Newly released data from Germany’s federal government, controlled by the three-party, left-liberal ‘traffic light’ coalition, has revealed that the number of migrants seeking asylum in the country—excluding Ukrainian refugees—has climbed to levels not previously seen since the 2016 European migrant crisis.
The figures, released on Wednesday, January 11th, in a report by Germany’s Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF), indicated that the Federal Republic of Germany registered 217,774 first-time asylum applications in the year 2022, the most of any European Union member state. The number represents a 46.9% uptick compared to the previous year, and the highest number of applicants since 2016, the Hamburg-based newspaper Die Zeit reports.
The figure does not include the approximately one million Ukrainian refugees who have traveled to Germany following the onset of the Russo-Ukrainian war in February 2022.
As has been the case in years past, the vast majority of migrants seeking asylum came from the Middle East. Most came from Syria (70,974), Afghanistan (36,358), Turkey (23,938), and Iraq (16,000). Another 8,800 originated from the Republic of Georgia, a country in the Caucasus, which is presently involved in a frozen conflict with the Russian Federation.
According to a report from the Berlin-based newspaper Die Welt, the total number of migrants seeking asylum last year was the sixth highest recorded in Germany’s history. Numbers came close to, but did not exceed, the number of newcomers who arrived between 1991 and 1993, during the Balkan wars, or those who arrived during the European Migrant Crisis of 2015-16.
BAMF’s report comes weeks after an opinion survey, conducted by the Institute for New Social Answers (INSA), showed that 68.7% of Germans are deeply concerned by the left-liberal government’s open-border policy which has allowed massive numbers of unvetted asylum seekers to enter the country. The poll also revealed that while 48.4% of Germans said that migrants seeking asylum will alter the country for the worse, a mere 16.3% expressed the opinion that the newcomers would make Germany a better place.
