders on the other, through which criminals can slip unnoticed. The processing of the attack on the Berlin Christmas market at the Gedächtniskirche shortly afterwards also addressed such problems. The following examples show deficiencies in official data exchange as well as related remedial steps:

  • Afis-A and Afis-P are automated fingerprint identification systems (AFIS) used by the German police . Until the beginning of 2016, only the police had access to the Automated Police Fingerprint Identification System (Afis-P), in which only dactyloscopy-related data is stored for the purposes of law enforcement or police security. The Asylum Automated Fingerprint Identification System (Afis-A), which only records data from asylum seekers as part of the identification service (ED treatment) to carry out the asylum procedure , could only be accessed by the immigration authorities . Both systems are now linked so that both the police and immigration authorities can access the data stored in these systems. Both Afis-P and Afis-A are part of the INPOL database of the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA). The chief of the BKA Holger Münch considers INPOL too old and too slow.
  • The nationwide available core data system (KDS) based on the Central Aliens Register (AZR), which was set up as part of the digitization of the asylum procedure and through which the aliens and registration authorities responsible for uncontrolled foreigners can exclude multiple identities, was only introduced in the first half of the year Introduced in 2016. However, the Berlin attacker Anis Amri came to Germany from Italy in the summer of 2015 and was there on July 6, 2015 in Freiburg i. Br. Registered by Kriminaldirektion Freiburg K8 under the name Anis Amir (sic).
Identity verification via passports

The police union estimates that only around 25 to 30 percent of asylum seekers who entered Germany in 2015 had a passport to show. It is also known that both blank Syrian ID cards and ID software, devices and stamps could have fallen into the hands of criminal organizations, so that criminal or terrorist organizations may be able to produce technically genuine passports with false information. The General Staff Council of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) warned in November 2015 that the accelerated asylum procedure without identification of people who pretend to be Syrians posed an increased risk potential, as it made it easier for IS fighters to infiltrate Central Europe. According to the General Staff Council, Syrian passports were not checked for authenticity in November 2015; In the case of asylum seekers without a passport, there is even no need to establish an identity . A prompt was against the background of forged or stolen passports in December 2015 Germany again individual assessment and the asylum applications required by asylum seekers from Syria. Ansgar Heveling (CDU), Chairman of the Interior Committee of the German Bundestag , demands “in Europe above all the fastest possible, complete registration of all people who arrive here.” Burkhard Lischka (SPD) also emphasized the importance of “an individual check of those who have fled as well People from Syria by German authorities ”. On December 3, 2015, the Conference of Interior Ministers in Koblenz decided, for security reasons, to return to the regular individual assessment of asylum applications with a personal hearing, including for asylum seekers from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Eritrea. This was decided with effect from January 1, 2016.

At the beginning of August 2016, Katja Wilken-Klein from the BAMF declared that all asylum seekers were registered and checked by the police. In mid-August 2016, the Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann (politician, 1956) accused the BAMF of inadequately checking asylum seekers, saying that this was an unacceptable security deficit, because: “We now know that ISIS has also used these security gaps in a targeted manner to identify assassins Smuggling asylum seekers into Europe camouflaged. ”During a random check of the passports of asylum seekers in Bavaria, a significant proportion of forged passports and incorrect identities were discovered. In September 2016, 3,300 passports of asylum seekers were checked in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and 140 forged passports were discovered, some of which had been declared authentic by the BAMF with expert opinions. Brandenburg's Attorney General Erardo Rautenberg wanted to have around 18,000 data records confiscated by the BAMF in order to check them. According to the RBB, this was the data of refugees who had come to Brandenburg by train from Hungary or Austria between September 5 and December 22, 2015 and could not be identified by the federal police due to capacity reasons. However, the BAMF refused to hand it over because refugees could not be placed under such general suspicion, as the Frankfurt (Oder) regional court decided. By February 2017, the public prosecutor checked 1,000 of the 18,000 cases in nationwide, one-off and complex individual proceedings. It was found that 15–20% of the people could no longer be found.

Accelerating ongoing asylum procedures

Guarded hotel in Dresden, refugee accommodation in winter 2015/2016

The number of ongoing asylum procedures in Germany in September 2015 was higher than in all other European countries combined. In order to speed up the processing of asylum applications , the politicians were already looking for ways in the summer of 2015. One of them was the accelerated processing of asylum applications from applicants from the Western Balkans (approx. 46%). The federal government decided to bring forward their asylum applications, which were considered hopeless, in order to be able to deport these asylum seekers quickly after a probable rejection .

Syrians and Eritreans as well as Mandaeans , Yazidis and Christians from Iraq generally meet the requirements for refugee status . Therefore, an accelerated asylum procedure has been introduced for these asylum seekers. Your applications will be approved solely on the basis of the written application, and the so-called revocation check was waived until August 1, 2015, when the law on the redefinition of the right to stay and the termination of residence came into force. In the opinion of the General Staff Council of the BAMF, the accelerated asylum procedure for Syrians and Eritreans does not follow the rule of law . There is no identity check for asylum seekers who are Syrians or who pose as such . Refugee status is only granted if an interpreter, who is usually neither sworn in nor is from Syria, confirms an asylum seeker as a Syrian. In the case of refugees who are able to show a Syrian passport , the decision-makers are "required to grant this group of people refugee status without an authenticity check". This procedure is inadequate, as numerous Syrian passports are forged and a large number of asylum seekers give false identities in order to obtain the prospect of staying with the possibility of family reunification etc.

Federal Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière estimated the proportion of “false Syrians” in autumn 2015 to be 30 percent. When it became public that he had no data, he was accused by the opposition of stirring up rumors. In 2016, a confidential Frontex screening revealed that around 14% of the refugees who arrived in Greece in 2015 falsely pretended to be Syrians in order to have a better chance of staying. This trend continued in 2016.

From the beginning of September 2015, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) had many unprocessed asylum applications. In order to complete more asylum procedures per month, the workforce was increased to 7,300 employees in 2016 and increased to a total of 9,000 employees through secondments from other authorities. The increase in asylum procedures and the accelerated processing at the Federal Office also led, with a time lag, to a considerable increase in the number of lawsuits and emergency legal protection procedures in the administrative courts. According to the figures published for Brandenburg, the number of new cases at the three Brandenburg administrative courts rose from a total of 2,859 (2014) to 5,707 (2015), 7,106 (2016) and to 6,805 proceedings in the first half of 2017 alone.

The development of the number of pending proceedings depends mainly on the monthly new entry and the number of resolved applications. Since the 4th quarter of 2016, significantly more applications have been decided than there are:

In April 2019, the BAMF changed its guiding principles on Syria: In certain cases, only a ban on deportation should be issued instead of subsidiary protection status. For the purpose of coordination with the Federal Ministry of the Interior, however, some of the proceedings of Syrian asylum seekers were temporarily suspended at the end of April.

Financial and social policy development

Because of the large number of asylum seekers, the German federal government increased the financial resources for refugees by one billion euros for 2015 and made an additional six billion euros available for 2016. With these measures, among other things, the budgets of job centers and the funds for job-related German promotion should be increased. In addition, direct financial contributions should be partially replaced by contributions in kind. It was also agreed to increase the Federal Foreign Office's budget by 400 million euros a year in order to combat the causes of flight . The federal government, states and municipalities are funding a 600-hour German course for asylum seekers with good prospects to stay. The Federal Employment Agency and the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees were placed under the joint leadership of Frank-Jürgen Weise in order to enable asylum seekers to receive individually tailored funding.

In contrast, the IFO Institute calculated in September 2015 for the 800,000 refugees forecast in 2015 alone - at the turn of the year there were actually around 900,000 - with costs of 10 billion euros. Educational measures and reunification through family reunification were not yet included. However, these figures had to be corrected considerably in December 2015, so the Ifo Institute now reckoned with costs of € 21 billion in 2015 alone.

Chancellor Merkel promised in October 2015 that no tax increases would be made to finance the refugee crisis.

In February 2016, the finance ministers of Bavaria and North Rhine-Westphalia put the costs of the federal states for integration services at 20 to 25 billion euros for the current year. For the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia, they indicated the reimbursement by the federal government at almost 20%, for Bavaria at 17% of the costs. The planned reimbursement of costs between the federal states and municipalities also became a point of contention. The state of North Rhine-Westphalia only transferred a lump sum of 10,000 euros per refugee, which representatives of the municipalities did not consider to cover the costs. For around 52,000 rejected asylum seekers in NRW in January 2016 who could not be deported and were only tolerated, the state only paid the lump sum for three months per year.

Caring for unaccompanied minor refugees has proven costly. For Berlin, journalists calculated in February 2017 for the more than 2,700 unaccompanied underage refugees in the city a year of 200 million euros.

Accelerated repatriation of rejected asylum seekers without a passport from the Balkans

The federal government is repatriating rejected asylum seekers from Balkan countries without a valid passport on the basis of the laissez-passer procedure. This procedure allows voluntary return or deportation even without a passport. The Balkan states have declared their readiness to accept the returnees. Furthermore, the incentives for voluntary return have also been increased. More than 5,000 Kosovars received amounts of up to 3,000 euros for their voluntary departure.

For returnees from Albania, Serbia, Macedonia and Kosovo, the REAG / GARP funding program only covers the transport costs (as of March 2015).

Special procedure for certain asylum seekers

On December 3, 2015, the Conference of Interior Ministers in Koblenz decided for asylum seekers from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Eritrea to return to the regular individual examination of the asylum application with a personal hearing for security reasons .

Changes in the asylum law 2015 (Asylum Package I)

On September 29, 2015, the Federal Cabinet approved a legislative package with significant changes in the German asylum law - the asylum package I . The following was decided in detail:

  • Classification as “safe country of origin”: In order to be able to deport asylum seekers from the Balkan states Albania, Kosovo and Montenegro more quickly, these countries were classified as “ safe countries of origin ”. Asylum seekers from there should remain in the initial reception facilities until the asylum procedure has been completed .
  • Accommodation in initial reception centers: Asylum seekers should be up to six months - previously max. three months allowed - be accommodated in initial reception facilities and receive only benefits in kind instead of money. The payment of money should only be max. one month in advance.
  • Unannounced deportation: In order to prevent a descent into illegality , rejected asylum seekers should be deported without prior notice.
  • Accelerated asylum procedures: Asylum procedures should be completed after three months. The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) is to be increased in staff. Legacy procedures should be completed more quickly in future by more decision-makers.
  • Benefits in kind instead of money: In order to avoid financial incentives for asylum seekers who came to Germany only out of economic hardship, they should in future receive benefits in kind such as food, clothing, personal care products, tobacco products or tickets for local public transport.
  • Financial aid from the federal government: The federal government pays the federal states a monthly flat rate of 670 euros for each refugee assigned, with the condition that these funds are distributed to their municipalities .
  • Accommodation: Certain building regulations that would delay the construction of winter-proof quarters are suspended (e.g. when choosing a location, noise protection or the use of renewable energies).
  • Integration: Asylum seekers with good prospects for a residence permit are offered integration courses and German courses, integration assistance on the labor market is offered and access to internships is made easier.
  • Medical care: The federal government is creating the prerequisites for the states to be able to introduce a health card for refugees on a voluntary basis .

The changes in asylum law through Asylum Package I mainly came into force on October 24, 2015.

Changes to the asylum law 2016 (Asylum Package II)

On February 3, 2016, the Federal Cabinet passed a second legislative package with stricter asylum rules - Asylum Package II . Accordingly, family reunification is to be suspended for two years for those entitled to subsidiary protection . This would currently affect about a tenth of asylum seekers from Syria. In addition, rapid asylum procedures in special reception facilities and a reduction in asylum seeker benefits are planned. The SPD party chairman Sigmar Gabriel contradicted the draft law at the beginning of February because family reunification for minors would also be suspended there, and stated that this had not been agreed. The draft law had previously been checked by the SPD-led Federal Family Ministry and not objected to. Since Gabriel insisted on improvements, the Chancellor commissioned the Minister of the Interior and Justice to clarify the situation. Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière (CDU) and Justice Minister Heiko Maas (SPD) agreed on February 11, 2016 not to change anything in the coalition's resolutions on Asylum Package II . If there are urgent humanitarian reasons, the Foreign Office should decide on exceptions in agreement with the Ministry of the Interior . The asylum package II was born on 25 February 2016 by the Bundestag adopted. 429 MPs voted in favor and 147 against. The legislative package passed the Federal Council on February 26, but did not require approval.

Originally, as part of Asylum Package II, the federal states should be obliged to provide minimum standards such as lockable toilets and separate showers in the refugee accommodation. In addition, it was planned to only issue an operating permit to accommodations with children if they meet the standards prescribed in an EU directive and in child and youth protection law. The Federal Government's Abuse Commissioner , Johannes-Wilhelm Röhrig , described the lack of these regulations in the draft law, which was adopted by the Bundestag on February 25, 2016 , as "grossly negligent", as more and more cases are sexual assaults on children in refugee accommodation As stated in the expert report commissioned by him, the frequency of sexual abuse on February 22nd. The EU Commission called on the German government to comply with the EU directive, otherwise administrative fine proceedings would be initiated against the Federal Republic.

A second law was supposed to expand the list of safe countries of origin to include the Maghreb states of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia . The law passed by the German Bundestag on May 13, 2016 on the classification of the North African states Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia as " safe countries of origin " did not receive the required majority in the Bundesrat on March 10, 2017 because federal states with government participation by the Greens and the Left voted against it .

At a meeting on January 28, 2016, the top politicians of the governing parties had already agreed that asylum seekers should pay € 10 per month for language courses and that those who successfully complete an apprenticeship in Germany would then be allowed to work in Germany for at least two years .

Digitization of the asylum procedure

In September 2015, the Federal Chancellor and the heads of government of the federal states decided to push ahead with the further digitization of the asylum procedure in a federal project. The aim was to implement an integrated overall IT system to accelerate the refugee management process (integrated identity management). The legal framework for this was created by the Data Exchange Improvement Act that came into force on February 5, 2016 . On this legal basis, it was possible to supplement basic personal details already stored in the Central Aliens Register (AZR), such as names, date and place of birth and nationality, with new storage information, in particular with fingerprints . The AZR, which was the central information platform for foreigner data in the past, will in future also serve as a core data system (KDS) in the context of refugee management thanks to the adjustments made in accordance with the Data Exchange Improvement Act.

When an asylum seeker first contacts an authority, an extensive data set is created and saved in a standardized way. In order to ensure secure data transmission, information is exchanged via a protected message server to which the registration authorities are connected via the Internet. The transmission obligations to the AZR and the authorizations to retrieve data from the AZR have also been expanded.

Proof of arrival, introduced in January 2016

The Integrated identity management was introduced by the end of May 2016 nationwide with 1,500 registration stations. Since that time, all can complete in Germany seeking protection fingerprinted be. In particular, fingerprints can be taken and the basic personal details determined can be stored centrally in the KDS. The management system has three core components:

  1. Registration of asylum seekers at the first official contact, whereby multiple biometric entries are excluded due to the fingerprints
  2. Storage of the data in the KDS based on the central register of foreigners
  3. Issuance of a forgery-proof uniform proof of arrival to all now registered asylum seekers, in which important data is uniformly recorded.

The recorded data is centrally available to all public bodies within the scope of the required task fulfillment without media discontinuity . Initial registration, information provision for authorities, security checks and asylum procedures can be carried out more quickly and misuse of BAMF services can be prevented.

A security comparison based on the consultation procedure of central authorities (KZB procedure), which is carried out immediately after the data has been saved in the KDS, now enables the security authorities to check at an early stage whether a person has particular knowledge of terrorism or other serious security concerns.

The proof of arrival and in particular the AZR number printed on it serve as an access key to the KDS, via which the various authorities can access the data on the asylum seeker. In addition to the basic information such as name, date and place of birth, this also includes information on accompanying underage children and adolescents. Information on school education, vocational training and other qualifications is recorded for quick integration and job placement. The registration authorities responsible for migrants and refugees are equipped with a fingerprint quick comparison system (Fast-ID) , with which an immediate query can be used to determine immediately whether data is already available on a person; Multiple identities are thus prevented. Technically, this is ensured in the KDS by means of data comparison via the INPOL database at the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), in which the captured fingerprints are stored centrally.

Integration Act

The CDU / CSU parliamentary group warned after the terrorist attacks in Brussels on 22 March 2016 against "Islamist ghetto education" as in the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek . The then Federal Minister of Justice Heiko Maas (SPD) described districts like Molenbeek as breeding grounds for terrorism, which should therefore not arise.

A legally prescribed residence requirement for all refugees is intended to prevent such settlements in large cities. Under the heading "Promote and Demand", the federal government was planning an integration law with the following content:

  • A residence requirement is intended to prevent massive influx into metropolitan areas. The draft law allows the federal states to enact rules on the choice of residence for recognized refugees. It should be up to the federal states whether they stipulate specific places of residence or prohibit moving to certain cities or regions. The regulation is to be limited to three years and does not apply to refugees who have received a job, apprenticeship or study place in a location that does not match the assigned residential area.
  • The right of permanent residence for recognized refugees is to be tightened. You should no longer receive a settlement permit after three years as before . In the future, this unlimited residence permit will only be available after five years if, among other things, sufficient language skills (level A2 of the European Framework of Reference ) and a largely secure livelihood can be proven. Only persons entitled to asylum, recognized refugees and resettlement refugees who have reached an advanced language level (level C1) and who are largely responsible for their own living will be granted permanent residence after three years .
  • The priority test , which has so far ensured that asylum seekers and tolerated persons are only hired if a job cannot be filled by suitable applicants from Germany or the EU, is to be suspended for three years in regions with below-average unemployment. From three months stay in Germany are refugees on the basis of temporary workers can be employed.
  • Young asylum seekers with good prospects to stay should be given secure residence status for the duration of their vocational training . In future, they should also be able to take up training if they are older than 21 years; the previous age limit will be abolished. Accompanying aids or assisted training can be approved after a three-month stay, vocational training allowance and training allowance after 15 months. If asylum seekers are accepted after completing their training, they will be given secure residence status for another two years after graduation. If there is no employment, your right of residence is extended for six months to look for a job.
  • For asylum seekers , “100,000 additional job opportunities for a low-threshold introduction to the German labor market” are to be financed from federal funds. The Federal Employment Agency (BA) should be able to oblige refugees to take up reasonable jobs. If measures are rejected, the BA benefits should be reduced. Refugees from safe countries of origin should be excluded from the planned measures.
  • Integration courses consist of a language course and an orientation part. In the future, the orientation section should cover 100 hours instead of the previous 60 hours. Asylum seekers should be able to participate earlier than before; they should also be able to be obliged to participate. The right to participate in an integration course should expire after one year. In the event of non-participation, social benefits can be reduced to what is immediately necessary.
  • Family reunification is to be permitted only after two years for people who have only been granted subsidiary protection .

The bill for the integration law was passed by the federal cabinet at the government's closed meeting in Schloss Meseberg on May 24th. The first reading in the Bundestag took place on June 3rd. The bill was approved by a large majority; the opposition expressed sharp criticism. The Bundestag passed the law on July 7, 2016 with a few changes. A day later, the Federal Council also approved the law.

The Integration Act came predominantly on 6 August 2016 in force. Its regulations are accompanied by the ordinance on the Integration Act and the fourth ordinance amending the employment ordinance.

Accelerating the deportation of rejected asylum seekers

The “Starthilfe Plus” return assistance program was introduced on February 1, 2017 , in order to offer those who have very little chances in the asylum procedure a financial incentive to make an early decision to voluntarily return and to give those who want to return to their home country a return and to facilitate a new beginning in the country of origin.

On July 20, 2017, the law for better enforcement of the obligation to leave the country was passed. This provides, among other things:

The German Bundestag passed the draft law submitted to the vote by the federal government on May 18, 2017.

Arbeiterwohlfahrt (AWO), Deutsches Kinderhilfswerk , Pro Asyl and Unicef ​​Germany criticized in February 2017 that the planned law would allow the federal states to accommodate children and young people in initial reception facilities for an unlimited period of time. It is also criticized that the youth welfare offices should in future apply for asylum for unaccompanied refugee minors.

On the grounds that there is no protection from persecution and torture in any part of Syria, the interior ministers of the federal states decided at their conference in December 2019 to extend the general ban on deportation for Syrians until June 2020. However, the federal government should check whether at least dangerous criminals and refugees who go back to Syria on vacation can be deported there.

To combat the causes of flight

In the near East

300,000 people have been killed since the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War in the wake of the Arab Spring in early 2011; 4.2 million Syrians fled abroad. The United Nations (UN) estimates that after five years of civil war there are 7.6 million internally displaced people in the country itself .

