Germany: 280,000 new migrants last year, far lower than 2015
BERLIN — Germany saw about 280,000 new asylum-seekers arrive last year, less than a third of the previous year’s huge influx of 890,000, the interior minister said Wednesday.
While new arrivals declined, Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said that the number of rejected asylum-seekers who left Germany was up — though still not to authorities’ satisfaction. In total, 80,000 people either left voluntarily or were deported, he said.
Arrivals declined sharply with the closure of the Balkan migrant route in March and the subsequent agreement between the European Union and Turkey to stem the flow across the Aegean Sea to Greece.
Asylum applications have lagged well behind arrivals and many people who came to Germany in 2015 applied only last year.