Germany records a steep decrease in the number of asylum requests. According to the German interior ministry, there were over 30% fewer applications last year than in the 2019, this was announced January 10th.
According to the ministry, Germany recorded just over 76,000 first-time asylum applications requests last year, 31.5% fewer than in 2019. Most of the requests came from nationals from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Turkey.
According to Infomigrants the ministry said that a further 26,520 asylum applications were made for children under the age of one who were born in Germany to non-nationals. This brings the total number of applications to 102,581.
Germany’s Minister Horst Seehofer said the drop in asylum seekers could partly be attributed to the coronavirus pandemic. The pandemic caused a reduce in the rate of international travel to Germany by non-nationals
According to the ministry, it recorded just over 76,000 first-time asylum applications last year, 31.5% fewer than in 2019. Most of the requests came from nationals from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Turkey.
Moreover, while the overall recorded number of people who lost their lives trying to reach Europe in 2020 decreased, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), certain routes, in particular the Atlantic one from Africa to Spain’s Canary Islands, saw an increase in fatalities.
“Overall, the trend that more people die “within and en route to Europe” continues,” IOM said.
145,000 decisions made on asylum
In 2020, Germany’s Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) decided the asylum applications of 145,071 people, close to 40,000 fewer than in 2019. Of those,
- 26% (37,818) were recognised as refugees under the Geneva Refugee Convention;
- 4% fell under a deportation ban;
- 13% received subsidiary protection;
- some 32% of the asylum applications were rejected, and
- around a quarter (24.8%) of cases were terminated otherwise (e.g. withdraws their application or they are a Dublin case and sent back to the first EU country they arrived in to continue their application there);
- therefore, the overall protection rate was 43%
BAMF further said that around 52,000 asylum applications hadn’t been decided yet at the end of December, down from some 57,000 in 2019.
The 76,000 asylum applications submitted in 2020 are only roughly 7% of the more than 1.1 million applications Germany received in 2015 and 2016 during Europe’s so-called migrant crisis.
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