From 2012 to 2015, Germany supported the World Food Program in the Syrian crisis as the largest donor and as the third largest bilateral donor, humanitarian and structural aid for the victims of the war in Syria with more than 2.6 billion euros. For the period 2016–2018, the federal government has pledged further aid in the amount of 2.3 billion euros. This makes Germany the world's largest donor. The World Food Program (WFP) is in 2016 money ready for feeding 1.5 million people in refugee camps and 4 million people in need in Syria. With 570 million euros, Germany bears half of these costs. Another 200 million euros are being invested in the Partnership for Prospects employment initiative , which aims to create 500,000 jobs for Syrian refugees in the region. In Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, refugees from Syria should be given access to the local education system and the labor market. Here, families in need receive, among other things, food parcels, hygiene kits, winter aid and medical services. Ambulance services and first aid services reach 65,000 people in Lebanon alone. In addition, the German Academic Refugee Initiative (DAFI), the program of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) Leadership for Syria and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Scholars at risk 1900 offer scholarships for Syrians. About the initiated by Germany Fund Syria Recovery Trust Fund (SRTF) are Since 2013 projects to supply the people and funds for the reconstruction of war-damaged infrastructure in Syria and Iraq. SRTF funds were z. B. Used for projects to restore power supply or to produce food. For 2016, the Federal Foreign Office increased the funds for aid in the region by 400 million euros. This money is intended to restore the electricity supply for 300,000 people in northern Syria, to secure health care for 100,000 people in refugee camps in Lebanon and to provide food to 500,000 needy people in Syria.

The German government also urged the conclusion of the EU-Turkey agreement of March 18, 2016 , in which the accelerated disbursement of 3 billion euros for humanitarian aid for refugees on site was agreed. The European Union (EU) had already promised Turkey this aid in the jointly agreed action plan of November 30, 2015 within the framework of the “ Facility for Refugees in Turkey”. In addition, a follow-up payment of a further 3 billion euros for the period from 2018 onwards was agreed in the agreement.

In Africa

After immigrating to the EU via the Mediterranean , many of the asylum seekers traveled on to Germany. In 2016, the total number of initial asylum applications in Germany was 722,370. Among the ten most important countries of origin were the African countries Eritrea (4th place) and Nigeria (8th place); 18,854 applicants (2.6%) came from Eritrea and 12,709 applicants (1.8%) from Nigeria. Due to the large number of African applicants, Africa moved up high on the Chancellor's agenda. At the summit of the group of the twenty most important industrialized and emerging countries (G20) in Hamburg in July 2017 , the topics of Africa, migration and international aid should be given priority. In an article in January 2017, Der Spiegel wrote that Merkel had recognized that traditional forms of aid and training were not enough for Africa. Billions in aid, tens of thousands of paid helpers and thousands of rarely coordinated projects did not prevent the number of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa from remaining alarmingly high. The Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) has so far failed to provide sustainable solutions ; a paradigm shift and fundamentally new approaches in Africa aid are necessary.

On February 1, 2017, in Johannesburg, South Africa , the BMZ presented its Marshall Plan with Africa and the “new G20 partnership with Africa” , in the spirit of a return to the historical Marshall Plan for the construction of Western Europe and, above all, Western Germany after the Second World War . The last "Marshall Plan" to be propagated was the Global Marshall Plan (GMP) initiated by the then American Vice President Al Gore . For the recent German presidency in the G20 , the “topic of Africa” was the focus. The choice of topics was justified in the expected migration development. Demographics , high economic and income disparities, unstable security and deteriorating environmental factors on the African continent point to increasing migratory pressure in the next few years. The impending wave of migration from south to north has led to a change of course in the EU institutions as well as in the leading EU states. The primary aim is to combat the causes of flight , above all wars and a lack of economic growth. The migration partnerships with Mali , Niger , Nigeria , Senegal and Ethiopia that have been running since mid-2016 are only referred to as emergency solutions.

In Afghanistan

In Afghanistan, Germany supported humanitarian and structural aid as the third largest bilateral donor in 2016 with 430 million euros per year.

Situation of the refugees

Refugee emergency accommodation (inflatable hall) October 2015 in Neubiberg ( Munich district ), Bavaria

Situation in the accommodations

Setting up residential containers before winter in Hanover in the Linden-Nord district , 2015
The initial reception center Itzehoe during the construction phase 2016. It was never put into operation.

In almost all federal states , the accommodation for asylum seekers was overcrowded, in some cases significantly, until the beginning of 2016. For this reason, emergency quarters were set up in residential containers and vacant buildings. In many countries such as Schleswig-Holstein , Hamburg and Bavaria, refugees stayed in large tent camps.

In Hamburg, a law was passed on October 1, 2015 that allows the confiscation of empty buildings, provided they are suitable as refugee accommodation. The regulation does not apply to private apartments. In the state of Lower Saxony , the state parliament passed several legislative changes in order to be able to create new living space for refugees more quickly and with less bureaucracy before winter 2015/2016. This means that playgrounds and parking spaces no longer have to be created and monument protection requirements are taken into account.

At least in the group of Kurds from Iraq, the months of accommodation in collective shelters with no concrete prospect of job opportunities from November 2015 onwards led some to decide to voluntarily return to Iraq.

At the height of the refugee crisis, almost 1,000 sports halls across Germany had been converted into temporary refugee accommodation. By the summer of 2016, 700 sports halls could be reopened, but they first have to be renovated before they can be used again by schools and sports clubs. In March 2017, Berlin cleared the last refugee accommodation in gyms, so that North Rhine-Westphalia is the last federal state that has not yet cleared all halls.

Conflicts between refugees

Theft, assault and rape occurred in several facilities. Single mothers and homosexuals are particularly at risk, according to Johannes-Wilhelm Rörig , the commissioner for issues relating to child sexual abuse . In October 2015, a gay couple was attacked in the refugee accommodation in Berlin-Lichterfelde .

In a mass brawl involving several hundred people in the refugee home on the grounds of the old Kassel-Calden airport , 14 people were injured in September, including three police officers. In October 2015 there was a fight between refugees in Hamburg and Braunschweig. In the two cases, hundreds of asylum seekers fought each other. Iron bars were also used. This was followed by an argument of 15 to 20 people between the ages of 16 and 31 in Backnang, three people were seriously injured. The reason for the fight with pans, broomsticks and other household appliances are said to have been mutual insults. Afghans were involved.

Against this background, the overcrowding of the accommodation is sometimes criticized, and separate accommodation according to nationality or denomination is repeatedly demanded. While this is rejected by some as “hardly practicable”, others see the call for such separate accommodation as a surrender of the rule of law. One should "not capitulate to misanthropic attitudes through segregation , but must make it clear to all newcomers to us that discrimination on religious grounds is not tolerated in Germany," demanded, for example, the Green politician Volker Beck .

Sexual assault on women and children

In a survey of 40 refugees on behalf of Amnesty International , many female refugees reported having been victims of physical violence, extortion or sexual harassment by people smugglers, security personnel or other refugees on their way to Germany. Many women feel unsafe because men are watching them in the toilet in refugee shelters. Some women responded by eating and drinking very little so that they had to go to the bathroom less often. The home management tacitly accepted the threat to women.

Women's organizations pointed to numerous rape of women and the sexual abuse of children in refugee shelters. The Federal Commissioner for Child Sexual Abuse Issues, Rörig, stated that he assumed a high number of unreported cases. Many are afraid of reporting sexual assault. According to experts, such incidents are decisively favored by organizational deficiencies within the accommodation. Rörig therefore called for single mothers to be accommodated separately with their children and for showers that are separate for the sexes to be set up. In addition, contact persons for victims of sexual assault should be in the accommodations. The volunteers should also be checked more closely before they are granted access authorization and should, if possible, consist of equal numbers of men and women. The chairman of the German Police Union Rainer Wendt is of the opinion that sexual assault and violence against women and girls in the homes are downplayed by politics. The number of unreported cases is generally high for such crimes, and in addition, such crimes are usually not reported in the refugees' countries of origin. It is important that there is advice for women that they can trust.

Children in refugee shelters are not only at risk from sexual assault, but also from abuse of power and violence. According to media reports, a danger to children does not only come from other refugees and security personnel, but also from other children and volunteers. Their parents are often themselves traumatized and unable to take care of their children enough.

Assaults on refugees with Christian denominations

According to research by Welt , Zeit and report Munich from September 2015, there is a clear hostility among some Muslim refugees towards Christian refugees in many refugee shelters , ranging from insults like kuffar to threats and violence. Former Muslims who have converted to Christianity are hardest hit; these would be beaten regularly.

In mid-August 2015, an Afghan man who had turned away from Islam was hunted down in Suhl , Thuringia . About 50 asylum seekers attacked the police officers who had been summoned. 17 people were injured, including six police officers. In Oberursel and Berlin-Dahlem, Christian refugees were mistreated by the Muslim security guards at the asylum seekers' homes. A pastor from Berlin-Steglitz , who cares for the 1200 Christian refugees in Berlin-Tempelhof , criticizes that the authority to interpret attacks against Christians always lies with the attackers and the security guards, who also come mostly from Islamic cultures, because the police are theirs Obtains information from the security guard. The Archbishop of Bamberg, Ludwig Schick, confirms that there is exclusion and assaults against Christian refugees and calls for action to be taken against this: "It must not be that asylum seekers in Germany suffer again for their faith." In February 2016, the State Security in Berlin investigated Assault with a religious background.

Capacity problems in housing refugees in 2018

The number of asylum applications recorded fell by over 70% in 2017 compared to the previous year. After arrival and registration, refugees are temporarily accommodated in the initial reception facilities of the federal states in order to apply for asylum there. Although many federal states have already significantly reduced the accommodation capacities built up in 2015/16 due to the declining number of asylum seekers, around 100,000 places were not occupied in the initial reception facilities and collective accommodation. Many federal states want to further reduce the reception capacities, although it is uncertain how the refugee movements from Africa and Asia to Europe will develop.

After the asylum procedure has been completed, the refugees are assigned to an independent city or district based on a quota system. These regional authorities are usually responsible for the permanent accommodation of the refugees. In the metropolitan areas in particular, they have considerable problems in providing recognized refugees with suitable permanent housing. In Berlin, around 3,700 refugees currently have to live in emergency shelters such as old barracks or office buildings because there is a lack of affordable housing in the city. In order to improve the housing situation for recognized refugees, up to 60 so-called modular accommodations are to be built there in 2018. The cities and municipalities in Baden-Wuerttemberg and Hesse as well as the city of Bremen also complain about problems with the “subsequent accommodation” of refugees. To solve the housing problem, Hessen has drawn up the Housing Master Plan in Hessen , which is not only intended to benefit refugees.

Due to the residence obligation according to § 12a Residence Act (AufenthG), recognized refugees are forced to stay in the assigned regions for at least three years. This is intended to relieve the conurbations. Since migration within Germany to the metropolitan areas is expected as soon as the residence obligation expires, many politicians called for it to be extended in 2017 in order not to aggravate the housing situation in the metropolitan areas any further.

According to the Federal Homeless Aid Association, 440,000 of the 860,000 statistically recorded homeless people in Germany are recognized refugees.

anti-Semitism

Since many refugees come from countries in which anti-Semitism as well as the rejection of Israel are pronounced, the fear of imported anti-Semitism arose in Jewish communities . The terrorist attacks against Jews since 2012 and the riots during the Gaza War in 2014 also played a role here. Josef Schuster , President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany , feared that an uncontrolled influx of refugees could endanger Jewish life in Germany. The President of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien , Oskar Deutsch, called for an upper limit for refugees.

Schuster suggested making anti-Semitic resentment a central topic in the integration courses and visiting concentration camp memorials or Jewish museums with the course participants . Some studies on anti-Semitism among refugees from Arab and North African countries and those from the Near and Middle East show that there is a relatively high degree of anti-Semitic attitudes and clear gaps in knowledge about Judaism, such as the Holocaust and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict , albeit with differences between the countries of origin. Rejection of Israel is widespread, with many respondents trying to distinguish between Jews, Israelis and the State of Israel.

According to a survey of Jews in Germany who were victims of anti-Semitic acts conducted by Bielefeld University under the direction of Andreas Zick in 2017, Muslim persons were identified as suspected perpetrators in 62 percent of the insults and 81 percent of the physical attacks. 70% of the respondents are concerned that anti-Semitism will increase in Germany because many refugees are anti-Semitic. A survey conducted by the University of Regensburg among refugees in 2017 came to the result that more than half of the respondents from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq had “clear tendencies towards anti-Semitic attitudes”.

Views of Refugees

Since the sexual assault on New Year's Eve in Cologne, the media have been concerned with the image of women among Muslim men and with the question of whether Muslim refugees bring “archaic behaviors” to Germany.

According to a joint study by the BAMF, IAW and DIW, refugees and Germans think very similarly.

The School of Media, Communication and Economics (HMKW) surveyed in 2016 in Berlin refugee camps living refugees about their attitudes to democracy, the role of social coexistence of refugees and to Germany. As a result, deficits in the understanding of democracy on the one hand, but a positive attitude towards Germany on the other. According to the authors of the study, refugees' attitudes towards sex outside of marriage, interreligious marriages and homosexuality are reminiscent of the 1950s . Furthermore, there is emotional resentment towards Jews.

Welcome culture and volunteer work

Welcome column at a refugee dormitory in Bremen-Osterholz , 2016

During the refugee crisis in 2015, many volunteers got involved without a direct government mandate in order to subsequently work with aid organizations and government agencies. The reception of special refugee trains arriving at Munich Central Station by volunteers has become internationally known as an expression of the so-called “ welcome culture” . All in all, 55% of the population in Germany have been committed to refugees since 2015, “be it through donations of money and goods, public advocacy or active help.” Federal Family Minister Katarina Barley commented: “The available figures show a high level of helpfulness and solidarity in our company Country. Voluntary work is indispensable for the integration of refugees [...]. ”The helpers worked an average of 5.5 hours per week and stated that their motives were mainly“ to want to get involved in society ”,“ to want to contribute to the realization of social justice ”and "Wanting to make a statement against racism." Two thirds of the volunteers were women. A detailed practical example from Wandlitz (from 2013/2014) shows that a welcoming culture succeeds above all through active dialogue (citizens' meetings, round tables, welcoming activities , conflict resolution) and civic engagement based on shared tasks .

From the beginning of 2016, after the events of New Year's Eve in Cologne, there was speculation in many media under headings such as “The end of the welcome culture?” About the end of voluntary work. Georg Cremer, Secretary General of the German Caritas Association , contradicts the thesis that the refugee aid workers' commitment was flagged in spring 2016 : “The voluntary commitment is as high as in summer 2015 , but the media perception was one-sided on the welcoming culture in the summer and more on today focused on the terrifying events. “In 2017, 19% of the population were still active as active helpers, donors or supporters. Organizations such as the Hope Bearers Foundation and many others have been consciously promoting voluntary work in refugee and migrant aid since 2015 and supporting volunteers in their cities in building so-called houses of hope , in which refugees live together with locals who help them with integration. These efforts will be expanded further.

An empirical survey carried out in September 2018 supports the statement that the majority of people still perceive coexistence as positive in the immigration society. All groups of origin, including migrants, are treated as “friendly”. This means that the results have only changed very slightly compared to the survey three years ago.

Labor law position

Asylum seekers are generally prohibited from employment in the first three months . After this period they are allowed to work, but the priority test gives priority to applicants from Germany and the EU for a further fifteen months when assigning jobs. With the Integration Act, the possibility was created that in regions with low unemployment the priority check can be omitted for asylum seekers and tolerated persons. For the duration of an apprenticeship (three years), a secure residence status was created for those not entitled to remain.

As part of the refugee integration measures (FIN) labor market program , the Federal Employment Agency has been able to create up to 100,000 low-paid jobs since August 2016. Almost 19,000 such positions had been applied for by mid-January 2017, 13,000 of which were approved; 12,500 of them were also occupied at this time.

Security situation

Crime in the context of immigration

Study on the Increase in Violent Crime 2014-2016

The study on the development of violence in Germany led by the criminologist Christian Pfeiffer . Focus: Young people and refugees as perpetrators and victims , the results of which were published in the form of a report on January 3, 2018, examined the increase in violent crime in Lower Saxony between 2014 and 2016. According to a co-author of the study (Dirk Baier), Lower Saxony is an average federal state and the results can therefore be generalized in parts. In Lower Saxony there was an increase in violent crime registered by the police by 10.4%. The number of suspects with German citizenship fell by 0.9%. The increase is therefore due to people without German citizenship. 92.1% of the increase is attributable to refugees. The study defines refugees as asylum seekers, recognized asylum seekers and rejected asylum seekers with tolerance. In 2016, they were responsible for 13.3% of all violent crimes investigated by the police in a population of around 1%. Foreigners (10% of the population) accounted for 30.5% of all suspects. Non-Germans who immigrated through the asylum system were therefore disproportionately responsible for the increase in violent crime that was informed by the police, compared with other non-Germans. The bottom line is that the immigration of refugees has noticeably increased the level of violent crime. The study authors list a number of favorable factors for the outcome, including cramped accommodation, age structure, the absence of women (hence the support for family reunification ), lack of care and “norms of masculinity”. In addition - at least in the case of minor offenses - foreigners are more likely to be reported by victims as Germans.

Balance sheet 2015

On November 13, 2015, the Federal Minister of the Interior de Maizière presented a first preliminary picture of the situation in connection with the refugee crisis. According to De Maizière, the trend statements available at this point in time showed "that refugees are, on average, just as little or as likely to commit criminal offenses as comparison groups of the local population."

In North Rhine-Westphalia , Interior Minister Ralf Jäger announced at the end of February 2016 that in 2015 of 5,210 Algerians in his state 38.6 percent had committed crimes and of 36,118 Moroccans in the state 33.6 percent had committed offenses . Multiple offenders were excluded, and violations of immigration law were not taken into account. According to press reports, the interior minister has agreed with the federal government on an immigration ban for asylum seekers from Morocco and instructed the police to take action at known meeting points. Furthermore, they urge faster processing and rejection of asylum applications from Morocco and Algeria in order to be able to deport people more quickly.

Balance 2016

On April 24, 2017, the report on police crime statistics 2016 (PKS 2016) was published by the Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI). The focus of the PKS 2016 is under point 9.1 “Crime and immigration”. The federal situation report on crime in the context of immigration published by the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) describes, under certain restrictions, the effects of increased immigration on the development of crime in 2016, both in the area of ​​general crime - without violations of immigration law - and in the area of politically motivated crime ( PMK). The basis of the statistical information for the area of ​​general crime in the situation report is the data from the PKS 2016, whereby only solved cases are considered.

The timeliness of the PKS is influenced by criminal offenses that take a long time to investigate. Around 24 percent of the crimes recorded in the PKS 2016 were committed in 2015 or earlier. The BKA defines immigrants as persons who enter the federal territory as citizens of a non-EU state in order to stay here temporarily or permanently. Approx. 1% of the total population of Germany are immigrants according to this definition. In the PKS 2016, persons with the residence status “asylum seekers”, “tolerated”, “contingent / civil war refugees” and “unauthorized” were recorded as “suspect immigrants” . Suspects who have been recognized by the BAMF as “persons entitled to international / national protection and persons entitled to asylum” after the asylum procedure has been completed are listed under the collective term “other permitted residence” and not as “suspect immigrants”. The BKA has no knowledge of the proportion of recognized persons entitled to protection and asylum among the group of “suspect others”.

Proportion of immigrants among the suspects in selected criminal offenses / groups
selected offenses / groups Change in the number of offenses compared to the previous year Total suspects Suspected non-Germans (in%) including immigrants (in%)
Total offenses (excluding violations of the law against foreigners) −0.7 2,022,414 30.5% 8.6%
Offenses against life 14.3% 3,765 33.9% 12%
Rape and sexual assault 12.8% 6,476 38.8% 14.9%
Robbery −3.7% 28,120 41% 14.3%
Dangerous and serious bodily harm, female genital mutilation 9.9% 149,567 37.6% 14.9%
Willful simple assault 8.1% 340,100 30.4% 9.8%
Home burglary −9.5% 17,152 42.5% 11.3%
Shoplifting −3.3% 261,922 45.4% 16.8%
Pickpocketing −2% 8,992 75.8% 35.1%
Benefit fraud 20,266 33.5% 12.7%
Amounted to −7% 435.148 35% 10.4%
Drug offenses 7.1% 245.731 24.7% 6.1%

At the presentation of the PKS in 2016, Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière pointed out that the number of offenders among immigrants was higher than the average for the population. Of the 616,230 “suspect non-Germans” recorded in the PKS 2016, more than a quarter (174,438) were “suspect immigrants” - an increase of 52.7 percent compared to the previous year, whereby criminal offenses such as unauthorized entry ( Section 14 of the Residence Act ) were not taken into account.

Among the “suspect immigrants” in 2016 there were a noticeably large number of young men, a population group that was also more noticeable among Germans in the crime statistics. The federal situation picture on crime in the context of immigration shows for 2016 that 86% of the suspect immigrants were male and 67% were younger than 30 years.

In 2016 immigrants were involved in 9% of the crimes against sexual self-determination , in 2015 only about 4.6% of the sexual offenses. In a five-year comparison , an increasing number of immigrants were involved in crimes against sexual self-determination (2012: 645 → 2016: 3,404).

Almost a third of the offenses involving at least one “suspect immigrant” were thefts. This group of people was involved in pickpockets alone, accounting for 35.1 percent of all suspects.

31% of all “suspect immigrants” were responsible for more than two thirds of all crimes committed by immigrants . 83% of these "multiple suspects" appeared two to five times in connection with a crime. According to Thomas de Maizière, hardly any Syrians were among the multiple and intensive offenders.

