Asylum Mess?

It was something that you could predict that would happen.

So as the massive asylum and refugee issue exploded in Germany in 2015....the whole BaMF apparatus (the agency controlling visas and applications) was determined to be undermanned (they had barely 700 individuals in the agency).  If you'd applied for asylum back in 2010....it typically took around six weeks for them to reach a decision, after ensuring your legit ID, your background, and your chief reason for asking for asylum in Germany.  By early 2015, it was taking six months, and in some cases....up to nine months.

So the Berlin crowd drilled down into BaMF and asked the question....shouldn't you add more manpower.  BaMF said no.  Reason?  It would take months to train the new people, and the bigger issue (they felt) was that you were going to get a bunch of new people into the approval process.

From the various levels of work in BaMF....you had the applications people who did all the homework, and then at the top level....a small group who did the peer-review of the case, and stamped it complete, and then said either 'yes' or 'no'.

So, today....Focus noted that there's now action that could undermine literally hundreds of thousands of disapproved asylum applications because of unqualified approval people.  Yep.....the court system is suggesting that those new people just weren't up to the job.

Adding to the episode is that the BaMF organization is letting some of the approval personnel go because they've reached a state where less applications are coming in and the agency doesn't want to keep the larger manpower.  Cost impact?  No one really says anything.

If they hadn't added the extra people and just going on?  I suspect by early 2016....you could have been looking at 12-to-14 months of waiting on some approval or disapproval to come with asylum applications.  For me, it's hard to imagine sitting around some camp or asylum center....for almost year, and then get the news that I'd been refused.  Go look across at 400,000-plus people who've been disapproved and they simply shake their heads over this suggested mess now.

The court system?  Even if they get heavily involved into this....who says that they'd be anymore qualified than the 130 new folks doing the process?  On top of that....the German court system isn't manned to handle this massive amount of processing...UNLESS, you hired new folks into the German court system.  Yeah....you'd go and do exactly what got BaMF into serious trouble, and just repeat this entire process.

This is typically an bureaucracy episode that German satirists would turn into a twenty-minute routine, and have an audience laughing till the curtain came down.  The asylum folks?  They aren't laughing.