Germany, which has for two years been Europe’s leading destination for asylum seekers, is planning to toughen its immigration laws as it struggles to deal with a growing influx of new arrivals.
While Greece and Italy have called for more European funding to help deal with the flow of immigrants arriving on their shores, Germany is readying steps to tighten rules for applicants from three Balkan states.
The Bundesrat upper house of parliament is due to debate draft legislation later this month that would make it easier for authorities to deport asylum seekers from the formerly war-ravaged states of Serbia, Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Berlin says it wants to focus instead on refugees from more dangerous warzones, such as Syria and Iraq.
Legislators in the lower Bundestag have already approved the measure, which is opposed by human rights organizations.
Ministers from Germany’s 16 regional states held two days of discussions on the issue, ending on Friday.
Thuringia State Interior Minister Joerg Geibert said the measure aimed to cover asylum seekers whose request “is obviously unjustified.”
After a surge in applicants in recent years, Berlin has argued that the three Balkan states are safe and that citizens do not face persecution, torture, arbitrary violence or inhumane or humiliating treatment.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said efforts now needed to be focused on refugees fleeing current hotspots.
“We must watch that we concentrate on refugees who urgently need help or for whom there are grounds for asylum, such as people from Syria,” she told the Maerkische Allgemeine regional newspaper.
Serbs, often from the impoverished Roma minority, are among the biggest groups of asylum seekers in Germany.
Even if their requests end up being rejected, they receive benefits while their applications are being considered — possibly for several months — that often exceed what they can hope to earn back home.
Petra Follmar-Otto of the German Institute for Human Rights said all the measures boiled down to a “restrictive” policy on asylum law that would “seriously change the way in which one deals with people who are looking for protection.”
Since the end of 2010, the number of asylum requests in Germany has soared.
For the past two years, Europe’s biggest economy has attracted more asylum requests than any other nation in the EU.
Last year, requests jumped 64 percent to 127,023, according to German government data, making up 29 percent of the total number of requests registered in the EU.
The long and bloody conflict in Syria has seen the number of Syrian asylum requests in Germany increase almost threefold since the start of the year, while those from Iraqis has doubled.
Many of the refugees have made a perilous journey across the Mediterranean and eventually arrive in big cities such as Berlin where centers are already feeling the strain.
About 6,141 refugees had arrived in the German capital by late last month, more than the figure for the whole of last year.
The German Institute for Human Rights has complained about conditions in some centers, while the Pro Asyl organization says that such emergency solutions cannot drag on forever.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of