In 2016, 43,825 immigrants were the victims of a crime. Their share in the total number of victims of crime is 4.3%. If an immigrant was the victim of a crime, 11% of the cases (4,326) were Germans, and 79% of the cases (31,459) immigrants .

In 2016, a total of 686,913 Germans were victims of a crime. An immigrant was involved in 4.6% of the crimes with German victims (31,597) . Of the 27,494 German victims of crimes against sexual self-determination in 2016, 9% (2,496) were victims of at least one “suspect immigrant”.

In 2016, 35% of all “suspect immigrants” came from the main countries of origin Syria , Iraq and Afghanistan (63% of asylum seekers). 16% of the suspected immigrants came from the Western Balkan countries Albania, Serbia, Kosovo, Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina (11% of asylum seekers). 11% of all suspected immigrants came from the Maghreb states (2.4% of asylum seekers).

The criminal psychologist Rudolf Egg is of the opinion that some of the people who have come to the country as refugees have “a bundle of risk factors” due to their age and social structure. This includes young single men without a family with few job prospects, who are poorly integrated and who may not have the prospect of staying. Dominic Kudlacek, social scientist at KFN , also counts poor language skills and education, little money and lack of social control among the refugees, who often travel alone, among the risk factors. It is necessary to clearly indicate boundaries and to punish violations of applicable law more consistently. As a reaction to the fact that certain nationalities and immigrant groups are disproportionately often criminalized, he recommends: massive investment in education, clear boundaries and financial incentives to return to the home country.

Balance 2017

The PKS 2017 recorded a total decrease in criminal offenses of 9.6%. The decrease is essentially related to the lower influx of refugees and migrants compared to previous years, which significantly reduced the number of specific violations of the law relating to foreigners ( unauthorized entry , unauthorized residence ). The total number of crimes without violations of the law on foreigners fell by 5.1%.

Proportion of immigrants among the suspects in selected criminal offenses / groups
selected offenses / groups Change in the number of offenses compared to the previous year Total suspects Suspected non-Germans (in%) including immigrants (in%)
Total offenses (excluding violations of the law against foreigners) −5.1% 1,974,805 30.4% 8.5%
Offenses against life −1.6% 3.713 34.7% 14.3%
Rape and sexual assault see running text 9.414 37% 15.9%
Robbery −9.7% 26,948 40.3% 15.1%
Dangerous and serious bodily harm, female genital mutilation −2.1% 145,658 37.8% 15.2%
Willful simple assault −2.8% 329,422 30.3% 9.6%
Home burglary −23% 14,789 41.3% 10.7%
Shoplifting −6.6% 245.989 42.6% 14.2%
Pickpocketing −22.7% 6,915 74.4% 31.4%
Benefit fraud 18,937 34.1% 13.7%
Amounted to 1.3% 417.481 34.5% 9.6%
Drug offenses 9.2% 263.255 26.1% 7.3%

The sharp increase in the number of suspects for rape and sexual assault compared to the previous year is also due to the expansion of the sexual criminal law. The newly created offense of sexual assault under Section 177 of the Criminal Code (sexual assault; sexual coercion; rape) does not require coercion as an offense. In addition, people who are unable to resist can now also be victims of crimes . § 184i StGB (sexual harassment) and § 184j StGB (criminal offenses from groups) were newly created.

The share of immigrants in the total population is around 2%.

The current situation report "Crime in the context of immigration" confirms once again that refugees from war zones and conflict regions, above all Syrians and Iraqis seeking asylum, came into conflict with the law less than their statistical share would suggest. For example, Syrians made up 35.5% of all asylum seekers and refugees in 2017, but their share among suspected immigrants was only 20%. The opposite is true for immigrants from Maghreb countries (2017: 2.4% of asylum seekers, 9% of suspects among immigrants), from Serbia and Georgia.

Danger from Islamist terrorism and radicalization

In October 2015, several hundred thousand foreigners were unregistered in Germany. The then President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Hans-Georg Maaßen, and the Director of National Intelligence , James R. Clapper , warned in February 2016 that the Islamic State could exploit the large influx of refugees and migrants to smuggle terrorists into Europe and Germany. The Federal Criminal Police Office (as of May 2016) has evidence of the smuggling of terrorists or supporters of terrorist organizations in 369 cases ; 40 preliminary investigations were initiated.

The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution also sees the risk of refugees becoming radicalized in Germany. The ideas spread by Salafists form a breeding ground for an Islamist radicalization to Salafism up to and including recruitment for jihad . According to the findings of the constitutional protection authorities of the countries targeted Salafists trying to recruit refugees. They mainly address unaccompanied young asylum seekers in the vicinity of refugee accommodation who come without their families and are looking for connection and support. The Office for the Protection of the Constitution was made aware of 300 attempts to address them by March 2016; it is believed that the real number is much higher. The Arabic-speaking mosque landscape in Germany also has immense potential for radicalization. Many of these mosques are fundamentalist in character, and some are already being monitored by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution due to their Salafist orientation. The active Sunni-Islamist movement Tablighi Jamaat also arouses concern through its efforts to contact refugees and migrants with the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. The aim of this movement is to dissuade Muslims from adopting an “overly secular attitude” and to orient their lives strictly according to the Koran. This endangers inner peace, because black and white thinking is built up and everything "non-Muslim" is rejected. In view of the large influx of Muslim refugees and migrants, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution fears a sharp increase in the number of radical Islamists in Germany. Hans-Georg Maaßen is very concerned that Islamists in Germany would try, under the guise of humanitarian aid, to specifically abuse the situation of the refugees for their own purposes, to evangelize and recruit asylum seekers. Members of some Islamist groups, e.g. B. according to the protection of the constitution extremist Salafist association "Helfen in Not", were found in asylum seekers' homes. A well-known Salafist preacher called on his followers via Facebook to specifically recruit refugees.

In October 2016, the Federal Intelligence Service also warned of IS fighters who would come to Europe disguised as refugees. They would be specifically trained to be recognized as a refugee when interviewed by police officers or when applying for asylum . Two of the eleven perpetrators of the terrorist attacks on November 13, 2015 in Paris are also believed to have come to Europe disguised as refugees. The alleged bomb maker entered Germany via the Balkan route and Austria in October 2015 and was picked up by an accomplice in Ulm.

The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees received many reports of refugees with connections to terrorist organizations. Often the information comes from the asylum seekers themselves, who expect more prospects of asylum as a result. In 2017 there were a total of 1210 new terror investigations. In addition to connections to the Taliban in Afghanistan and IS in Syria, there are connections to Laschkar-e-Toiba , the Pakistani Taliban, Boko Haram , IS-West Africa, IS-Sinai, IS-Libya, IS in the Islamic Maghreb, IS-Khorasan, Ansar al-Sharia in Libya, Janjaweed militia in Sudan, Ogaden National Liberation front and al-Murabitun Mujao been displayed in Mali. 18 cases were discontinued due to a lack of suspicion. 564 cases were discontinued despite continuing suspicions under Section 153c of the Code of Criminal Procedure (StPO) (as crimes committed abroad which, according to the public prosecutor's office, do not affect German state security interests). In particular, criminal proceedings against the Taliban under Section 153c StPO have been discontinued because they have not yet committed any attacks in Europe. Criminal proceedings against supporters of IS or al-Qaeda-affiliated groups, however, have not been discontinued because they regularly commit attacks in Europe.

In December 2017, Denmark tightened controls at the border with Germany again because the rejected asylum seekers in Germany were viewed as a risk. Armed soldiers had also been used to relieve the police since the end of September 2016. The Danes had given the terrorist threat as a reason for extending the border controls.

Major Islamist-motivated incidents

  • On July 18, 2016, an attack occurred on a regional train near Würzburg , in which a perpetrator registered as an unaccompanied minor refugee attacked rail travelers with an ax and a knife.
  • The bomb attack in Ansbach, which left 15 people injured, on July 24, 2016 was carried out by a 27-year-old Syrian refugee.
  • In the attack on the Berlin Christmas market at the Gedächtniskirche on December 19, 2016, 12 people were killed and 56 injured. The IS claimed the act for itself; The Tunisian Anis Amri , who, as an asylum seeker, lived for a while in a refugee accommodation in Emmerich on the Rhine , is an urgent suspect . He was wanted with a Europe-wide arrest warrant from December 21 and was killed on December 23 in an exchange of fire with the police in Milan .
  • On July 28, 2017 attacked a 26-year-old refugee from the United Arab Emirates indiscriminately customers of a supermarket in Hamburg with a knife. A 50-year-old man was killed and six other people injured.
  • On August 18, 2020, an Iraqi living in a refugee shelter intentionally caused three accidents on a Berlin city motorway. He also knocked over a motorcyclist. Six people were injured. The public prosecutor classifies the incident as an Islamist attack.

Police actions on suspicion of terrorism

  • On February 4, 2016, two Algerian men and a woman from the Islamist scene were arrested in a nationwide raid . They wanted to prepare assassinations from Berlin. According to the police, the main suspect was in an initial reception center for refugees in Attendorn and was arrested there. He is also wanted by the Algerian authorities because he belongs to the terrorist group ISIS and is said to have received military training from IS.
  • In June 2016, an IS terrorist cell was excavated in Germany. The three Syrians are said to have reached Germany via the Balkan route, camouflaged as refugees ; they were arrested in their refugee shelters. They were commissioned to carry out attacks in the old town of Düsseldorf in the style of those in Mumbai in 2008 . The German authorities became aware of the attack plans through another member of the terrorist cell who was detained in France . According to one IS suspect, a total of ten terrorists were supposed to carry out the attack.
  • In early August 2016, four Syrian terror suspects who were living in asylum seekers' accommodation in Dinslaken were arrested. According to the findings of the Duisburg public prosecutor's office, there were plans to attack a football game at the start of the Bundesliga. One of the men was taken into custody and another arrest warrant was issued. The other two asylum seekers were released.
  • On September 13, 2016, three Syrian asylum seekers who had come to Germany as refugees in November 2015 were arrested during anti-terror raids by the BKA in Schleswig-Holstein . They are strongly suspected of having planned attacks on behalf of IS. On the same day they were presented to the investigating judge at the BGH in Karlsruhe .
  • A 16-year-old Syrian refugee was arrested by the police in Cologne-Porz on September 20, 2016 in a refugee shelter. Internet chats revealed that the 16-year-old showed readiness for an explosive attack and received instructions. He was taken into custody .
  • Other people who were attributed to the terrorist organization IS and who applied for asylum in Germany in 2015 are Jaber al-Bakr , who was arrested on October 10, 2016, and the Tajik Islamist Mukhamadsaid S.
  • On November 2, 2016, a 27-year-old Tunisian man who claimed to be a refugee from Syria was arrested in an apartment in Berlin-Schöneberg . The following day he was presented to the investigating judge at the BGH. An arrest warrant was initially rejected, but a custody order for forgery of documents was ordered. According to the federal prosecutor's office , there was a connection between the man and the IS.
  • A 20-year-old Syrian refugee from Upper Swabia was arrested in Ulm on November 20, 2016 , after trying to enter Denmark the day before with bomb-proof material .
  • A Syrian refugee was arrested by the police on December 31, 2016 in his apartment in Saarland . Chat history showed that the 38-year-old was in contact with an IS member and demanded 180,000 euros for the procurement of vehicles and bomb material in order to be able to commit attacks in Western Europe. According to the authorities, there were still no concrete plans for the attack, and the arrested person also denied them. A detention center was ordered.
  • On January 26, 2017, a 17-year-old refugee, who claims to come from Syria, was arrested in Koethen after an arrest warrant had been issued against him. He is said to have had contact with a terrorist cell that trains people in building bombs. He was taken into custody.
  • On February 1, 2017, a 36-year-old Tunisian was arrested in Frankfurt am Main in a nationwide anti-terror raid in Hesse . The arrested man entered Germany as an asylum seeker in 2015, but had already stayed in Germany for several years from 2003. According to the public prosecutor's office, he is said to have been active as a recruiter and smuggler for IS and was also wanted by Tunisian security authorities in connection with the attack in Tunis in 2015 .
  • On April 8, 2017, a 24-year-old Moroccan was arrested in Borsdorf near Leipzig in a home for asylum seekers by a special police unit. He was classified by the authorities as an Islamist threat and was suspected of attempting an attack on the Russian embassy in Berlin . He was in custody.
  • On May 30, 2017, a 17-year-old asylum seeker of suspected Syrian origin was arrested in the Uckermark after he had written a short message to his mother saying goodbye and announcing that he had joined the jihad . In addition, there were indications from the immediate environment.
  • In June 2017, a 19-year-old Syrian was arrested in Pegnitz . The investigators found instructions for building bombs, IS badges and a confessional video of the accused. In November charges were brought against him for providing instructions on how to commit a serious act of violence that threatened the state.
  • On October 31, 2017, a 19-year-old Syrian was arrested after months of observation after obtaining chemicals and components for building a TATP explosive device . He entered Germany as a refugee in autumn 2015. The Hamburg Higher Regional Court sentenced him to six and a half years in prison in November 2018.
  • On November 21, 2017, eight apartments in the cities of Kassel , Hanover , Essen and Leipzig were searched and a total of six Syrian asylum seekers were arrested, accused of being supporters of the terrorist organization Islamic State and of preparing attacks on the Essen Christmas market and on a shopping center .
  • In February 2018, a 17-year-old Iraqi was arrested in Eschwege on charges of contact with high-ranking members of the Islamic State and of preparing a serious, state-threatening act of violence. He has therefore obtained building instructions for remote-controlled car explosives.
  • In April 2018, three Syrian asylum seekers were arrested in the Saarlouis area . Two of them are charged with membership in the Islamic State, the third with recruitment for another banned Islamist group.
  • In July 2018, the rejected Moroccan asylum seeker Abderrahman D. was sentenced to two years in prison without parole. He was found guilty of guilty of committing a serious act of violence that was dangerous to the state and is alleged to have been a member of the terrorist organization Islamic State.
  • In December 2018, the Higher Regional Court in Celle sentenced two asylum seekers from Syria to two and a half years in prison after they had spread propaganda for the Islamic State terrorist militia from Salzgitter and called for terrorist attacks, especially on Christmas markets.
  • In January 2019, three Iraqi refugees were arrested in the Dithmarschen district in Schleswig-Holstein . According to the investigators, they had wanted to prepare an Islamistically motivated terrorist attack and had therefore already downloaded bomb construction instructions from the Internet and started extracting black powder from New Year's rockets.

Sexual assault on New Year's Eve 2015/16

The fact that the suspects in the sexual assaults in Cologne on New Year's Eve 2015/16, according to the information recorded in the ads, were supposed to come from the North African or Arab region and that the suspects were also partially assigned to the group of refugees with regard to property crimes, intensified At the beginning of 2016 there was a debate about limiting admission and easing the deportation of asylum seekers.

According to the final balance of the Federal Criminal Police Office, around 650 women were victims of sexual offenses in these attacks. 881 sexual offenses were committed across Germany with over 1200 women affected. The number of perpetrators is estimated at around 2000, most of them from North Africa. But only 120 suspects could be identified. BKA President Holger Münch said: "In this respect, there is already a connection between the occurrence of the phenomenon and the high level of immigration, especially in 2015 (...) We have to assume that many of these acts will not be investigated afterwards."

The group of perpetrators from North Africa for such crimes had been known to experts for a long time. The Braunschweig police chief Ulf Küch said: "We have noticed that very few immigrants are noticed as criminals, but that they then often commit a large number of crimes". The head of a reception facility in North Rhine-Westphalia reported that young North Africans in particular often attracted negative attention. They drink a lot of alcohol and are also often under the influence of strong medication. In Cologne, too, criminalists have been dealing with criminals from North Africa for some time. The Cologne Criminal Police Office 41 began an analysis in 2014 that provides information on which illegally entered refugees will be reoffended within a year. While only 0.5 percent of Syrians were suspected, it was 40 percent of refugees from the Maghreb. Most of the offenders among them do not have a permanent residence and have to be tried in so-called fast-track proceedings. The authorities responsible for prosecution do not have the time for intensive investigations, so that only low sentences can be imposed. In the past, deportations and expulsions to the home countries of the offenders were almost impossible due to the lack of willingness to cooperate in the home countries.

Federal Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière condemned the incidents as "hideous and unacceptable"; the obvious involvement of people with a migration background in the crimes should “not lead to refugees of any origin who seek protection from persecution with us being placed under general suspicion”. At the same time, de Maizière argued in favor of facilitating the deportation of asylum seekers who have committed criminal offenses. In connection with the New Year's Eve attacks, the media referred to high factual hurdles for a deportation .

Deportations to the Maghreb often fail due to the refusal of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia to take back the rejected asylum seekers. In order to negotiate with the Maghreb states about the withdrawal of the asylum seekers who were rejected in Germany - there are around 30,000 mostly young men - Federal Minister of the Interior Thomas de Maizière undertook a three-day trip to the Maghreb on February 28, 2016. There are repatriation agreements with Morocco and Algeria , but there are many ways in which the deportation of persons obliged to leave the country can be made more difficult or even impossible in practice. The Federal Minister of the Interior was able to conclude cooperation agreements with Morocco and Algeria. Since the North Africans do not accept charter flights , the Federal Minister of the Interior promised that deportations should be made with scheduled aircraft . Moroccans who are required to leave the country can be identified using the fingerprints stored in the Moroccan registration files . Staffs are to be set up to ensure the data transfer to Germany. The Tunisian government is also ready to cooperate in the return of rejected asylum seekers. In a pilot project, a group of 20 Tunisians is to be brought back to their home country. Even three months later, in June 2016, State Minister Ralf Jäger described the North African states as "completely uncooperative" in taking back their citizens. The take-back agreement with Morocco is "hardly suitable".

Radicalization of the political dispute

The rise in anti-refugee attacks and brutal language use suggest that the political debate has become largely radical. It is also worrying that right-wing extremist positions in the bourgeois -right-wing populist spectrum no longer meet with rejection in all cases. Articles from publications of the right-wing intellectual spectrum showed that “even its representatives are now beginning to think in terms of civil war categories”. According to the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, attacks by right-wing extremists, Islamists or left-wing extremists against the respective political opponents also accelerate the development of radicalization. "The resulting spiral of interaction could lead to a considerable escalation of violence, which from today's perspective can hardly be reliably forecast."

The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) observed that the unease and fears of many citizens regarding the possible social and economic consequences caused by the high number of refugees have increased. Against this background, the BfV expects “that both asylum-critical 'right-wing parties' and right-wing extremist parties will gain noticeably stronger support”.

According to a study by the Allensbach Institute for Demoscopy, 24% of those involved in refugee work stated that they had been attacked or insulted because of their commitment. The writer Monika Maron warned in the FAZ at the beginning of 2016 that the negative reinforcement effect of the events on New Year's Eve 2015/16 was already leading to a division in society: “An increasing part of the people distrusts the media, the parties, the institutions, the motives and Abilities of the government, especially of the Chancellor, whose insistence on open borders is as incomprehensible as her sudden call for a strong state is credible. We distrust one another, we even begin to hate one another because the other opinion is not just another opinion, but affects our right to exist. "

The philosopher Wolfram Eilenberger and colleagues have commented on this problem in an article by Spiegel Online, Philosophers on the Refugee Crisis - The End of the Lie of Life : Everyone advocates a “pragmatic approach” that places demands on both sides and not as “ right ”or“ left ”should be dismissed, with which the risk of radicalization must be counteracted.

According to the freelance journalist Liane Bednarz, radicalization among the bourgeoisie does not stop at Christians, with conservative Catholics and evangelicals being particularly vulnerable.

On the occasion of the publication of his book Hostile Takeover: How Islam hinders progress and threatens society , Thilo Sarrazin was asked in 2018 by the “ Stern ” journalist Arno Luik whether, in Sarrazin's opinion, shipwrecked refugees should be allowed to die in the Mediterranean. The question answered:

“The lower the pull factor, the fewer people drown in the Mediterranean. The pull factor created by Angela Merkel has driven up the number of drowning people. People no longer go to the Mediterranean when they know that there is nothing they can get on the other side. If this knowledge is there, no one drowns anymore. "

Right- wing parties like the AfD instrumentalized the crisis by acting as protectors of Jewish life against Islamization . Muslims who have lived in Germany for decades are “lumped together” with the refugees.

According to Michael Butter, there is a conspiracy-like interpretation of the refugee crisis among populists . It is not due to push factors in the countries of origin, but to the deliberate work of secret elites who are up to a re- population or destruction of the values ​​of the Christian West . The then federal chairman of the AfD, Alexander Gauland , declared on November 7, 2018 in the Bundestag debate on the UN migration pact that “left dreamers and globalist elites” intend to “clandestinely transform Germany from a nation state into a settlement area”.

Attacks against refugees

The Federal Criminal Police Office has already reported in late August 2015 a doubling of right-wing extremist motivated crimes against asylum seekers accommodations on 335 cases. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution feared “that a new organized right- wing terrorism could emerge”.

