Germany has announced a tightening of its refugee policy, saying it is “not acceptable” that many refugees coming to the country are from Afghanistan and not Syria.
The German interior minister, Thomas de Maizière, said on Wednesday that, of the thousands of refugees and migrants arriving every day, the second highest number came from Afghanistan.
“Afghanistan is on the second place for the number of cases being handled. That is not acceptable,” he told journalists in Berlin after a cabinet meeting.
“We agree with the Afghan government that Afghanistan’s youth and middle class should remain in their country and take part in its reconstruction,” he said, claiming that an increasing number of those coming in recent weeks were from Kabul’s middle class, and that their departure threatened Afghanistan’s stability.
The government is under increasing domestic pressure to reduce the numbers coming to Germany, which it is estimated could reach 1.5 million by the end of the year. On Monday alone, a total of 11,154 refugees and migrants were picked up by German police, more than in the entire month of October so far.
Until recently it was widely accepted that Afghans, Iraqis and above all Syrians had a right to apply for asylum in Germany. The government, keen to show it is managing the refugee crisis, has also begun speeding up the process of deporting those back to countries considered safe, as well as halting its previous policy under which rejected asylum seekers were not deported back during the winter months.
The tougher rhetoric from Berlin also came as Austria, until now a critic of building fences to keep out refugees and migrants, announced plans to erect barriers along parts of its border, albeit insisting the move was meant solely to bring order to the flow of people entering the country.
No comments:
Post a Comment