Numbers of non-deported migrants in Germany keep rising

Since joining the Bundestag in autumn 2017, the AfD has requested this figure every quarter. Accordingly, the increase in the last quarter of 6 000 people was the strongest since the beginning of the query. The number has risen steadily since the end of December 2017 (228 859).

Of the 241 932 foreigners obliged to leave the country, some 166 464 either lacked papers, had an unexplained identity or had health reasons.

Most of the exiles come from Afghanistan (19 117) and Iraq (16 944). “The burden on our welfare state and social peace is getting heavier. These people should actually have been deported according to current legislation long ago,” Herrmann told the Berlin weekly Junge Freiheit.

Instead, the AfD member of the Interior Committee fears that they would remain in Germany due to the recently passed bill known as the Fachkräftezuwanderungsgesetz of the Federal Government. “Breach of law is first made acceptable and then subsequently legalized,” the police chief commented.

Germany spent a record 23 billion euros last year on helping to “integrate” more than one million asylum seekers and fighting the root causes of migration abroad, Reuters reported. That marks an increase of nearly 11 percent on the 20,8 billion euros that Germany spent in the previous year, a document prepared by the Finance Ministry showed.

Chancellor Merkel has repeatedly defended her 2015 decision to open German borders to hundreds of thousands of migrants, mainly from Muslim countries, as a “humanitarian necessity”, but has since vowed to prevent a repeat of such mass migration by tackling its causes.

The government spent a total of 7,9 billion euros in 2018 on measures aimed at keeping migrants outside the European Union and improving living conditions in their home countries – a 16 percent increase compared with 2017.

Germany’s 16 federal states, which are mainly in charge of funding housing and integrating the arrivals from countries such as Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, received 7,5 billion euros from the government last year, according to the report. This marked an increase of 14 percent.

Alice Weidel, parliamentary leader of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), criticised Merkel’s government for spending billions on migrants. “This is a costly welcome party at the expense of citizens.”

But Annette Widmann-Mauz, Minister of State for Migration, Refugees and Integration, called Weidel’s comments “stupid” and in bad taste. “Whoever dismisses humanitarian protection as a party has understood nothing at all,” she added.

In a new European survey, 41 percent of Germans say they would welcome more asylum seekers despite being the largest recipient of migrants during the height of the migrant crisis, while more than half of Swedes say they do not want to see the country take in more migrants, making it one of the most migration-sceptic nations.

Some 8 000 people in Germany, Poland, Spain, Hungary, Italy, Belgium, France and Sweden were asked a series of questions in the survey by YouGov, including:

“Do you agree with the statement: ‘My country should not receive more refugees from conflict areas.’?” to which 51 percent of the Swedish respondents said yes, Spanish newspaper El Pais reported.

While both Poland and Italy were tied with 53 percent, Swedes were more negative about the prospect than even Hungarians, at 49 percent.

More than one-third, 35 percent of the respondents across all of the countries surveyed, said that immigration was the most important issue facing the European Union today but only 14 percent said that the European Union had handled the migrant crisis in 2015 and 2016 well.