At the beginning of October, Federal Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière expressed concern about the massive increase in acts of violence against refugees and refugee shelters. Two thirds of the identified suspects are "citizens [...] who live in the respective regions and who have so far not got into debt". The increase is "worrying" and "a shame for Germany". In addition, the open violence is accompanied by insults and hateful language. A barrier to civilization has fallen. In particular, the xenophobic protests and riots in Freital , Heidenau and Dresden as well as the assassination attempt on Henriette Reker or the protests in Clausnitz attracted media attention.

According to a survey by the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), 1005 attacks on refugee shelters were committed between January and December 2015 . The number has thus increased fivefold since 2014. Most of them were property damage, followed by incitement to graffiti and acts of violence. 901 of the cases clearly have a right-wing extremist background. 92 attacks were arson; In 2014 there were 6. With 173 acts of violence, more than six times as many attacks were recorded as in the previous year.

According to research by Zeit und Zeit Online , half of the arson attacks were directed against inhabited accommodations. 76.1% of all arson attacks were not resolved. (As of November 30, 2015)

The Federal Criminal Police Office has the following figures on politically motivated crime:

Demand to secure the EU's external borders

After the terrorist attacks in Paris on November 13, 2015 , the chairman of the German police union, Ernst G. Walter, called for the European border protection agency Frontex to be converted “into an operational European border police, in order to prevent further Islamist threats and terrorists from entering Europe at the external borders . “Against the background that Syrian passports had been discovered for two of the dead terrorists, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls called for effective protection of the EU's external borders.

According to a statement by a spokeswoman for the German Federal Ministry of the Interior in December 2015, given the high number of migrants currently admitted, it cannot be ruled out that “people from the field of general crime, war criminals, members of militant groups or terrorist organizations or individuals with extremist sentiments may be among them who use the current migration movements to get to Germany. Neither can it be ruled out that these people carry forged documents with them. "

Economic consequences of the refugee crisis

Business representatives were initially very optimistic. Dieter Zetsche and David Folkerts-Landau, for example, saw the refugees as the basis for a new economic miracle in October 2015. In autumn 2016 it became known that all 30 DAX companies together had hired fewer than a hundred refugees. However, it must be taken into account here that immigrants who were hired before the asylum procedure was completed had to reckon with the fact that they could be deported in the event of a subsequent negative asylum decision even if the 2019 law on tolerance for training and employment was passed they have started vocational training or have become gainfully employed.

Problems with the economic integration of refugees are, in addition to the risk of sudden deportation of people without a secure right to stay, often a lack of training or a qualified school leaving certificate, missing certificates and a lack of German language skills. The assessment of economists has also changed. Calculations from 2015, which predicted that refugees would represent an economic asset after a few years, had proven to be too optimistic. Many economists share Clemens Fuest's view that high investments would have to be made to integrate refugees into the labor market and that the majority of refugees will remain net transfer recipients for the foreseeable future.

For the state budget

Direct costs

The direct "refugee costs" from federal funds totaled around 21.7 billion euros in 2016 , including 7.1 billion euros for combating the causes of flight , 1.4 billion euros for reception, registration and accommodation, 2, 1 billion euros for integration services, 1.7 billion euros for social transfers following the asylum procedure and 9.3 billion euros that were made available to the federal states and municipalities . In addition, there were 20 billion euros from state funds. For 2017, 21.3 billion euros are planned in the federal budget for refugee costs. Information on the expected costs of the federal states and municipalities is not available.

Development Aid Minister Gerd Müller reckoned 30 billion euros for one million refugees in 2017, which would correspond to costs per person seeking protection of 2500 euros per month. The German Economic Institute and the German Advisory Council, on the other hand, forecast costs of 50 billion euros for 2017.

Long term costs

  • The Center for European Economic Research (ZEW) puts the long-term burden on the state budget at around 400 billion euros, if the refugees' productivity were not higher than that of locals with a low level of qualifications. If 60 percent of the refugees achieved the productivity of people with vocational training, the burden would be 113 to 218 billion euros. A 100 percent qualification quota would produce a positive balance of 20 billion euros.
  • Bernd Raffelhüschen differentiates according to the level of immigration. For every 100,000 immigrants, a tax increase of around 0.3 percent across all taxes and contributions would have to be expected. However, if one million immigrants came in in 2015 and 2016, the immigrants would be less integrated. In this case, taxes and duties would have to be increased permanently by six percent. Raffelhüschen estimated that each refugee would cost the state around 450,000 euros. However, because of the large number of new long-term unemployed, the costs could be even higher. After one year, only 12 percent of refugees were gainfully employed in autumn 2016, and mostly only as interns or assistants, and it is estimated that even after 5 years around half of the refugees will still not have a job.
Development of public finances in various integration scenarios: Study by the Research Center for Generation Contracts at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg on behalf of the Market Economy Foundation
scenario Fiscal sustainability gap (in% of GDP ) Implicit debts (social insurance, basic pension, social assistance) (in% of GDP ) Necessary tax increase (compared to taxes and social contributions as of 2015)
Hypothetical scenario without refugees. Net immigration of 1.964 million people mainly from European Union countries in the period 2015–2020. 197.7 122.8 9.5%
Base scenario: Additional net immigration of 2.4 million refugees in the period 2015–2020. - All immigrants reach the fiscal average of the foreign population currently living in Germany. - The children of the immigrants reach the fiscal average of the German population. 211.7 136.8 10.0%
Like the basic scenario, but the refugees' integration into the German labor market takes an average of 6 years. 227.8 152.8 10.8%
Like the basic scenario, but the refugees' integration into the German labor market takes an average of 6 years. The children of the immigrants only reach the fiscal average of the foreign population currently living in Germany. 251.3 176.4 12.1%
Like the base scenario, but the refugees' integration into the German labor market takes an average of 12 years. 238.5 163.6 11.4%
Like the basic scenario, but the refugees' integration into the German labor market takes an average of 6 years. The average age at immigration is only 24 years (instead of 32 years in the base scenario). 216.8 141.9 10.2%

Even in the scenario without refugee immigration, there are clear sustainability problems due to demographic change . The fiscal effects of refugee immigration depend on the one hand on the length of time they have been employed, i. In other words, the younger the refugees are and the faster they can be integrated into the labor market, the longer they pay taxes and social security contributions. Furthermore, the fiscal effects depend on the level of the achievable average income. The more the average income of the refugees remains below the average income of the German population, the higher the social transfer entitlements. Due to the expected unfavorable net tax payment profiles for the first generation of refugees, refugee immigration exacerbates the sustainability problem in all scenarios. According to the study, the base scenario with a six-year integration period is the most likely scenario with relatively optimistic assumptions. In this scenario, the long-term costs of the “refugee crisis” amount to 30.1% of GDP, or 878 billion euros. With lightning-fast integration into the labor market (base scenario), long-term costs of the “refugee crisis” would amount to only 14% of GDP. If, on the other hand, the children of the refugees are not fully integrated, the long-term costs of the “refugee crisis” and the failure of integration would be 53.6% of GDP, or 1.56 trillion euros. According to the authors of the study, politicians are therefore urgently called upon to ensure the best possible integration of refugees.

For the social systems

  • In 2015, Hans-Werner Sinn analyzed, referring to the situation in the USA, that the immigration of predominantly low-skilled people would lead to an oversupply in this segment of the labor market and thus depress wages. The welfare state will have to cushion hardships here. Compensating for the demographic development primarily through immigration of migrants is a dubious solution. For this, 32 million migrants would have to be admitted by 2035, this would not be possible without making our values ​​available.
  • In 2015, Bernd Raffelhüschen calculated that with an immigration of one million in 2015 and 2016, immigrants would not be well integrated. In this case, there would be a massive increase in old-age poverty , which would necessitate a restructuring of the pension system towards tax-financed basic provision. A similar development can be expected in health and long-term care insurance.
  • In 2015, the business journalist Patrick Welter warned that if there was a high level of immigration, a curtailment of the welfare state could only be avoided if the incentives to immigrate to the welfare state were limited. It recalls the dictum of Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman , according to which one cannot have free immigration and a welfare state together.
  • The American economist William Niskanen , who died in 2011 , once said that it was better to build a wall around the welfare state than around the entire country. Therefore, the incentives to immigrate to the welfare state should be limited. Following this idea, in 1996 the United States withdrew all new immigrants from access to federal welfare benefits for five years. It is a big mistake that Germany is doing it the other way around: All asylum seekers immediately receive comprehensive social benefits. At the same time, asylum seekers may only be employed subordinate to Germans in the first 15 months of their stay. In addition, the mandatory minimum wage reliably prevents refugees with little education and a lack of German language skills from finding their way into the labor market. As a result, they are raised to become dependent on the German welfare state.
  • The aid organization of the food banks supported around 1.5 million people with food donations in 2015, but they also recorded around 250,000 refugees who, despite food in the accommodation, went to the food banks, so that the distribution had to be rationed.
  • After the medical care of refugees has been paid for by the municipalities for 15 months, if they do not have sufficient income, they are then allocated to the statutory health insurance funds through the receipt of unemployment benefit II. Since the state payments to the health insurance companies are not sufficient for ALG II recipients, the other insured persons of the health insurance companies have to compensate for the shortfall in income through additional contributions .

For the job market

Labor market chances of the asylum seekers

Level of education

The information on the qualification structure of those seeking protection that was collected by the BAMF for 2015 on a voluntary basis and without verification of evidence was unweighted or evaluated according to the protection rate and resulted in the following picture:

Highest educational institution attended (regardless of whether it was completed) of adult first-time applicants in 2015
Education unweighted weighted according to protection rates
University 18.4% 23.2%
high school 21.7% 24.7%
Middle schools 29.7% 26.7%
primary school 23.0% 19.6%
No formal schooling 6.6% 5.4%
Others 0.5% 0.4%

In September 2015, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research decided on a package of measures worth an additional 130 million euros “in the next few years”, “for the acquisition of the German language, the recognition of skills and potentials of refugees and for integration into training and work “Should serve. In addition, a shortage of teachers was predicted as an impact of the refugee crisis, which represented an obstacle to integration.

For information on compulsory schooling, see also: Refugee children and schools in Germany

theory

All economists agree that the refugees' job market opportunities depend on adequate qualifications. Bernd Raffelhüschen emphasizes that semi-skilled and unskilled workers have a hard time finding the job market. Since the integration of hundreds of thousands of Hartz IV recipients into the labor market has not yet succeeded, the question arises as to how this should succeed with immigrants. According to Hans-Werner Sinn, qualification of the refugees is necessary, but only possible over a longer period of time. The minimum wage must be abolished or at least the employment of refugees must be financially supported by the state for rapid integration into the labor market and also to prevent refugees from being marginalized. More jobs for low-skilled workers, such as cleaning staff or car washers, could only be created if the minimum wage were abolished. Even Dennis Snower recommends government wage subsidies to facilitate access to the labor market. Minister Nahles rejects interference with the minimum wage law. However, due to the refugees, she expects additional ALG-II recipients in 2016, an estimated 240,000 to 460,000 people. By 2019 that number could rise to a million. Only a few of the refugees speak German, many lack the appropriate training, around 16% are even illiterate. In areas related to helping refugees, Nahles expects thousands of new jobs, for example in looking after refugees, in security services, in catering or in housing construction. There will therefore be a further decline in unemployment among local residents. Overall, however, she anticipates rising unemployment figures for 2016.

The development economist Paul Collier is skeptical about job market opportunities. Integration into the labor market requires not only German lessons and suitable training, but also cultural integration, e.g. B. in the German work discipline and ability to cooperate. However, many studies have shown that the larger and more homogeneous the group of immigrants, the more difficult it is to integrate. In Collier's view, migrant workers do everything in their power to “arrive” in the host society, whereas refugees do less.

Empiricism

According to a study by the Institut der Deutschen Wirtschaft , refugees have taken an average of 15 years in the past to reach the level of other immigrants in terms of integration into the labor market. Due to the low level of education of the refugees who have entered the country since 2014 and those with subsidiary protection from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Eritrea, it is to be expected that the integration of these asylum seekers will be even more difficult than was the case in the past for other groups of refugees.

According to a study by the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF), of the Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans who came to Germany between 2008 and 2012, only a good third found employment. Only 11% of the women are employed. According to the BAMF, this is probably due to the fact that these women are bound by childcare, as well as to the culture-specific division of labor in the family, to a lack of language skills and qualifications.

In December 2016, the Federal Employment Agency (BA) provided an overview of the effects of refugee migration on the labor market. For 2015 and 2016, people from non-European countries of origin were almost completely regarded as "refugees" (for 2016 there is also a clear allocation for the first time):

Refugees from non-European countries of origin: unemployed , jobseekers, participants in support measures and employees subject to social security contributions
status As of 2015 all As of 2016 all 2016 refugees only 2018 refugees only
Jobseekers¹⁾ 180,000 444,000 425,000 482,000
Unemployed 90,000 175,000 164,000 187,000
Participant funding measure 13,000 71,000 70,000 77,000
Employees subject to social security contributions 86,000 123,000 238,000

The employment rate for German citizens is 68.3% (as of May 2018), the employment rate of non-German people in Germany is 49.3% (as of May 2018). The employment rate of people from non-European countries of origin of asylum in Germany was 21.2% in October 2015, 16.2% in October 2016 and 27.2% in May 2018.

The comparatively low employment rate of 27.2% among people from non-European countries of origin of asylum shows that integration into the labor market requires continued efforts over a longer period of time. In August 2018, the chief executive of the Federal Employment Agency, Detlef Scheele, drew a positive interim assessment of the integration of refugees in the German labor market. As of May 2018, 238,000 of the refugees were employed subject to social security contributions, which exceeded the expectations of the Federal Employment Agency.

In May 2017, 872,000 people from main countries of origin such as Syria, Iraq or Afghanistan were receiving ALG-II (Hartz-IV) . In December 2017, 959,000 people from non-European refugee countries received Hartz IV, making up over 15% of all ALG II recipients. 12,255 recipients are stateless and the origin of 27,144 is unclear.

In 2018, the Federal Employment Agency published statistics on the training place market in Germany. According to these statistics, between October 2016 and September 2017, 36 percent of applicants for an apprenticeship position with a refugee background in Germany began vocational training. Another percent of this group continued an earlier started training. In 2017, nine percent of applicants for an apprenticeship with a refugee background fell into the category of “unsupported applicants for a training position” (= potential future old applicants ). Four percent of applicants for a training position were registered as unemployed in 2017.

Additional public service positions

In some areas of the German labor market, as a result of the refugee crisis, the demand for workers has increased, most of which are positions in the public service or in other government-related areas that have to be financed from public funds.

Since there are many school-age children among the refugees in Germany , the Education and Science Union reckons with 300,000 additional students from this field in 2016. In addition, there are up to 100,000 pre-school children who need places in day-care centers. The GEW called for an additional 24,000 teachers and 14,000 educators to be able to teach and care for the refugee children professionally as required.

Effects of digitization

Most forecasts do not take into account the medium to long-term effects of digitalization on the demand for labor in Germany. According to Alexander Hagelüken, according to “optimists” in Germany , the digital transformation would mean the loss of “only” 5 million jobs by the 2030s; "Pessimists" expected a loss of 18 million jobs.

Gross national product and per capita income

A report for which EU Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici is responsible sees the increase in public spending and the additional labor supply as having a small growth effect due to the large number of refugees immigrating. Since the population growth is stronger than the increase in the gross national product, a slight annual decline in per capita income is also expected. Two scenarios were developed for Germany. The first scenario was based on the unrealistic assumption that the immigrants were just as well qualified as the German population. In this case, “a growth effect of 0.2 percentage points is to be expected for 2015, which will increase to 0.7 points by 2020. At the same time, of course, per capita income will initially fall by 0.7 percent (2015) and later (2020) by 0.3 points. ”In the second scenario, a significantly lower level of qualification is assumed. In this case, a growth effect on the German economy of 0.1 percentage points (2015) is expected, with an increase to around 0.5 percentage points (2020). The per capita income will decrease accordingly more than in the first scenario. The effects depend on the qualifications acquired in the home countries and those gained in the target countries as well as on the abolition of artificial labor market barriers such as the minimum wage .

Overall view

Balance sheet for the years 2015/2016

  • Bernd Raffelhüschen emphasized in October 2015 that Germany had been a country of immigration for 150 years. But suitable immigration rules are needed, otherwise you will be overburdened. According to a model calculation by Raffelhüschen (in which all government expenditures and social security payments minus taxes and social security contributions over the life of a refugee were calculated using the cash value method), there are slightly more than a million refugees, assuming that they will be in integrated into the labor market, net cost of € 900 billion. The decisive factor in the model calculation is the refugees' lower level of education, which means that they are not only more difficult to integrate into the labor market, but also - on average - have a below-average income and thus do not pay taxes and social security contributions that cover their own costs. If, on the other hand, the (unrealistic) assumption of an average educational level of the refugees corresponding to the total population, a hypothetical profit of 300 billion euros would result.
  • Raffelhüschen put the long-term costs of the wave of refugees from 2015 at around 878 billion euros in July 2016. The government conceals the total debt of an estimated 6.2 trillion euros. Because of the low level of education of the refugees, it is not realistic to assume that they will earn a comparable income within a few years and thus achieve comparable social security contributions as the local population. The majority of immigrants would receive a tax-financed basic security at the end of their working life instead of a sufficient pension. In the long run, Germany could not afford uncontrolled immigration. He concluded that if you want to maintain the welfare state, you have to close the borders - or you have to adopt the United States' model, in which immigrants have no benefits.

Hypothetical consequences of consistently high refugee numbers beyond 2016

  • According to the OECD , Germany could benefit in the medium term from immigration of 1% of the population (800,000 refugees) if the refugees could be integrated into work. Above all, this requires rapid recognition of foreign training qualifications and suitable training measures. However, the OECD considers it wrong to abolish the minimum wage in order to create more jobs for asylum seekers. That brings uncertainty into the labor market.
  • In 2015, Clemens Fuest and Hans-Werner Sinn expressed the view that “a policy of uncontrolled immigration” would quickly overwhelm Germany. In order for Germany to continue to be able to take in and support those seeking protection, the country must limit immigration as a whole and control it qualitatively. Additional government spending led to an increase in demand in the short term, but it restricted the government's future room for maneuver, so the effect was not sustainable. In April 2016, Hans-Werner Sinn spoke retrospectively of a humanitarian task that actually had nothing to do with economic aspects, although it would cost hundreds of billions of euros.
  • The Austrian political scientist Arno Tausch asked himself in the context of the crisis using econometric migration potential estimates in the tradition of Harvard economist Robert Barro as well as with the global migration matrix of the World Bank and Arab surveys in 2015, how high the potential for "normal migration" from the Arab world and from the main Muslim-influenced sending states of workers without the current civil war events in Syria. Tausch comes to the result that 2.5 million Arabs and 6 million residents of the states of Islamic Cooperation can be described as direct and real migration potential from the region to the richer states of the world. Tausch accuses the German Chancellor Angela Merkel of having underestimated the level of this potential and of having largely redirected it to Europe through her invitation policy in summer 2015.

In 2015, the poverty researcher and Nobel laureate in economics, Angus Deaton, praised EU countries like Germany for taking human responsibility seriously and warned against accepting too many refugees. Germany will soon "reach the limit that overwhelms it [...] Too many immigrants will destabilize Europe, that is clear."

Marcel Fratzscher thought the discussion about “whether we could afford it or whether we would take over” was counterproductive in 2015: Politics and business should finally roll up their sleeves and look for solutions for successful integration.

Political debate

Integration policy

Migration expert Stefan Luft recommends promoting the integration of immigrants through good educational, social and economic policies, so that ethnic segmentation of the labor market and cities can be avoided. Housing construction, the expansion of educational facilities and the establishment of language courses required strategic planning. In “structurally strong cities” in particular, considerable investments in social housing are necessary. Luft assumes that a majority of the refugees will settle in economically strong regions after leaving the temporary emergency shelters.

In addition, Luft advocates a clear distinction between refugee policy and immigration policy, because otherwise the awareness of the protection obligations towards refugees would be undermined. He sees the reduction of enforcement deficits in deportation as necessary in order to prevent incentives to migrate that arise if the success or failure of an asylum application would be irrelevant for the prospect of staying. In this context, Luft expressly criticizes the demand made by business associations “time and again” to enable a “change of path”, “that is, to give rejected asylum seekers with suitable qualifications access to the labor market and thus a right to stay.” While refugee policy has humanitarian obligations considerations of utility could and should play an essential role in a future-proof immigration law .

The cultural scientist Marina Münkler and the political scientist Herfried Münkler suggest “ treating all migrants who have arrived in Germany (with the exception of those who are certain that they will leave Germany again within a few weeks) as if they would stay permanently. “What would then not come into play for local society with some returnees in their home countries in terms of language skills and vocational training could possibly be recorded elsewhere as German development aid.

It is also a matter of overcoming a constellation in which migrants, who, due to their status, have little access to the labor market, almost inevitably slip into petty criminal activities. Those who neither have the right to asylum nor can they be repatriated should have their residence status legalized. This opened up not only access to the German labor market, but also “the chance of comprehensive integration into German society.” The stressful stay in initial reception centers should not last longer than absolutely necessary; Housing and school policy should counteract the emergence of mutually exclusive parallel societies; the “systemic disadvantage” of immigrant children in the education system must be ended.

