The German ambassador to Pakistan castigated the policies of Green Party Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, as the country accepts 1,000 Afghan refugees each month under a new scheme.
Germany received 244,000 asylum applicants in 2022, with officials now looking at plans to incentivise legal migration through schemes and transfer more of the burden to North Africa.
If projections are correct, the number of asylum seekers and Ukrainian refugees entering Germany over the years 2022-2023 will equal twice the population of Köln.
The news comes as asylum applications submitted across the European Union’s 27 member states in 2022 climbed to nearly one million, the highest number recorded since the European migrant crisis of 2015.
Austria, with its population of just under nine million, witnessed the largest percentage increase of any EU member state, logging 108,490 asylum applications last year compared to 39,930 registered in 2021.
“This government was elected, among other things, on a mandate to create a paradigm shift in migration policy. This requires many major changes,” Migration Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard (M) told members of the press.
The number of migrants seeking asylum last year was the sixth-highest recorded in Germany’s history, exceeded only by the number of newcomers who entered between 1991 and 1993, during the Balkan wars, and those who came during the European Migrant Crisis of 2015-16.
“It is quite clear that the increasing number of applications will continue in the foreseeable future,” Gregori suggested, insisting that the instability and threats that cause people to flee their homelands are, unfortunately, “not temporary.”
“Germany is dangerously approaching a tipping point. If the majority of the population has a migration background, our country will change significantly,” CDU lawmaker Stefan Heck said.
