Growing Influx: Germany Caught Off Guard By Surge in Refugees

[unhappycamper]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/surge-in-refugees-catches-german-leaders-off-guard-a-979633.html



The German government is expecting around 175,000 people to file applications for asylum this year, the highest number in two decades. Regional politicians are acting surprised, but there have been signs of this development for years now.

Growing Influx: Germany Caught Off Guard By Surge in Refugees
July 07, 2014 – 05:40 PM

Last Friday, the state interior ministers of Germany's conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU) convened for a meeting at the stately Westin Bellevue in Dresden, with a view of the Elbe River and the baroque historic city center. But they weren't here to discuss the views -- the subject at hand was much grimmer: packed school gymnasiums, dwellings made out of shipping containers, cots and other logistical aspects of Germany's refugee crisis.

Part of the job of state interior ministers in Germany is to ensure that refugees who make their way into country are provided with acceptable accommodations. If you travel through Germany's cities, you can often see evidence that state governments haven't been doing their jobs well -- and that they've been overstrained by the sheer number of people seeking assistance, which has risen dramatically for months.

Officials had been hoping that Thomas de Maizière, Germany's federal interior minister and a member of Chancellor Merkel's CDU, might present a realistic solution at the Dresden meeting. Germany's federal parliament passed a new law penned by de Maizière on Thursday that defines Serbia, Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina -- the sources of a massive wave of refugees to Germany during the Balkan Wars of the 1990s -- as "safe countries of origin" and expedites the process of rejecting asylum applications for citizens from these countries.

Although de Maizière praised the law at the meeting, it is unlikely that it will be approved by the Bundesrat, Germany's second legislative chamber, which represents the interests of the states -- the CDU and SPD do not have a majority in the Bundesrat, and the Green Party has already expressed its displeasure with the proposed law. And even if it is approved, it isn't clear if the new rules can slow the influx of refugees.