For the Münklers, the willingness of migrants to integrate is ultimately a question of willingness to help in the host society. A civil society that is active in caring for the newcomers is therefore essential to them . The government must also tackle integration with courage. “Multiculturalism will not work. We have to turn these people into Germans. ”It's about work ethic, tolerance and political manners. "A depoliticization of the religious is also necessary."

The deputy chairman of the CDU Thomas Strobl described it as an obstacle to integration that, according to the current legal situation, all asylum seekers after a three-year stay in Germany are practically automatically granted an unlimited right of residence. The unlimited right of residence should only exist for asylum seekers who have shown their willingness to integrate by “being able to speak fairly good German” after 5 years, having “basic knowledge of our legal and social order” and “having committed no criminal offenses”. In addition, they should " be able to prove with 60 contributions to the statutory pension insurance that they can provide for their own living".

In a study by the Bertelsmann Foundation , the political scientist Dietrich Thränhardt comes to the conclusion that integration in work is a central requirement. He demands:

  • Language courses for all refugees with the prospect of staying right from the start
  • Early registration of career prospects and inclusion in the registration systems of the Federal Employment Agency
  • to coordinate the local distribution of refugees with the employment agency so that refugees are preferentially distributed to regions with good employment opportunities
  • early transition to a normal living situation
  • Informing the local population about the admission of refugees
  • cooperation with church congregations, associations, schools, companies and civil society as a whole

The magazine of the German University Association contains a series of seven articles in the January 2016 issue under the general topic of refugees , some with additional specific recommendations, e.g. B. that instead of the three-year vocational training, one should aim for a two-year partial professional qualification , possibly with the possibility of topping up.

The journalist Fabian Leber is of the opinion that integration in high efficiency is the essential task. The German industrial society, which is designed for high efficiency, only makes sense for the refugees who stay in Germany permanently. He finds it strange that Germany adheres to traditional standards such as the minimum wage or an asylum procedure with long stays in mass accommodation, which leads refugees to underage and slows down the energies that are needed for a good start.

Lothar Semper, General Manager of the Chamber of Crafts in Munich and Upper Bavaria, reports that 70% of the refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq who started an apprenticeship at the end of 2013 dropped out again. The reason he cited was insufficient knowledge of German and the misconception that you could make a lot of money in Germany straight away . He suggests that the federal government should provide advisers to sensitize training managers to the problems of refugees.

The German Association of Philologists calls for an upper limit for the proportion of migrants in school classes in order to ensure successful integration. “Even when the proportion of children whose mother tongue is not German is 30 percent, a decline in performance sets in. This becomes dramatic from 50 percent ".

Federal President Joachim Gauck , the Peace Prize Laureate of the German Book Trade Navid Kermani and many politicians, u. a. Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel , demand a constitutional patriotism : “We have to make it clear that there are things with us that are not up for discussion. The Basic Law, freedom of expression, freedom of religion, equality. ”It is true that one cannot demand that the refugees“ become constitutional patriots when they cross the border ”, but“ there are principles for public coexistence that have to be accepted, even internalized, if so you want to live well here. ” Sabatina James warns against a“ naive optimism about integration ”. She refers to previous experiences with tens of thousands of civil war refugees from Lebanon in the 1990s, whose integration failed completely. This does not encourage the assumption that this time the integration of many more Muslim refugees from the Arab world will succeed. Political scientist Hamed Abdel-Samad doubts that the majority of Muslim refugees want to integrate at all. The Islamic scholar Riem Spielhaus is not afraid of the values ​​in Germany. She refers to a recommendation of the Council for Migration , according to which no guiding culture, but a new guiding principle is required, namely a current "narrative" of what Germany is and what it wants to be. The social scientist Necla Kelek doubts that the integration of the Turkish-born guest workers has been successful. That is a relativization that glosses over parallel worlds. Many boys of Turkish immigrants are losers in the German education system, and many girls are married off under family pressure. Machotism and violence in schools would be taboo; Police officers would be threatened if they interfered in parallel society affairs. In the current refugee crisis, it should not be overlooked that most Muslims come because they are looking for security and care in Germany, but not because they want to live in a secular country where people are liberally self-determined and women have equal rights.

Cem Özdemir considers it unlikely that the Muslims among the refugees in Germany will be secularized . The global trend is more towards radicalization. The piety of Muslims in Germany is not a problem as long as tolerant Islamic currents prevail. In particular, the Federal Government of Saudi Arabia must make it clear that the promotion of radically intolerant Wahhabism in Germany is undesirable. The Turkish-Islamic Union of the Institute for Religion (DİTİB) often does an impressive integration work at the grassroots level. But the umbrella organization itself is “nothing more than the extended arm of the Turkish state. Instead of becoming a real religious community, the Turkish government is turning the Ditib more and more into a political run-up to the AKP in Germany. "Turkey must release the Muslims in Germany .

In August 2017, the administrative scientist Prof. Jörg Bogumil presented a study on the integration of refugees. In the interview he said: "We have noticed a competence and organizational failure"; “We have an administration of no confidence”; "It is based solely on detecting abuse and not helping." Duplication of work and poor communication were identified as the most important deficits. The inadequate cooperation between administrations and authorities hampers integration and wastes a lot of time and money. The responsibilities in the area of ​​asylum and integration should be rearranged in order to end the confusion of jurisdiction. The implementation of integration measures should be made more flexible through generalizations instead of time-consuming individual checks. The Asylum Seekers Benefits Act should be abolished due to the enormous administrative effort involved in opening up Hartz IV to asylum seekers, as there are only very small differences in benefits. The study particularly criticized the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees for not working efficiently. Refugees whose asylum status has been recognized would have to apply for a new health card. Because there is no handover management, all data would have to be re-entered. The study praised the municipalities for their improvisational skills.

On March 21, 2018, in her government statement after the election as Chancellor , Merkel commented on the refugee crisis and admitted errors in refugee policy . The European Union and other institutions reacted too late to the refugee movements. "We reacted too half-heartedly and thought that the problems did not affect us." "We looked away for too long." That was "wrong and naive". Germany is "divided and the mood polarized".

Control of immigration?

According to Bernd Raffelhüschen , Germany is a country of immigration . But he warns that 70% of current immigrants are unqualified . The economist doubts that most immigrants can be integrated into the German labor market: “It will be more of an integration into the social security system.” Even if they are integrated into the labor market within six years, he calculated the additional costs in a study for the Marktwirtschaft foundation for the social systems to 900 billion euros in the long term. This burden resulting from the divergence of qualifications increases the pressure on the social systems in addition to the challenges of demographic development. He therefore advocates managing immigration in such a way that only or predominantly people immigrate with a qualification that is useful for the German labor market.

Gunnar Heinsohn explains that, according to a recent survey, 133 million people want to emigrate from the Arab region alone. For the whole of Africa, he estimates the number of people willing to migrate at 390 million today and around 840 million for 2050. A country like Germany has to decide whether it wants to keep its place at the top of the world economy or not. If so, it cannot afford to let people into the country without first checking their qualifications. “Competence fortresses” like Australia, New Zealand and Canada already view immigration as a competition for people with professional potential. On the other hand, countries like Sweden or Germany have high social costs due to the increasing number of immigrants with low professional qualifications and thus lose the competition for highly qualified specialists. If Germany decides that helpfulness is more important, then it will fall out of the competition and one day find itself on the economic level of Brazil.

On November 7, 2016, the chairman of the SPD parliamentary group, Thomas Oppermann , and other parliamentary group members presented a new draft for an immigration law based on a points system based on the Canadian model at a press conference . While those in need of protection who are entitled to asylum will continue to be admitted to Germany without restriction, based on the proposed concept, above all young and well-trained specialists from countries outside Europe are to be brought to Germany as migrant workers . Applicants should be selected according to a point system based on qualifications, language skills, job offer and age, as well as integration aspects such as work experience or relatives in Germany. According to the ideas of the SPD, 25,000 well-qualified immigrants from countries like India and Egypt should be recruited in a first step. Potential labor migrants should only receive a residence permit if there are no security concerns. According to a priority check by the Federal Employment Agency (BA), employment should only be allowed if no German or EU citizen is available for the job. The BA should also review the equivalence of working conditions in order to avoid wage dumping . It should only be possible to issue a settlement permit , i.e. an unlimited residence permit , after three years. Qualified specialists from non-EU countries should also be able to be granted a one-year residence permit when looking for a job. Migrant workers from non-EU countries should generally not be entitled to benefits under Book II of the Social Code (SGB II) during the first five years of their stay in Germany . Immigrants with a job offer should be able to bring their core family with them when starting work if the family's livelihood is secure. The FAZ journalist Reinhard Müller pointed out that due to its geographical location, hardly any asylum seekers come to Canada. In contrast, more than a million people actually immigrated to Germany last year alone. Since not even the current law is consistently enforced, anyone who has made it to Germany can stay anyway. This makes both an asylum law for persecuted people and an immigration law superfluous. The CDU, which at its party congress in 2015 still advocated an immigration law, is critical of the project at the moment. Peter Tauber reported that the remaining questions in asylum policy should first be clarified before the next topic is dealt with. In principle, the Blue Card for highly qualified people who want to immigrate to Germany from countries outside Europe has been in existence since August 2012 . The prerequisite for this is that you can prove that you have a job in Germany with a salary of at least 44,800 euros. For professions that are in high demand, e.g. B. with doctors or engineers, the salary threshold is only 35,000 euros. Academics can come to Germany for six months to look for a job if they can finance themselves.

The philosopher Peter Singer points out that the 1951 Geneva Refugee Convention was initially limited to people who fled within Europe. In 1967 the scope was expanded to include the international community. He writes in the Philosophy Magazine : “If refugees who apply for asylum in a neighboring country were taken to a camp where they would be safe from persecution and, thanks to the financial aid of the richer countries, well taken care of, there would soon be no more smuggling gangs - and also no deaths on the run. "

Annual upper limit for the admission of asylum seekers

Politicians from the CDU and SPD said that they wanted to work towards reducing the number of newly arriving refugees. However, you do not want to commit yourself to an upper limit. According to the government, the refugee crisis must be resolved on a European basis - through solidarity, contingents, hotspots, combating the causes of flight and efficient control of the EU's external borders. The effectiveness of these long-championed concepts is, however, controversial at the European level. Chancellor Merkel declared that the causes of flight must be combated, this was a "task of the century".

The number of critical voices of the government's refugee policy increased in early October 2015, both in the media and among various politicians. The policy of the undifferentiated and unregistered admission of all refugees waiting in front of Budapest Ostbahnhof was seen as a possible main incentive of the "refugee pull" since the beginning of September 2015. This criticism was voiced in all governing parties. 34 CDU officials expressed them in an open letter to the Chancellor. The "currently practiced 'policy of open borders'" corresponds neither to European or German law, nor is it in line with the CDU program. The SPD -Ministerpräsident of Brandenburg requested that the Chancellor should "identify ways to reduce the high number of refugees." Hans-Peter Friedrich of the CSU accused the chancellor an "unprecedented blunder" before, this criticism was the CDU foreign policy expert Norbert Röttgen rejected . Other CSU officials also massively criticized their refugee policy. At the beginning of October the Bavarian Prime Minister Horst Seehofer announced that if necessary the federal government would be sued before the Constitutional Court and that security measures would be taken if measures were not taken to limit the movement of refugees immediately. The announcement met with criticism from both the opposition and the governing coalition. In an interview on January 3, 2016, Seehofer named a specific value for the first time, “up to a maximum of 200,000 people”, as the upper limit for the manageable number of refugees per year. This corresponds roughly to the sum, 170,000, of the refugees admitted from January to June 2015. From July to December 2015, however, the number of refugees was 930,000, more than five times as high.

On October 27, 2015, the Bavarian Prime Minister had given Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) an ultimatum : she should end the “open border policy” with Austria by November 1. The Chancellor rejected the ultimatum on the same day: There was constant contact between her and the Austrian Chancellor Faymann . At the weekend she will organize a joint conference with Faymann, Seehofer and Gabriel. Werner Faymann did not take part in the top-level meeting that was actually held, only Merkel, Seehofer and Gabriel.

Ralf Fücks , head of the Heinrich Böll Foundation , advocated a European solution at the end of October 2015 and warned against an increasingly harassing deterrent policy that would cost a high political and humanitarian price. At the same time, in his opinion, the “culture of welcome” can only be maintained if the population does not get the impression that massive immigration is beyond control.

The Hungarian historian Iván T. Berend stated in 2016 that Angela Merkel referred her statement “We can do it” to the assimilation of immigrants by 82 million Germans. One could not put these migrants in relation to the total population, but only with the group of their peers. That would then be around 10 million Germans, including many immigrants, in their 20s or younger, which would be in relation to around 1.2 million migrants, of which around 72% are men and 40% are young men between 18 and 34 who will soon Spouses or families would catch up. According to Berend, one must conclude that the entire demography of Germany will be rewritten and that in future half of young people in Germany could come from North Africa or the Middle East. Such a transformation is certainly not acceptable for the majority of the populations in the immigration countries of Europe.

The Central Council of Jews in Germany joined the end of November 2015 calls for the introduction of a "ceiling" for the reception of refugees in Germany. The President of the Central Council Josef Schuster explained the point of view with the size of the integration challenge and the concern for anti-Semitic socialization of many refugees who “[want to flee] from the terror of the 'Islamic State' and live in peace and freedom, but at the same time cultures [ originate], in which hatred of Jews and intolerance is an integral part. "

The refugee aid organization Pro Asyl , on the other hand, criticized the upper limits as “strange”, as both the Geneva Refugee Convention and the European Convention on Human Rights guaranteed protection against rejection at the EU border. Every refugee must be viewed as an individual. Federal Development Minister Gerd Müller also contradicted Horst Seehofer in January 2016 and rejected upper limits. You cannot build fences around Germany and Europe. “The people will not ask us whether they can come […] Only ten percent of the wave of refugees triggered in Syria and Iraq has reached us. Eight to ten million are still on the way. "

The Scientific Services of the Bundestag doubted the legality of ceilings for the reception of refugees in a report on December 16, 2015. The report points out that the EU's asylum and refugee law does not contain any provisions “which provide for a numerical limit on the admission of international asylum seekers”.

In the first few months of 2016, some representatives from the ranks of the Protestant and Catholic Churches called for ways to be explored to reduce the number of refugees.

In January 2016, the writer Mely Kiyak asked the politicians in charge not to discuss the “demand for upper limits” or “protect external borders” or “reduce the number of refugees”, but rather to use a “precise expression” to admit the exact number of deaths name that they are willing to accept by closing borders because refugees have to return to the boats and travel back across the Mediterranean. If you don't drown on the outward journey, you might do it on the return journey. The development economist Paul Collier, on the other hand, regards a policy of open borders as ethically reprehensible because it calls on people to play a kind of Russian roulette : they should come across the sea and hope that their boat will not sink.

In February 2016, the lawyer Hans-Joachim Heintze complained that the right to asylum was being made absolute in the debate and that no one could expect that the destabilization of a state through massive immigration would simply be accepted. In that case, the arriving people could no longer be treated humanely.

The question of the admissibility of upper limits only arises for asylum seekers who have a right to apply for asylum in Germany (see # Admissibility of admitting asylum seekers from safe third countries ).

Discussion about the incentive effect of the German asylum practice

The EU Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society Günther Oettinger , contrary to the German Chancellor's idea, demanded that not only the EU and the EU partner countries change their previous course in the refugee crisis, but also Germany itself. Oettinger said:

“The German asylum law acts like a magnet for refugees. A change to the Basic Law would be necessary in order to reorganize the asylum law. As long as this is not addressed, there is actually only one alternative: billions in aid for the refugee camps in Turkey and other countries. "

- Günther Oettinger : Interview with Handelsblatt

In 2015, the legal scholar Christian Hillgruber recalled that refugees already enjoyed protection in the refugee camps in accordance with the Geneva Refugee Convention. Only under the conditions of a right of residence, which is only limited in time and also limited in content to a protective function, could the refugee status be limited to people who are actually absolutely dependent on protection. A more far-reaching right of residence, which includes a labor law and provides for comprehensive participation in the welfare state, is a misleading label for labor migration or immigration into the German social system. Integration Minister Bilkay Öney points out that in November 2014 the temporary work ban for asylum seekers with residence permits anchored in Section 61 (2) AsylG was shortened from nine to three months. Although this was done with good intentions, it ultimately made immigration into the asylum system more attractive and possibly triggered it. The increase in social assistance benefits for asylum seekers forced by a ruling by the Federal Constitutional Court in 2012 has also created incentives. As a result, the number of refugees rose rapidly. She also criticizes the fact that by appointing Peter Altmaier as refugee coordinator, the Chancellor sent a signal that many refugees understood as if the Chancellor wanted as much immigration as possible. After a refugee summit, the rumor also circulated that every refugee would receive a welcome money of 670 euros. In fact, this was only meant as a flat rate in the federal-state balance. According to Chancellor Angela Merkel, the SPD and the Greens have delayed and prevented necessary resolutions. There would have to be further tightening of asylum law. "We made compromises that didn't help us either and that one day we'll have to reverse."

According to the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) and various political observers, the extent of the numerically high influx of asylum seekers to the various European countries is influenced by several factors, including the differences in economic power in Europe, the respective demographic situation and the Amount of social benefits for refugees.

Limiting immigration from the Maghreb countries

The proportion of refugees from the Maghreb states of Morocco and Algeria increased significantly in the course of the refugee crisis along the Balkan route . Only a small number of asylum seekers from these countries are allowed to stay in Germany. Although Germany has signed a readmission agreement with Morocco and Algeria, the deportation of “persons obliged to leave” often fails due to the uncooperative attitude of the governments of these countries. According to the Federal Ministry of the Interior, a good 8,000 people from North Africa were “obliged to leave” at the end of November - around 2,300 of them from Morocco and almost 2,500 from Algeria. These states refuse to take back rejected asylum seekers, for example because certain documents are missing and they question their citizenship. In the opinion of the German Vice Chancellor Gabriel, the willingness of these countries to accept could theoretically be helped by a cut in development aid. Thomas de Maizière also mentioned the criteria for issuing visas as a possible means of political pressure.

Development Minister Gerd Müller (CSU) spoke out against it because, in his opinion, a cut in development aid would only lead to more refugees from these countries; and he wants people not to have to make their way to us.

In December 2015, around 2300 Algerians and around 2900 Moroccans were registered as asylum seekers in Germany. In November the numbers were similarly high. The number of asylum seekers from these countries was about five times as high as in July 2015; 1000 asylum seekers from both countries were registered at that time. In 2014, the total number of asylum applications from both countries was around 3900. Far fewer asylum seekers than from Algeria and Morocco came from Tunisia in 2015. As in the previous months, only nearly 200 Tunisians were registered as asylum seekers across Germany in December 2015.

In principle, the governments of Slovenia, Austria and Germany agree that rejected asylum seekers from the Maghreb states should be taken back from their countries of origin more quickly. Germany wants to achieve this with the help of the embassies of these countries in Berlin. Since refugees are often unable to identify themselves, the embassies are intended to help determine their origin. Equipped with EU laissez-passer papers , citizens of these countries who are required to leave the country can be flown out more easily than was previously possible with the cumbersome multi-phase return procedure.

On May 13, 2016, the German Bundestag decided to classify Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco as “ safe countries of origin ”. The classification is intended to accelerate asylum procedures. Because of the negative attitude of the Greens and the left , the corresponding draft law was stopped in the Federal Council . Organizations such as Pro Asyl and Amnesty International generally reject the concept of “safe countries of origin”. In the case of Morocco and Algeria, these organizations have specific objections. There is no free press in both countries and individual minorities and government critics are politically persecuted.

Position of Bavaria and the CSU

In a position paper of the Bavarian State Government from January 2016 on the legal opinion of Federal Constitutional Court judge a. D.  Udo Di Fabio : The migration crisis as a federal constitutional problem was seen as a threat to internal security in the country. Social tensions threatened to divide society. Applicable law would not be observed. The Bavarian State Government also saw the collapse of the European Dublin and Schengen systems as the cause of the threat to internal security .

The Bavarian state government accused the federal government of violating the Basic Law in its refugee policy. In January 2016, the Bavarian state government wrote to the Federal Chancellor:

There was no reaction from Berlin. Since February 2016, the Bavarian state government has had an application prepared for a lawsuit before the Federal Constitutional Court (BVerfG) against the federal government. The lawyer Markus Möstl from the University of Bayreuth was supposed to prepare the lawsuit as representative of Bavaria.

In spring 2016, Seehofer admitted that the situation had calmed down due to the fact that the Balkan route was actually closed. The Bavarian government waived a constitutional complaint. The AfD then filed a lawsuit against the Bavarian state government in May 2016 before the Munich Administrative Court. On April 14, 2018, the AfD itself filed a lawsuit against Angela Merkel's actions in the refugee crisis with the Federal Constitutional Court. The immigration policy violated the Bundestag's rights of participation and, according to an AfD lawyer, what Horst Seehofer had just announced is being implemented. In December 2018, the Constitutional Court declared the AfD's action to be inadmissible.

