Outside of its official asylum program—and in addition to the illegal migrants, legal migrants, and Ukrainian refugees that continue to flow into the country—Germany’s left-liberal ‘traffic light’ coalition is quietly flying in some 4,000 migrants each month.
The figures, released by the ruling coalition following a request from the CDU/CSU faction in the Bundestag, revealed that from January to December of last year, between 3,100 and 4,700 migrants, most of whom were Afghans, were flown into Germany every month at the taxpayers’ expense, the Berlin-based newspaper Die Welt reports.
In its response to the parliamentary inquiry, the government stated that a total of 52,575 people were brought to Germany in this way between January 2022 and the end of March 2023.
After Afghans, many of whose safety has become uncertain in the wake of the Taliban takeover, the second largest group of newcomers are Syrian nationals, who are transferred to Germany by plane from Turkey in accordance with the 2016 EU-Turkey agreement.
The Union (CDU/CSU) was especially angered by the revelation that the ruling coalition has allowed—and continues allowing—governmental organizations (NGOs) to act as authorized offices for potential asylum seekers, determining which people are in physical danger in their home countries, which ones are not, and thus who is and who isn’t permitted to be flown to Germany.
When asked, leaders from the ‘traffic light’ coalition responsible for the program, however, gave little to no information about the NGOs, refusing to provide any names of the organizations. The CDU/CSU, for its part, has expressed deep concern that, for the first time, people who may or may not be facing physical danger in their own countries are being flown directly into Germany. In fact, according to a confidential letter from the German ambassador to Pakistan, Islamists are taking advantage of the program’s lack of scrutiny, and using it to enter the country when they otherwise could not.
Some 100 NGOs have been granted the authority by Federal Interior Minister Annalena Baerbock, who has described the scheme as an “unprecedented federal admissions program.”