In the run-up to the Bavarian state election campaign, there was again brief tensions between the CDU and CSU at federal level in the summer of 2018 over the rejection of refugees who had previously been registered in other European countries at the German borders.

Deportation to Afghanistan

Deportations to Afghanistan are controversial . In October 2016, the federal government agreed with the country to return Afghans who were obliged to leave the country to their home country. At the end of January, 25 young men were deported to Afghanistan. Chancellor Merkel emphasized that there are regions in Afghanistan in which one can live safely. In the case of deportations, this is carefully checked in each individual case. Federal states ruled by red and green stopped deportations to Afghanistan in early February 2017 due to fighting between government troops supported by NATO's Resolute Support mission and the Taliban . In August 2017, Die Welt reported that on average only around 50% of Afghans in Germany were eligible for protection, but almost all of them stayed in Germany. Of 253,000 Afghans in Germany at the end of 2016, 324 people were deported in 2016 and 261 people in 2017 before the program was scaled back. 3,300 people returned to Afghanistan in 2016 as part of a subsidized exit program; by August 2017, the figure should have been 800.

Legal processing

Acceptance of asylum seekers from safe third countries

According to Section 18 (2) AsylG , an asylum seeker is to be refused entry if he is entering from a safe third country or if there are “indications that another country is responsible for carrying out the asylum procedure based on European Community legislation or an international treaty and admission or retrial proceedings are initiated ”. In 2015, 1,699 refugees did not reach Germany from or via a safe third country, almost exclusively by air. In the following year, that number fell to 903 refugees by air and two by sea.

On the other hand, Section 18 (4) AsylG provides two clear reasons for when the aforementioned refusal of entry should be dispensed with because of the intended entry from a safe third country: Either “the Federal Republic of Germany [is] based on European Community legislation or of an international treaty with the safe third country responsible for the implementation of an asylum procedure ”, or the Federal Ministry of the Interior has ordered entry voluntarily for reasons of international law or humanitarian reasons or to protect the political interests of the Federal Republic of Germany.

The federal government responded to the question posed in a small question by the left as to whether a rejection of those seeking protection was compatible with EU law and the Geneva Refugee Convention: "Rejection is permitted within the legal framework of the Dublin III Regulation and Section 18 AsylG ." When asked to what extent it was true that on the night of September 13, 2015, there was said to have been a 30-page deployment order for 21 hundreds of the Federal Police, which also included the rejection of asylum seekers and which the Chancellor received through telephone calls to Federal Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière is said to have prevented it at the last minute, the federal government replied:

“The deployment order of the Federal Police Headquarters of September 13, 2015 regulates the implementation of the temporarily introduced border controls at the German internal borders. The Federal Police Headquarters has instructed that (...) third-country nationals without residence-legitimizing documents and with submission of an asylum application must be allowed [...] The decision was made within the scope of the existing responsibilities within the Federal Government. "

- German Federal Government : BT-Drucksache 18/7311

The state secretaries in the Federal Ministry of the Interior, Haber and Krings, have also presented the German government's legal opinion to the Bundestag, according to which there is no national or European legal obligation to allow refugees to enter Germany at German land borders. The Federal Government had made a conscious decision not to reject asylum seekers at the border.

“The regulations in Section 18 (2) to (4) AsylG are to be viewed in the context of the framework of European law. Refusals at the border are permitted within the legal framework of the Dublin III Regulation and Section 18 AsylG. (...) The decision not to reject the group of people concerned was made in connection with the temporary reintroduction of border controls at the German internal borders within the scope of the existing responsibilities within the Federal Government. "

"European law in the form of the Dublin Regulation does not force us to refrain from rejections (...)."

The legal scholar Christian Hillgruber criticizes the fact that the exact wording of the order of the Federal Minister of the Interior to refrain from rejecting asylum seekers from safe third countries in accordance with Section 18 (4) No. 2 AsylG was never made public. That is why the refugee crisis is increasingly developing into a "crisis of law and parliamentary democracy in Germany". In addition, politicians from all governing parties have criticized the fact that the Bundestag has never voted on the continued opening of the borders to asylum seekers or refugees from safe third countries such as Austria or Switzerland . Former Federal Minister of the Interior and lawyer Otto Schily (SPD) explains in Stern magazine :

“The Chancellor made the decision on her own. It created a fait accompli, let a million refugees into the country and then asked the other European countries to please show solidarity now and take refugees from us. That was neither European nor does it have anything to do with the rule of law. The Chancellor is not empowered to decide on her own authority whether or not people are allowed to enter illegally. "

Politicians from the CDU and CSU have also expressed their views. The Bavarian Prime Minister Horst Seehofer even spoke of a "rule of injustice".

The constitutional law teacher Michael Kloepfer does not consider the Federal Minister of the Interior to be responsible for the overall decisions on immigration, but the Bundestag, since according to the materiality case law of the Federal Constitutional Court, such decisions would have to be made by Parliament. This materiality jurisprudence is intended to preserve the principle of the separation of powers , according to which the legislature has democratically legitimized laws and the executive has to execute them. The Federal Constitutional Court explains:

"Today it is constant jurisprudence that the legislature is obliged (...) in fundamental normative areas, especially in the area of ​​the exercise of fundamental rights, insofar as this state regulation is accessible, to make all essential decisions himself."

- BVerfGE 49, 89 - Kalkar I

Other legal scholars have also criticized the fact that the Federal Minister of the Interior and not the Bundestag made such a far-reaching decision as the entry permit from safe third countries such as Austria or Switzerland . Especially since the Federal Constitutional Court has confirmed several times:

“Anyone arriving from a safe third country within the meaning of Article 16a, Paragraph 2, Clause 1 of the Basic Law does not need the protection of the fundamental rights guarantee of Paragraph 1 in the Federal Republic of Germany because he could have found protection from political persecution in the third country. Exclusion from the basic right of asylum does not depend on whether the foreigner can or should be returned to the third country. An asylum procedure does not take place. The provisional right of residence guaranteed as a preliminary effect of fundamental rights protection also does not apply. "

- BVerfGE 94, 49 - Safe third countries (accessed on January 3, 2017)

The Federal Administrative Court has also confirmed this in its case law on refugees: "Anyone who has already found protection (...) in another state and can continue to obtain it has no right to recognition as a refugee (...)" . The constitutional law teacher Ulrich Vosgerau explains:

“The only shameful thing to be mentioned here is the behavior, or rather the inaction of the German Bundestag. The Bundestag has to control the government. The government, in turn, has made it sufficiently clear that it no longer takes the legal and constitutional situation in Germany into account when governing the refugee issue. [...] But the Bundestag simply watches the injustice inactive. "

- Ulrich Vosgerau : refugee crisis - legal dispute over the "rule of injustice"

The legal scholar Ekkehard Schumann is of the opinion that the government had no authority to override German law. The constitutional lawyer Josef Isensee is of the opinion:

“Where has the parliament gone? The slightest changes in data protection, small selective deployments of the Bundeswehr abroad, minimal changes in tax law are strictly subject to legislation. When it comes to the really big questions that irreversibly determine the future of the country, the composition of the population and its cohesion, the Bundestag is left out. All 'essential' rules of state coexistence require parliamentary law. The slogan 'We can do it' is a political hope, but not a law. "

- Josef Isensee : Are the borders tight? No critic can force Merkel to change her policy

Constitutional law experts around Professors Otto Depenheuer and Christoph Grabenwarter also criticize:

“The power of the state seems at a loss, constitutional principles such as democracy and the rule of law are coming under pressure from the force of events. The rule of law is about to dissolve in the context of the wave of refugees by de facto overriding current law. Government and executive make their decisions bypassing the democratically legitimized legislature [...]. "

- Otto Depenheuer , Christoph Grabenwarter (ed.) : The state in the refugee crisis.

A senior security guard from the federal apparatus harbored in an internal legal opinion of the Ministry of the Interior , according to the " world " early doubts about the legality of the entry permission of the minister held by the German Bundestag :

"The federal police must no longer be prevented by the federal government from rejecting foreigners who want to enter Germany without a residence permit."

- Internal legal opinion : Federal Ministry of the Interior

He added: “The federal police are obliged to do this under the law of residence; contrary instructions of the federal government are unlawful [...]. ”An expert opinion by the scientific service suggests that the federal government was not authorized to issue a“ general and mass entry permit ”. Such an essential question is subject to parliamentary scrutiny . The President of the Constitutional Court for the State of North Rhine-Westphalia a. D. Michael Bertrams in January 2016; he came to the conclusion that “Merkel's solo effort” was “an act of self-empowerment”. On January 13, 2016, constitutional lawyer Ulrich Battis pointed out to Die Welt that, according to the Basic Law, there is no right of asylum if someone comes from a safe third country:

“This regulation is at the core of the Dublin Treaty. This system no longer works. The Federal Republic is thus obliged to protect itself from unregulated immigration. Without border controls, not only will the welfare state be unhinged in the long run, but also the rule of law. "

The legal scholars Alexander Peukert , Christian Hillgruber , Ulrich Foerste and Holm Putzke refer to a statement by the Federal Government, according to which the Federal Republic is not responsible for the vast majority of those seeking protection under EU asylum law; Rejection at the border is therefore permissible. You also point out that the European Court of Human Rights has expressly pointed out several times that another country can, but does not have to, enter the asylum procedure itself if the asylum procedure in the actually competent state is poor. With its asylum practice, the Federal Government can therefore only rely on the exception provision in Section 18 (4) No. 2 AsylG and the right of access under Regulation (EU) No. 604/2013 (17) Regulation (EU) No. 604/2013 (Dublin III) support. However, these only apply as exceptions for individual cases. For a large number of asylum seekers, the rule of Section 18 (2) No. 1 AsylG applies , according to which entry from a safe third country is to be refused. According to the legal opinion of the legal scholars, the Federal Government has suspended the de facto entry permit for an indefinite number of third-country nationals for a longer, undefined period of time under Section 18 (2) No. 1 AsylG . But only the legislature is allowed to do this, not the executive . An over legal justification does not exist. The guarantee of human dignity in Article 1 of the Basic Law, like the Geneva Refugee Convention, does not require all those who wish to enter the country to be granted residence.

Federal constitutional judge a. D. Udo Di Fabio came to the conclusion in a legal opinion for the Bavarian State Government that according to Art. 16a GG an applicant is only granted the basic right to asylum in the event of political persecution and only if the asylum seeker does not enter a safe third country is done. This is a balance between the individual right to asylum and the stability and performance requirements of the democratic community. “However, the Basic Law does not guarantee the protection of all people worldwide through factual or legal entry permits.” A universally guaranteed and unlimited duty of protection would go beyond the institution of democratic self-determination. Di Fabio came to the conclusion that “Democracy can only work if a state people with a correspondingly clearly defined civil rights can be identified and are practically capable of acting in elections and votes. In this respect, the people of the state must, on the one hand, decide on the composition of the population and on the rules for acquiring or losing citizenship with the law in the formal sense; on the other hand, they must not give up the practical possibility of parliamentary governance and democratic decision-making in elementary issues of the political community. " may - with the Schengen system to secure national borders - transfer sovereign rights to the European Union, but in the event of the failure of European systems, the guarantee remains responsible for the effective control of entries into the federal territory.

The President of the Federal Constitutional Court a. D. Hans-Jürgen Papier sees the refugee crisis as a “blatant political failure”, the gap between the rule of law and reality is currently deeper than ever in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany. The Chancellor must ensure that the granting of asylum and migration policy are clearly separated again and that the country's external borders are secured. If German asylum law were applied in a strictly compliant manner , the discussion about upper limits would become irrelevant. In his book The Warning: How the Rule of Law is Undermined, published in 2019, he reiterated his criticism and classified Chancellor Merkel's decision as a clear breach of the law with dramatic consequences.

To this day, the Bundestag has not formally resolved the permanent opening of the borders to asylum seekers and refugees who want to enter from safe neighboring countries of Germany or confirmed their maintenance by law.

In September 2017, however, a German administrative court ruled that an African who had illegally traveled to Germany from Italy, although he was already recognized as a beneficiary in Italy, could not be sent back there because in Italy a life on the margins of society in homelessness and misery threatens. According to the judge, the European Court of Justice must make the final decision on such Dublin returns to Italy.

Scientific services of the German Bundestag

Shortly before the 2017 Bundestag elections, an expert opinion by the Scientific Services of the German Bundestag commissioned by the Left MP Sevim Dagdelen and published by the government months before the debate was controversial.

The Scientific Services of the German Bundestag first establish that there are fundamentally competency standards for an entry permit, namely the right of self-entry according to Regulation (EU) No. 604/2013 (Dublin III) or an order from the Federal Ministry of the Interior for international, humanitarian or political reasons Section 18 (4) no. 2 AsylG. The obligation to refuse entry does not apply without exception. They also state that on a parliamentary question the Federal Government did not name the exact wording of the order with which a refusal to refuse entry in accordance with Section 18 (4) No. 2 AsylG was ordered.

Furthermore, the Scientific Services of the German Bundestag raise the question of whether this was such a far-reaching decision that it would have required authorization from the legislature (Bundestag). “Regardless of these considerations, one could think that the general and mass entry permit is no longer covered by Section 18 (4) AsylG. In this respect, one could argue that such a far-reaching order by the Federal Ministry of the Interior or the exercise of the right of self-entry according to the Dublin III regulation by the Federal Republic requires a statutory regulation or parliamentary approval. ”Normative point of reference for the question of whether participation of the Bundestag should have taken place, is the materiality doctrine of the BVerfG , according to which the principle of democracy and the rule of law of the Basic Law requires the legislature to make all essential decisions in fundamental normative areas, in particular in the area of ​​the exercise of fundamental rights. With regard to the question of whether or not the mass entry permit was an "essential" decision in this sense or not, there are various ways of reasoning:

For a violation of the doctrine of materiality and the principle of democracy and the rule of law speaks in her view: “Both for the entry permit according to § 18 Abs. 4 Nr. 1 AsylG, which refers to the Dublin jurisdiction, and with regard to the authority of the Federal Minister of the Interior according to § 18 Abs. 4 Nr. 2 AsylG one could point out that the legislature should at least have set the limits for self-entry according to the Dublin III regulation as well as for the ministerial authority to issue orders. "

According to her, the following speaks against a violation of the doctrine of materiality and the principle of democracy and the rule of law: “The fundamentally plausible duty of the legislature to make essential decisions is difficult to determine in a specific case.” The assumption of materiality is more prevalent The case law of the BVerfG is not sufficient "that there is a political dispute over a matter". It also says: “The entry permit as such does not yet contain a preliminary decision on whether the foreigners will remain in the federal territory. The decisive factor for the asylum seekers remaining in the federal territory is rather the question of whether the Federal Republic is responsible for examining the asylum application under the Dublin jurisdiction system. However, the Dublin system of jurisdiction shows weaknesses if - as actually happened - the determination of the responsible EU member state is made impossible due to a lack of registration and onward travel allowance or if the transfer to the actually responsible EU member states is not allowed due to 'systemic deficiencies'. Then there is a high probability that the destination country is responsible according to Art. 3 Para. 2 Regulation [EU] No. 604/2013. Against this background, in the event of a massive influx of asylum seekers, exercising the right of self-entry under the Dublin III regulation to accelerate the process can be useful, in particular to cope with an emergency situation - like the one in Hungary. "

With reference to the judgment of the Federal Constitutional Court on family reunification, it says: “On the other hand, one can argue that the general and mass entry permit for asylum seekers is associated with such significant consequences for the community that it exceeds the 'materiality threshold'. When asylum seekers enter the country, there are already numerous state obligations which - depending on the number of asylum seekers - require a high level of administrative effort and cause high costs ... If the entry permit is used on a large scale, this can also change the structure of society and lead to considerable integration problems. The fact that the legislature has a certain limiting function when deciding on the immigration of foreigners becomes clear in the case law of the Federal Constitutional Court on family reunification. There it says:"

"It [erg. the Basic Law] neither excludes a generous admission of foreigners, nor does it require such a practice. Within the broad framework set by him, it is up to the legislature and - within the limits permitted by it - the executive to decide whether and to what extent non-Germans in the total population will limit the immigration of foreigners to the federal territory or whether and to what extent such immigration is tolerated or encouraged; [...] "

- BVerfG, judgment on family reunification : BVerfGE 76, 1, 47 f.

Media influence

A study by the Hamburg Media School led by media scientist Michael Haller examined the reporting on the refugee crisis on behalf of the Otto Brenner Foundation on the basis of more than 30,000 articles that were published between February 2015 and March 2016. Publications in national daily newspapers ( Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , Süddeutsche Zeitung , Welt und Bild ), online media ( focus.de , tagesschau.de and Spiegel Online ) and 85 local and regional newspapers were evaluated .

According to this, commentators from the national daily newspapers mainly dealt with federal politics and mostly with representatives of the governing parties. There were hardly any interviews with those affected or experts (four percent of the texts examined), nor were there any reports and on-site research that could have shed light on events from their own perspective (six percent). The local newspapers, whose strength is actually rooted in the region, have not compensated for this weakness, but have adapted their reporting to the national media. What was perceived by the population as a concrete problem has been translated into an "abstract negotiating object of institutional politics" in the media. Although this procedure is not unusual, at least for national media, it has, in the overall picture, led to a narrowing of the perspective. Criticism and dissenting views have barely penetrated.

Haller summed up that journalists had not done justice to their role as critical educators. Instead, “information journalism took over the view and slogans of the political elite” and was itself more of a political actor than a neutral observer. Concerns and fears of the population were almost completely suppressed behind the narrative of the “welcoming culture” and those who think differently were discursively excluded. This promoted a “front formation” in society. It was only after the events of New Year's Eve 2015 in Cologne that "the media discovered the real reality behind the melodious welcome rhetoric".

Even Giovanni di Lorenzo , editor of the time , criticized the role of the media in the refugee crisis. The unanimous pro-refugee mood and the undifferentiated solidarity of many media with the culture of welcoming practiced by politics was resented by the readers: “This confirmed the prejudice that we are in league with power, with the elites and to support what is prescribed for us. "The latter was" de facto not the case "," but the impression was definitely gained through the reporting ". For a long time there was a tendency to help shape the refugee crisis instead of concentrating on the role of observation, whereby he does not exclude himself. He was particularly surprised by the “Refugees Welcome” campaign by the Bild newspaper, since that is the slogan of the Lampedusa movement in the autonomous scene. It was only after the 2015 New Year's Eve in Cologne that the media's attitude changed somewhat.

Facts and figures on refugee immigration

development

New asylum seekers since 1953 (first and follow-up applications)

The BAMF has been keeping statistics on asylum applications since 1953. Accordingly, there were record levels in 1980 with 107,818 applications, in 1992 with 438,191 applications and in 2016 with 745,545 applications. The migrant group of repatriates and EU foreigners is not included.

In 2013 there were a total of 127,023 asylum applications in Germany, almost 50,000 more than in the previous year. In 2014, the applications in Germany rose by 60% to 202,645, which corresponds to 32.4% of the asylum applications made in the EU.

When the number of applications rose sharply in November 2014, the German government decided to accept all Syrians as convention refugees until further notice, without checking on a case-by-case basis . In the summer of 2015, the decision was made to de facto override the Dublin rules for Syrians . Both of these “emergency decisions” were repealed at the end of 2015.

The following table and the diagram on the right give an overview of the inflows of asylum seekers since 1953.

year Initial and follow-up applications for asylum
1953 1,906
1954 2.174
1955 1.926
1956 16,284
1957 3.112
1958 2,785
1959 2,267
1960 2,980
1961 2,722
1962 2,550
1963 3,238
1964 4,542
1965 4,337
1966 4,370
1967 2,992
1968 5,608
1969 11,664
1970 8,645
1971 5,388
1972 5,289
1973 5,595
1974 9.424
1975 9,627
1976 11,123
1977 16,410
1978 33,136
1979 51,493
1980 107,818
1981 49.391
1982 37,423
1983 19,737
1984 35,278
1985 73,832
1986 99,650
1987 57,379
1988 103.076
1989 121,315
1990 193.063
1991 256.112
1992 438.191
1993 322,599
1994 127.210
1995 166,951
1996 149.193
1997 151,700
1998 143,429
1999 138,319
2000 117,648
2001 118,306
2002 91,471
2003 67,848
2004 50,152
2005 42,908
2006 30,100
2007 30.303
2008 28,018
2009 33,033
2010 48,589
2011 53,347
2012 77,651
2013 127.023
2014 202.834
2015 476,649
2016 745,545
2017 222,683
2018 185.853
2019 165.938
2020
to July 31
64,790

The following table and the diagrams on the right give an overview of the number of registered people who have entered the country and the number of asylum applications made from 2015.

New registrations, initial and subsequent applications as well as pending asylum applications to the BAMF.
year month New registrations Initial and follow-up applications Pending asylum applications
2015 January 32,229 25,042 178,250
February 38,892 26,083 188,435
March 31.091 32,054 199,831
April 33,150 27,178 209,700
May 37.194 25,992 220,956
June 53,721 35,449 237,877
July 82,798 37,531 254,559
August 104,460 36,422 276.617
September 163,772 43,071 300,531
October 181.166 54,877 328.207
November 206.101 57,816 355.914
December 127,320 48,277 364,664
2016 January 91,671 52.103 371.754
February 61,428 67,797 393.155
March 20,608 59,975 409.113
April 15,941 60,943 431.993
May 16,281 55,259 459,667
June 16,335 74,637 495.792
July 16,160 74,454 526.276
August 18,143 91,331 567.479
September 15,618 76,400 579.314
October 15,178 32,640 547.174
November 17,566 26,438 490.967
December 16,442 20,575 433.719
2017 January 14,476 17,964 384,523
February 14,289 16,568 333.815
March 14,976 20,136 278.006
April 11,952 14,848 232.493
May 14,973 16,641 165.099
June 12,399 15,261 146,551
July 15,069 16,844 129,467
August 16,312 18,651 114.202
September 14,688 16,520 99,334
October 15,170 17,028 87,187
November 16,135 18,711 75,660
December 12,487 14,293 68,245
2018 January 12,907 15,077 57,693
February 10,760 12,490 55.279
March 10,712 12,622 51,968
April 11,385 13.163 51,498
May 10,849 12,494 50,373
June 11,509 13,254 52,514
July 13,194 15.199 57.273
August 13,141 15,122 59,410
September 11,239 12,976 59,738
October 13.001 14,824 59,640
November 12,118 14,130 58,538
December 8,900 10,561 58,325
2019 January 14,534 17.051 59,158
February 12,289 14,321 56,779
March 10,965 12,762 53,224
April 10,488 12,353 53.004
May 11,146 12,891 53,434
June 8,288 9,691 52,457
July 12,298 14,108 52,609
August 11,076 12,772 52,976
September 10,830 12,536 54,662
October 11,100 12,938 56,628
November 10,263 12.096 56,958
December 8,359 9,851 57.012
2020 January 12,212 14,187 58,277
February 10.140 11,928 59,010
March 7.120 8,069 56,223
April 5.106 5,695 58,744
May 3,777 4,329 49,232
June 4,789 5,576 43,617
July 7,588 8,865 42,731

Weeks or months pass between the arrival of the asylum seeker in Germany and the submission of the asylum application until the documents for the application are complete and can be submitted to the BAMF. The number of asylum applications submitted therefore lags behind the initial registrations. The number of asylum seekers registered monthly in the EASY IT system (initial distribution of asylum seekers) in 2015 was significantly higher than the number of asylum applications that the BAMF was able to accept due to the capacity bottleneck at the BAMF . The difference between EASY-registered asylum seekers and accepted asylum applications in a reference period is referred to by the BAMF as the EASY gap . The EASY gap was around 650,000 people in 2015 and around 300,000 people in the first quarter of 2016.

Another factor contributing to the discrepancy between the number of registered asylum seekers and the number of applications for asylum is that not every EASY-registered person applies for asylum. Onward travel, return travel, repatriation to safe third countries and the refugees' countries of origin are not taken into account.

Are not included in the EASY-first frame or the asylum statistics Relatives of asylum claimants - asylum seekers, those in the asylum procedure , the refugee status was granted - in the framework of family reunification come to Germany because they are not as asylum seekers, but a visa to enter.

The number of pending asylum applications rose steadily until September 2016 due to the low BAMF capacities and then fell as fewer new applications were made.

Since 2015, between 20,888 and 26,114 people have been deported each year. Most of them in their home countries, a small proportion in other EU countries.

The crisis years (2015 and 2016)

2015

October 24, 2015: Refugees at night on the Inn bridge between Braunau (Austria) and Simbach (Germany)

In 2015, 1,091,894 asylum seekers were registered in the EASY IT system (initial distribution of asylum seekers). The number of new registrations peaked in November 2015 with around 206,000 new entries. Since the counting of asylum seekers with EASY resulted in incorrect and double entries, the number of asylum seekers who entered Germany in 2015 was corrected by Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière to 890,000 at the end of September 2016. 820,000 of these were recorded in a newly introduced core data system. A further 20,000 were unaccompanied minor refugees who had not applied for asylum. 50,000 migrants were registered in EASY in 2015, but are no longer in contact with German authorities, so they have probably traveled on or back to their home countries or went into hiding in Germany. In addition, the approximately 20,000 contingent refugees who were flown in directly from camps in neighboring Syria are not included in the 890,000. How many people entered Germany in addition to the 890,000 is unknown. The ministry did not publish details of the methodology used to collect this figure.

Because of the capacity bottleneck at the BAMF , only 476,649 asylum applications were made in 2015. In 2015, the BAMF decided on 282,726 asylum applications. This roughly doubles the number of decisions compared to the previous year (+ 100.8%). 18,770 of the decisions were taken under the Dublin procedure . 364,664 asylum applications have not yet been decided. Compared to 2014, the number of ongoing asylum procedures has more than doubled (+ 115.6%).

In 2015, Syria was the country from which the most new asylum seekers came (35.9% of the total number of 441,899 initial applications), followed by Albania and Kosovo with a share of 12.2% and 7.6% respectively. This means that more than half (55.6%) of the initial applications submitted in 2015 went to these three countries of origin.

A total of 282,726 asylum applications were decided in 2015 . 137,136 of these applicants (48.5%) were recognized as refugees . 1,707 asylum seekers (0.6%) who were not recognized as refugees and were not granted asylum were granted temporary subsidiary protection as residence status. 91,514 (32.4%) asylum applications were rejected as unfounded or obviously unfounded. A ban on deportation was established for 2,072 asylum seekers (0.7%) . 24,000 family members of Syrians and Iraqis eligible for protection entered the country on a visa in 2015 .

In 2015, 975,000 people received benefits under the Asylum Seekers Benefits Act ; they received a total of around 5.3 billion euros.

2016

After the Western Balkans Conference on February 24, 2016, the Balkan route was effectively closed at the beginning of March 2016 . Shortly afterwards, the 28 EU heads of state and government decided at an informal meeting on March 7, 2016 to return to the full application of the Schengen Borders Code . The aim was to end the “irregular flow of migrants” along the Western Balkans route. The countries Macedonia , Serbia , Croatia , Hungary and Slovenia from then on only allowed refugees with a valid passport and the necessary visas into the country. Since then, the refugees have accumulated on the border between Greece and North Macedonia .

In 2016 as a whole, 321,371 asylum seekers were distributed to the individual federal states by the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) using the EASY IT application . In the EASY system, however, incorrect and double entries due to the lack of recording of personal data cannot be ruled out. According to preliminary calculations by the BAMF, an actual new arrival of 280,000 asylum seekers can therefore be assumed. While more than 91,600 asylum seekers were recorded in the EASY system in January, the number of newcomers fell to an average of less than 20,000 per month after the closure of the Balkan route and the conclusion of the EU-Turkey Agreement from April 2016. In December, 16,441 new entries were recorded in the EASY system.

The European Council passed two resolutions in September 2015 in which the 28 member states of the EU committed themselves to reallocate 160,000 people from Italy and Greece within the EU by September 2017. Germany had promised to accept 27,000 refugees, but until October 2016 only accepted 215 refugees within this framework. At the beginning of October 2016, Chancellor Angela Merkel announced that she would bring several hundred refugees from Greece and Italy to Germany. A week later the announcement regarding Italy was refined when the government announced that it would resettle 500 refugees from Italy per month in Germany.

In 2016, a total of 745,545 asylum seekers applied to the BAMF for asylum in Germany. Most of the asylum seekers registered in 2016 had already arrived in 2015. However, due to the BAMF being overburdened, these people could not apply for asylum immediately after entering the country. Most of the asylum seekers who entered the country in 2016 were from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Albania and Eritrea. Asylum seekers whose asylum applications were decided in the first half of 2016 waited an average of ten months for their asylum decision after entering the country. The head of the BAMF, Frank-Jürgen Weise , stated the average duration of asylum procedures for the entire year in October 2016 as 2.1 months; there were major regional differences.

In 2016, 321,371 asylum seekers were newly registered in the EASY IT system. The BAMF decided on a total of 695,733 asylum applications. Of these, 256,136 asylum seekers (36.8%) were granted the legal status of refugees under the Geneva Refugee Convention . 153,700 asylum seekers (22.1%) who were not recognized as refugees and were not granted asylum were granted temporary subsidiary protection as residence status. 173,846 (25.0%) asylum applications were rejected as unfounded or obviously unfounded. For 24,084 asylum seekers (3.5%) was a deportation ban detected. Around 434,000 asylum procedures could not be completed in 2016. 73,000 family members of Syrians and Iraqis eligible for protection entered the country on a visa in 2016 .

At the end of 2016, 207,484 foreigners required to leave Germany were living in Germany, 54,437 of whom were not tolerated . In 2016, 25,375 rejected asylum seekers across Germany were sent back to their home countries or other European countries.

According to the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the number of refugees arriving in Berlin fell in 2016, while attacks on their accommodation and on the facilities of political parties hardly fell.

In 2016, around 38,400 relatives from Syria and Iraq, which were particularly hard hit by the civil war in Syria, moved to Germany using the family reunification instrument.

Years after the crisis (2017 to today)

2017

In January, 14,476 people were from the BMI recorded who entered the country as asylum seekers to Germany. The most frequently mentioned nationalities were Syrians, Iraqis and Eritreans. In February 14,289 were counted with comparable indications of origin. In addition, 8,758 unauthorized entries were registered in January and February . The largest part was counted at the border with Austria with 3080 people, followed by 1658 entries via airports and 1356 people who had apparently come to Germany via Switzerland. The most common nationalities represented were Afghans, Syrians and Nigerians.

On April 25, 2017, 14 rejected asylum seekers were flown back to Afghanistan for the fifth time as part of a “collective deportation” . In 2017, a total of 107 Afghans have been deported to their country of origin . (See also: Admissibility and limitation of the admission of asylum seekersdeportation to Afghanistan )

In April 2017, the federal police in the federal states of Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg found an average of 31 people a day who had crossed the border to Germany as refugees from Austria and Switzerland.

In the period from January to December 2017, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) registered 186,644 asylum seekers. Almost half (44.0%) of the 198,317 initial applications for asylum made since January 2017 were made by refugees from Syria (24.7%), Iraq (11.1%) and Afghanistan (8.3%). A total of 222,683 initial and follow-up asylum applications were received by the BAMF and 603,428 asylum applications were decided. 123,909 applicants (20.5%), the status as a refugee after the Geneva Convention awarded. 98,074 asylum seekers (16.3%) who were not recognized as refugees under the Geneva Refugee Convention received subsidiary protection . 232,307 (38.5%) asylum applications were rejected, those of 109,479 people (18.1%) were processed elsewhere. For 39,659 asylum seekers (6.6%) was a deportation ban detected. 68,245 asylum procedures have not yet been completed. The overall protection rate in 2017 was 53 percent (2016: 71%). The administrative courts had 372,000 proceedings to decide on contested asylum notices. 91 percent of the rejected asylum applications were challenged in court and 328,000 complaints were filed against asylum notices - almost twice as many as in 2016. A good 40 percent of the complaints were successful.

In December 2017 there were around 115,000 rejected asylum seekers in Germany. By October 2017, 8,639 people had used the Starthilfe Plus repatriation program , which provides that all asylum seekers who withdraw their asylum application before the asylum procedure and voluntarily return to their home country receive monthly cash payments.

In 2017, around 40,800 relatives from Syria and Iraq, which were particularly hard hit by the civil war in Syria, moved to Germany using the family reunification instrument.

2018

According to information from the BAMF, a total of 185,853 people applied for asylum for the first time in Germany in 2018, which represents a decrease of 16.5% compared to the previous year.

In April 2018 it was reported that an unquantifiable number of Syrian refugees were leaving Germany to go to Turkey. However, the German authorities do not record movements of recognized refugees to other European countries, so no data are available. Around 4,000 Syrians are known to have moved in 2017 unknown.

At the beginning of 2018 there were a total of seven migration advice centers . Skilled workers who can be placed on the German labor market are to be advised and returnees from Germany supported. Locals without a chance of a German visa should be persuaded to remain in their home country. The advice centers are operated by the German Society for International Cooperation (GIZ). They are found in Albania , Serbia , Kosovo , Morocco , Ghana , Tunisia and Senegal . More are planned in Iraq and Nigeria . Consultation via online media is planned for Afghanistan .

From December 2017 to February 2018, the voluntary return program was topped up with an extra bonus for a limited period of three months. As part of the existing Starthilfe Plus program , € 1200 per adult and € 600 per child are paid. For asylum seekers who, after receiving a negative asylum decision, but before the expiry of the obligation to leave the country, agree to leave the country voluntarily, there is a € 800 fee instead. Up until February 2018, a housing cost subsidy was granted for the first time, limited to three months, for the first twelve months in the country of origin.

The German government assured the EU Commission that 10,200 of a total of 50,000 refugees to be distributed throughout Europe (France, for example, also takes in 10,200 people), who are currently in Libya , Egypt , Chad , Sudan and Niger , will be released by autumn as part of a two-year resettlement program To be recorded in 2019. According to a statement by EU Commissioner for Migration and Home Affairs Dimitris Avramopoulos, the EU Commission received the corresponding commitment from the German government in April 2018. The UN refugee agency UNHCR selects the resettlers .

2019

In 2019, 142,509 first-time asylum applications were submitted, which corresponds to a decrease of 12.0% compared to the same period in 2018 (161,931 first-time applications). The first asylum applications have thus decreased by over 10% for the third year in a row. The Federal Ministry of the Interior made a change in the counting method at the beginning of 2020: In a press release, the office named the number of 111,094 "cross-border first asylum applications" in 2019. The 31,415 first asylum applications for children born in Germany were therefore excluded.

In 2019, a total of 22% of the applications were submitted by or for children born in Germany under the age of one year, a further 7% of the applications were for children under the age of four who were not born in Germany. 17.2% of the asylum seekers were between 4 and 16 years old. 27.3% of applicants were between 16 and 30, 19.3% between 30 and 45 years old, and 6.9% were 45 years old or older. 43.5% of all applicants were female and 56.5% were male. The largest age and gender group individually listed by the BAMF were male children under 4 years of age (21,399 applications), followed by women under 4 years of age (20,314) and with some distance males between 18 and 25 years of age (12,904).

In December it became known that in 2019, on November 24th, for the first time since 2011, Germany no longer processed most of the first asylum applications within the European Union. According to the EASO, French authorities accepted almost 2,000 more first-time asylum applications .

The federal states of Berlin, Lower Saxony and Thuringia, led by the SPD and the Left respectively, decided in December 2019 to bring a total of 175 minors under the age of 14 to Germany for humanitarian reasons from a Greek reception center on the island of Lesbos.

At the end of 2019, according to the Central Aliens Register, there were 349,398 foreigners living in Germany for whom neither a residence permit nor a Duldung or a permit was recorded. The Federal Government itself counts only 36,011 of these as “required to leave the country” because it only classifies people in this category after a separate expulsion or deportation decision by the immigration authorities.

In addition to 261,000 pending asylum procedures and 202,400 refused tolerated persons , the Integration media service counted around 1.3 million refugees in Germany as of December 31, 2019, broken down into eight subgroups:

  • 43,500 asylum seekers
  • 702,800 refugees under the Geneva Convention
  • 235,800 beneficiaries of subsidiary protection
  • 112,600 people are prohibited from deportation
  • 92,200 people who had a residence or settlement permit “to protect the particularly political interests of the Federal Republic of Germany”
  • 21,200 people with temporary residence permits for urgent humanitarian or personal reasons
  • 22,000 people who were admitted for special humanitarian reasons through actions by the federal states
  • 56,300 foreigners who are obliged to leave the country and whose departure has not been possible for more than 18 months "for legal or factual reasons"

2020

From January to July 2020, 55,756 first-time asylum applications were made, which corresponds to a decrease of 35.4% compared to the same period in 2019 (86,350 first-time applications). The Federal Ministry of the Interior refers to "40,865 cross-border first asylum applications". The 14,891 asylum applications for children born in Germany were therefore excluded. In the course of the COVID-19 pandemic , 39 people applied for asylum to the federal police at the German border from mid-March to mid-April; by then there had been 1,682 applications at the border in 2020. In May there were 3,777 initial applications, the lowest number for initial applications within a month since May 2012, when 3,425 initial applications were made.

From January to July 2020, a total of 26.7% of the applications were submitted by or for children born in Germany under the age of one year, a further 7.1% of the applications were for children under the age of four who were not born in Germany. 16.4% of asylum seekers were between 4 and 16 years old. 26.2% of applicants were between 16 and 30, 17.3% between 30 and 45 years old, and 6.3% were 45 years old or older. 43.0% of all applicants were female and 57.0% male. The largest age and gender group individually listed by the BAMF were male children under 4 years of age (9,650 applications), followed by women under 4 years of age (9,169) and with some distance males between 18 and 25 years of age (4,856).

Distribution and registration of asylum seekers

Distribution of asylum seekers (initial asylum applications) to the federal states
state 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020
(until July 31st)
Baden-WürttembergBaden-Württemberg Baden-Württemberg 16,482 57,578 84,610 21,371 16,062 14,990 6,353
BavariaBavaria Bavaria 25,667 67,639 82.003 24,243 21,911 18,368 6,668
BerlinBerlin Berlin 10,375 33.281 27,247 9,369 8,216 8,221 3,500
BrandenburgBrandenburg Brandenburg 4,906 18,661 18,112 5,547 4,679 4.151 1,546
BremenBremen Bremen 2,222 4,689 8,771 2,495 1,880 1,683 507
HamburgHamburg Hamburg 5,705 12,437 17,512 4,664 4.139 3,551 1,245
HesseHesse Hesse 12,536 27,239 65,520 14,676 12,865 11,901 3,858
Mecklenburg-Western PomeraniaMecklenburg-Western Pomerania Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania 4,418 18,851 7,273 3,954 2,828 2,548 838
Lower SaxonyLower Saxony Lower Saxony 15,416 34,248 83.024 18,861 16,848 13,741 5,909
North Rhine-WestphaliaNorth Rhine-Westphalia North Rhine-Westphalia 40,046 66,758 196.734 53,343 39,579 33,879 13,387
Rhineland-PalatinateRhineland-Palatinate Rhineland-Palatinate 8,716 17,625 36,985 12,951 7,622 7,406 2,940
SaarlandSaarland Saarland 2,564 10,089 6,865 3,099 2,685 2.141 863
SaxonySaxony Saxony 6,030 27,180 23,663 7,389 7,561 6.310 2,666
Saxony-AnhaltSaxony-Anhalt Saxony-Anhalt 7,032 15,572 28,982 6,084 4,238 4,168 1,871
Schleswig-HolsteinSchleswig-Holstein Schleswig-Holstein 5,978 16,410 19,484 5.118 6,475 5,729 2.213
ThuringiaThuringia Thuringia 4,867 13,455 15,422 5,040 4.169 3,558 1,360
Unknown 112 187 163 113 129 164 32

People who have entered Germany without authorization or want to enter Germany to apply for asylum there are distributed to the initial reception facilities in the individual federal states with the help of the EASY IT system (initial distribution of asylum seekers) . EASY does not record any personal data, only the country of origin, the number of people, the gender and the family associations of the asylum seekers who speak to them or foreigners who have entered the country without a visa. In the past, there were incorrect and double entries due to the lack of identification service treatment and the lack of collection of personal data. The Data Exchange Improvement Act , which came into force on February 5, 2016 , now ensures that biometric data of asylum seekers is usually recorded as soon as they submit an informal asylum application to a state registration office. This can be done at the border or later in Germany at a security authority such as the police, a foreigners authority , an initial reception center or directly at an arrival center . Asylum seekers are registered at so-called PIK stations by the federal or state police, employees of the BAMF in the branch offices and arrival centers or employees of the federal states in reception facilities, immigration authorities and arrival centers. The asylum seekers are then given a week to go to the initial reception facility to which they have been assigned by the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) using the EASY IT system . The tickets required for the trip can be obtained from the registration office. A journey escort by representatives of the authorities is not provided. Only in the assigned initial reception center can they submit their formal asylum application in the local branch of the BAMF and are registered as asylum seekers in the Central Register of Foreigners (AZR). In 2015, several weeks or months passed between the distribution via the EASY system and the submission of the asylum application.

At the beginning of November 2015, the government admitted that an unspecified number of unauthorized persons entering Germany could not be registered directly at the border, but were sent to other registration offices by buses and trains. However, since these people did not report there, they could not be counted using the EASY IT application.

In February 2016, the Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI) was unable to provide any information about the whereabouts of around 130,000 people - around 13 percent of the asylum seekers distributed with EASY in 2015 - because they had not arrived at the reception facilities assigned to them. The Federal Ministry of the Interior u. a. the onward journey to other countries, the return journey home, the multiple registration and the "immersion in illegality" called.

Of the 890,000 asylum seekers who entered Germany in 2015 according to the ministry, around 820,000 were registered in the AZR at the end of September 2016, according to the Federal Interior Minister, which has been functioning as the core data system (KDS) as part of refugee management since the end of May 2016 . On January 6, 2017, a spokesman for the Federal Ministry of the Interior in Berlin announced that the re-registration of all asylum seekers registered in Germany had been completed. The spokesman pointed out that there may still be unauthorized people who have not reported to any authority and therefore could not yet be recorded. By comparing the data records stored in the KDS with the data stored in other IT systems, z. B. Detect criminals.

It is checked whether asylum seekers can be sent back to the EU country in which they first arrived under the Dublin procedure . In 2015, Germany submitted almost 45,000 takeover requests to other EU countries, but only just under 3,600 were carried out. Conversely, the other EU states sent around 3,000 asylum seekers to the Federal Republic. In view of around 442,000 asylum applications filed in Germany, the relief for 600 asylum seekers in 2015 was negligible.

Countries of origin and overall protection rate

Countries of origin of asylum seekers in Germany in 2015 (total protection rate in brackets)

The number of positive notices in relation to the total number of notices for all applicants from a certain country of origin is expressed as the total protection rate. In Germany, the total protection rate is calculated from the following positive notices:

Initial and follow-up applications for asylum and protection quotas by country of origin
rank Year 2015 Year 2016 Year 2017
Country of origin Requests Protection rate Country of origin Requests Protection rate Country of origin Requests Protection rate
1 Syria 162,510 96.0% Syria 268,866 98.0% Syria 50,422 91.5%
2 Albania 54,762 0.2% Afghanistan 127,892 55.8% Iraq 23,605 56.1%
3 Kosovo 37,095 0.4% Iraq 97.162 70.2% Afghanistan 18,282 44.3%
4th Afghanistan 31,902 47.6% Iran 26,872 50.7% Eritrea 10,582 82.9%
5 Iraq 31,379 88.6% Eritrea 19,103 92.2% Iran 9,186 49.4%
6th Serbia 26,945 0.1% Albania 17,236 0.4% Turkey 8,483 28.1%
7th unexplained 12,166 80.2% unexplained 14,922 84.4% Nigeria 8,261 17.3%
8th Eritrea 10,990 92.1% Pakistan 15,528 3.3% Somalia 7,561 60.8%
9 Macedonia 14,131 0.5% Nigeria 12,916 9.9% Russian Federation 6.227 9.1%
10 Pakistan 8,472 9.8% Russian Federation 12,234 5.2% unexplained 4,444 50.6%
Top 10 390.352 54.9% 612.731 75.9% 147.053 57.3%
total 476,649 49.8% 745,545 62.4% 222,683 43.4%

Samples by the Quality Assurance Unit of the BAMF showed that in the majority of asylum applications no identity determination was carried out. The recognized refugees registered as Syrians and Iraqis also include citizens of other nations, e. B. Turkey.

There is also the rejection notice and the termination for formal reasons (such as the termination of proceedings because the applicant withdraws the application or another EU country is responsible). The reasons for recognition and rejection developed as follows on a quarterly basis:

The following decisions on asylum applications were made between 2015 and 2017:

2015 2016 2017
number % number % number %
Decisions overall 282,726 100 695.733 100 603.428 100
Legal status as a refugee 137.136 48.5 256.136 36.8 123.909 20.5
- including those entitled to asylum 2,029 0.7 2.120 0.3 4,359 0.7
Granting of subsidiary protection 1,707 0.6 153,700 22.1 98,074 16.3
Establishment of a ban on deportation 2,072 0.7 24,084 3.5 39,659 6.6
Rejection 91,514 32.4 173.846 25.0 232.307 38.5
Formal decision 50,297 17.8 87,967 12.6 109,479 18.1

Various German federal states took in refugees voluntarily as part of so-called humanitarian “special contingents”. These people - quota refugees - are not officially counted as asylum seekers and do not go through a recognition process in Germany. According to the State Ministry of Baden-Württemberg, such persons can take up training and work like EU citizens and stay in Germany permanently. The following were recorded:

Family reunification

Foreigners who have been granted asylum within the meaning of Art. 16a GG , refugee status or subsidiary protection are allowed to bring their immediate family to meet them. This includes the spouse and the unmarried minor children. For those entitled to subsidiary protection , the federal government only introduced the right to privileged family reunification in August 2015. This means that even for those entitled to asylum no proof of livelihood security and no proof of sufficient living space is required as a prerequisite for the entry of family members. This applies to the reunification of the spouse and minor unmarried children. In March 2016, this regulation was suspended for two years for all subsidiarists recognized from that month onwards. With the exception of cases of hardship, they are only allowed to apply for family reunification from March 2018. Around 150,000 people with subsidiary protection live in Germany. The Federal Constitutional Court ruled 30 years ago that Article 6 of the Basic Law did not establish a fundamental right to family reunification. Family asylum is regulated by law in Section 26 AsylG , the right to family reunification in the Residence Act .

The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) expected in 2016 that recognized Syrian refugees would bring an average of one relative per refugee as part of family reunification. Based on immigration by mid-2016, 500,000 Syrian family members were expected to join them. In the estimate, it was calculated on the basis of the initial applications that half of the Syrian refugees were minors or relatively young and unmarried and that part of the other half had already come to Germany with family members. The authority thus explicitly contradicted other prognoses, which assumed that three or four family members would join each recognized refugee. The Federal Government pointed out that due to the processing backlog at the BAMF and the resulting long application and processing deadlines, the immigration will extend over a relatively long period of time.

Researchers at the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) presented a detailed estimate of family reunification for the first time in October 2017 . According to this, around 120,000 people outside Germany should still have the right to family reunification in Germany according to the law applicable at the time. If the law were to be changed and the relatives of those entitled to subsidiary protection were also given this right, another 60,000 people would be entitled. The estimate is based on a survey of 4,800 refugees, on the basis of which the study calculates a reunification factor of 0.4 family members per refugee. According to the Federal Foreign Office, the estimate is very low. The IAB did not include any unaccompanied refugee minors in the study. However, according to the IAB, the number of those who can register a claim to reunification from March 2018, with the abolition of the restrictions, can increase by 50 percent.

The CSU expected family reunification of up to 750,000 people. In mid-2017 there were 40,000 foreigners entitled to asylum under the Basic Law, 550,000 recognized refugees and 152,000 beneficiaries of subsidiary protection in Germany. The final decision on the status of 550,000 asylum seekers had not yet been made.

The Federal Ministry of the Interior stated in mid-October 2017 that there was no reliable scientific data on family reunification. On November 14, 2017, the Federal Ministry of the Interior also stated that there were no sustainable verifiable figures on family reunification.

Green politicians argue that family reunification promotes the integration of refugees. If you have your family around you, you no longer feel alone and as a tolerated guest for a while and will integrate more easily into local society. Migration and integration experts doubt it. Experience with migrant guest workers of the first generation rather shows that family reunification creates parallel worlds separated from the rest of the population in which migrants live with their families. These problems would have worsened with the third generation living here. In addition, there is no permanent admission to Germany for persons entitled to subsidiary protection.

The first reading on family reunification took place in the Bundestag on January 19, 2018 . The Bundestag deliberated on a draft law by the CDU / CSU, with which the suspension of family reunification for persons with subsidiary protection (until March 17, 2018) decided in Asylum Package II is to be extended until this is re-regulated by the government still to be formed.

In February 2018, the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung summarized that the executive federal government did not have an overview of how many family members of refugees living in Germany want to apply for family reunification or how many of them have already come to Germany.

On February 1, 2018, the German Bundestag decided, with the votes of the Union and the SPD, to continue to suspend family reunification for refugees with subsidiary protection until August 1, 2018. In addition, it was decided to allow 1,000 relatives of subsidiary protection to reunite every month from August 2018 on “for humanitarian reasons”; there are also "hardship cases". The Federal Council approved the corresponding amendment to the law on March 2, 2018.

Migration statistics

Immigration 1991–2016 (data from destatis.de and destatis.de )

In Germany are seeking protection in principle notifiable and consequently in the migration statistics of the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) taken into account; however, they are not recorded and verified separately. Alternatively, an approximate determination of the asylum seekers by nationality and country of origin is possible.

Destatis admitted in 2017 that there was likely to have been an under-reporting of those seeking protection in 2015 . This cannot be quantified, as it was not possible for the registration authorities to record all those seeking protection in a timely manner in 2015. In addition, incorrect bookings, but also double entries in connection with the distribution of asylum seekers within Germany, were possible.

Migration statistics 2015 - According to a tabular migration balance from Destatis from 2017, a total of around 2,137,000 people immigrated to Germany in 2015, including around 2,016,000 foreigners. In addition to immigrants from the European Union and labor migrants from third countries, more and more people seeking protection from war and crisis countries have recently migrated . The migration surplus from the recognition of immigration and emigration only foreign individuals over the borders of Germany puts Destatis for 2015 with approximately 1,157,000 people.

At the end of September 2016, Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière corrected the number of officially registered asylum seekers in 2015 from around 1.1 million to around 890,000. 441,899 seeking protection presented in 2015 at the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees an initial application for asylum (BAMF). This figure was reported to Destatis by the BAMF for the immigration of asylum seekers in 2015 and is also used in the immigration diagram 1991–2015 shown above .

The number of inhabitants in Germany for 2015 is given by Destatis at around 82.2 million, including around 9 million foreigners with permanent or temporary residence rights . These persons were citizens of states of the European Union , refugees already recognized under asylum law or had applied for asylum . 200,000 people who were in Germany in 2015 did not have a residence permit and were therefore “legally obliged to leave the country”. However, 150,000 of these people who were required to leave the country could not be forced by the state to leave the country because there were legally relevant reasons that prevented them from leaving - e. B. Illness, pregnancy or threat in their home country. Your stay in Germany was therefore tolerated under the law of residence. As of November 30, 2015, exactly 50,227 people were required to leave the country without toleration . According to statistics from the Federal Ministry of the Interior, 20,888 of the foreigners required to leave the country were deported in 2015 ; in 2014 the figure was 10,884. Most of the foreigners asked to leave Germany left voluntarily - partly thanks to funding programs. In 2015, a total of 58,108 persons obliged to leave Germany left the Federal Republic. However, there are no reliable controls as to whether people who have left voluntarily have actually left. The federal state of Bremen, for example, distributes border crossing certificates that are handed in at the border inspection post by those leaving. Only 59.1% of those who allegedly leave the country voluntarily return border crossings certificates. In many other federal states, the response rate is not even statistically evaluated.

The migration surplus increased especially for people from the non-EU countries Syria (from 66,000 to 298,000), Afghanistan (from 11,000 to 80,000), Iraq (from 4,000 to 60,000), Pakistan (from 7,000 to 20,000) and Albania ( from 12,000 to 47,000); that for people from Serbia decreased from 15,000 to 7,000.

Migration statistics 2016 - The Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) estimates that at the end of 2016 the population was around 82.8 million people. According to Destatis , around 10 million people with exclusively foreign citizenship were recorded in the Central Register of Foreigners (AZR) at the end of 2016 . 1.6 million of them were registered as refugees at the end of 2016 ; that was 16% of the foreign population. The number of people seeking protection has increased by 851,000 (+ 113%) since the end of 2014. 392,000 foreigners are not taken into account, as these are not clearly registered in the AZR as persons seeking protection . 64% of those seeking protection were male. The people seeking protection were on average 29.4 years old.

In 2015 and 2016 alone, the number of the foreign population increased by 1.886 million (23.1%), with the migration surplus having the largest share in this development. The birth surplus of the foreign population (balance of births and deaths) amounted to 98,700 people in the period 2015–2016. Since the beginning of 2015, 229,800 people have been deleted from the AZR due to naturalization . The number of foreigners from non-EU countries registered in the AZR increased by 1.279 million from the beginning of 2015 to the end of 2016; in the period from 2007 to 2014, however, only 879,400 new entrants were registered. The increase from 2014 to 2016 was mainly based on immigration from Syria (+ 519,700), Afghanistan (+ 178,100) and Iraq (+ 138,500).

The Federal Statistical Office differentiates between those seeking protection according to their protection status . At the end of 2016, 573,000 (36%) asylum seekers still had an open protection status , 872,000 (54%) had a recognized protection status , which, however, was only temporary for 600,000. 158,000 asylum seekers with refused protection status - their asylum application had been rejected - were in principle obliged to leave the country. In the case of 118,000 (75%), however, the obligation to leave was temporarily suspended due to a toleration .

Around half of all those seeking protection came from three countries of origin: Syria (455,000), Afghanistan (191,000) and Iraq (156,000). Most of those seeking protection with an open protection status came from Afghanistan (129,000), most with recognized but temporary protection status came from Syria (347,000). The main countries of origin of those seeking protection with a recognized protection status for an unlimited period were Russia and Iraq (each around 31,000 people). Most of those seeking protection with refused protection status came from Serbia (17,000) and Albania (15,000).

See also

Current documents

literature

Web links

Commons : Refugee Crisis in Germany 2015  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Official pages

Unofficial Pages

Individual evidence

  1. German Bundestag, Drucksache 19/3648 Efficient and sustainable control of the causes of flight
  2. Federal Agency for Civic Education : Figures on asylum in Germany . As of August 8, 2018; accessed on September 17, 2018.
  3. Jochen Oltmer: Migration. History and future of the present. Darmstadt 2017, pp. 234–237.
  4. Luft 2016, p. 44.
  5. Georg Blume, Marc Brost, Tina Hildebrandt, Alexej Hock, Sybille Klormann, Angela Köckritz, Matthias Krupa, Mariam Lau, Gero von Randow, Merlind Theile, Michael Thumann and Heinrich Wefing: Opening the border for refugees: What really happened? In: Zeit Online. August 22, 2016. Retrieved December 29, 2018 .
  6. Marina Münkler and Herfried Münkler 2016, p. 219 f.
  7. Herbert Stettberger: "Ms. Merkel invited me"! ? , Lit Verlag, Berlin, 2017, ISBN 978-3-643-13734-0 , pp. 78, 79
  8. ^ Gabler Wirtschaftslexikon, refugee crisis
  9. What to do with the many refugees? The Dublin system no longer works. In: n-tv.de. July 26, 2015, accessed November 7, 2015 .
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  12. Anna Reimann, Severin Weiland: Syrian refugees in Bavaria: How a rumor lured thousands onto the trains. In: Spiegel Online. September 1, 2015, accessed September 10, 2015 .
  13. a b Accommodation in Germany: Upper Bavaria expects up to 10,000 more refugees . In: Spiegel Online. September 7, 2015, accessed October 29, 2015 .
  14. Hundreds more refugees are expected in Munich. In: Westfalenpost. September 6, 2015, accessed November 4, 2015 .
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  495. a b c The EASY initial registrations come from figures on asylum in Germany from the bpb and for asylum applications from the Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI) “Asylum business statistics” 2015 , current figures from the BAMF, February 2016 ( Memento from 30 May 2015 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF ) The March value 2016 for the new registrations, ~ 20,000, comes from an article of the dpa from April 5, 2016. The values ​​for 2016 come from the BAMF "Current Numbers 12/2016" Erst- u. Follow-up applications.
  496. a b Office and Dignity . In: Der Spiegel No. 23, June 4, 2016, p. 55.
  497. ^ Regina Jordan: Giving Refugees Perspectives - Integration through Education and Qualification. Orientation of the integration courses of the BAMF. (PDF) In: bildungsverband.info , January 26, 2016, p. 3.
  498. FAZ September 8, 2015 / Eckart Lohse: "Not quite EASY"
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  501. Figures on asylum in Germany from the bpb (the figures are updated monthly); 2017 figures from BAMF asylum business statistics
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  503. Federal Ministry of the Interior: 2015: More asylum applications in Germany than ever before. Press release from January 6, 2016.
  504. Mittelbayerische Zeitung according to dpa of March 3, 2016, p. 1 and p. 6
  505. Very high asylum access in September. BAMF, October 7, 2015; So many refugees are in Germany. In: FAZ , October 2, 2015
  506. High asylum access in November 2015. Press release by the Federal Ministry of the Interior , December 4, 2015.
  507. a b c “It works”. Number of refugees corrected from 1.1 million to 890,000. In: Spiegel Online , September 29, 2016
  508. a b Germany corrects the number of refugees for 2015. In: WeltN24 , September 30, 2016 (→ Irregular residents cannot be counted ).
  509. zeit.de October 11, 2016 / Philip Faigle and Karsten Polke-Majewski: Disclose the dates! ( Comment )
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  511. Current figures on asylum - as of December 2015 ( Memento from December 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF, section: The ten countries of origin with the most access ). Source: Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) - Statistics from January 12, 2016 (provided on: Current Asylum Figures (12/2015) ( Memento from December 6, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) BAMF Infothek)
  512. Current figures on asylum (12/2015). ( Memento of December 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF) BAMF , January 12, 2016 (see decisions and decision rates since 2006 in time periods ).
  513. a b Family reunification is increasing sharply. Zeit Online , January 19, 2017.
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  517. 280,000 asylum seekers in 2016. BMI News, January 11, 2017.
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  529. 14,289 asylum seekers in February 2017. Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI), March 9, 2017.
  530. Almost 9,000 illegally entered people since the beginning of the year. In: Welt.de , March 22, 2017.
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  555. Very high asylum access in September. Website of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF), as of October 7, 2015
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  558. Personalization infrastructure component
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  561. ^ A b Roland Preuß: Authorities can no longer find more than 130,000 asylum seekers. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , February 29, 2016.
  562. Re-registration of refugees completed. Sächsische Zeitung (print edition) / dpa , January 7, 2017, p. 2.
  563. The EU needs new enthusiasm. In: Frankfurter Rundschau , December 29, 2015.
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  572. a b c What is family reunification about? Tagesschau , January 10, 2018
  573. a b c The explorers argue most about the numbers for family reunification. In: Die Welt , November 7, 2017.
  574. Family reunification of Syrian refugees. ( Memento from November 30, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF), June 8, 2016.
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  577. Lower family reunification of Syrian refugees than expected. In: Deutsche Welle , June 8, 2016, accessed June 10, 2016.
  578. Family reunification: 150,000 to 180,000 spouses and children of refugees with protection status live abroad. Institute for Employment Research (IAB), October 19, 2017
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  580. a b Interior Ministry does not want to give any figures on family reunification. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , October 20, 2017.
  581. Family reunification: 150,000 to 180,000 spouses and children of refugees with protection status live abroad. IAB of October 19, 2017, page 17.
  582. Thomas Röll: The crux of the matter is family reunification. , Bayernkurier , November 17, 2017.
  583. Jamaica juggles with 40 billion euros. Handelsblatt (Online), November 16, 2017, p. 2 (→ Kretschmann's little outburst of anger ).
  584. Quarrel with many strangers. Tagesschau , November 14, 2017.
  585. ^ Free Germany: Jean Pütz on Greens and family reunification. October 20, 2017. Retrieved September 9, 2018 .
  586. Family is not always good. Zeit Online , November 17, 2017
  587. Bundestag debate on family reunification. (Video) tagesschau.de , January 20, 2018
  588. Regulate family reunification - but how? tagesschau.de , January 20, 2018.
  589. Bundestag advises on family reunification - Union wants interim solution. Shz.de / dpa , January 19, 2018.
  590. Martin Ferber: Is Berlin Walling Up When Family Reunions? Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung from February 17, 2018.
  591. Bundestag suspends family reunification until the end of July. Zeit Online February 1, 2018.
  592. "You save yourself over a few months". Spiegel Online February 1, 2018.
  593. Family reunification remains suspended, from August the upper limit will apply. Spiegel Online, February 1, 2018.
  594. New regulation for refugees - Federal Council approves family reunification. tagesschau.de , March 2, 2018.
  595. a b as protection seekers are from the Federal Statistical Office designated foreign (Destatis) citizens residing in Germany on humanitarian grounds, for. B. People who are still in the asylum procedure, recognized refugees according to the Geneva Convention, beneficiaries of subsidiary protection and rejected asylum seekers who are still in Germany. Among the asylum seekers specifically includes the foreigners
    • who are in Germany to conduct an asylum procedure (asylum seekers with open protection status),
    • for whom a temporary or permanent protection status has been recognized (protection seekers with recognized protection status),
    • who are staying in Germany after being rejected in the asylum procedure or after losing their humanitarian residence permit (persons seeking protection with a refused protection status).
  596. The migration statistics include all immigration and emigration across municipal or federal borders with relocation of the main or sole residence in the reporting period. (Source: Destatis ( Quality Report Hikes 2016 (PDF)))
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  598. Statistical data on refugees. Federal Statistical Office 2017, accessed on November 18, 2017 (see migration statistics )
  599. a b Migration between Germany and abroad 1991 to 2015. (Table from 2017) Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), accessed on November 25.
  600. ^ New in Germany - Sociodemographic Characteristics of Immigrants. Federal Institute for Population Research (BiB), April 13, 2016.
  601. Migration surplus (a positive migration balance, net immigration) arises when the number of immigrants outweighs the outflows. (Source: Destatis )
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  605. a b Sven Siebert: The number of deportations doubled in 2015. In: Sächsische Zeitung (print edition), January 20, 2016, p. 2.
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  607. "Voluntarily left" can also mean submerged. In: Die Welt , March 17, 2016
  608. 2015: Highs in immigration and migration surplus in Germany. Federal Statistical Office , press release No. 246 of July 14, 2016.
  609. a b c 1.6 million people in need of protection in Germany at the end of 2016. Federal Statistical Office , November 2, 2017 (press release no. 387).
  610. List of non-EU countries. European Commission , as of November 17, 2017.
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