Sunday, February 4, 2018

A Migration Story

There are hundreds of ways to describe the migration and immigration crisis 'process' as screwed-up in Germany, and Focus (the German news magazine) came to list out just another negative piece of the whole story.

As one arrives in Germany, there's paperwork for the permanent visa that must be filled out, and various questions asked.  You, the applicant, then go into a waiting pattern....until an administrator confirms your ID and then resolves the big question of giving you a permanent status. 

Right now today, there are 57,693 asylum procedures open.  The German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (Bamf) quietly works away and tries to whittle these down.

What they admit is that about every fourth application has problems and issues, and the approval/disapproval time will be a minimum of 15 months.  They don't discuss much over the other 75-percent, but one would assume that almost none of these come near 90 days.

During this whole period (even past the 15 months)....who pays the benefits and social assistance?  Well....the individual state. 

Focus points out that roughly 14,000 cases are in the more than 15-month 'bucket', and that's a cost factor of 33 million per year.

One example given by Focus is a family unit of 10 members....who get 7,300 Euro per month while waiting to be approved by the government. 

The millions paid out to folks in waiting status who were eventually disapproved?  That's not really covered and I doubt if anyone wants to discuss the number in public.  When you go back to the 1980s and the old method (you had to apply in your home-country and be approved before arriving in Germany)....there was no huge cost situation for the West German government. 

The possibility of speeding up this process, and going past 15 months?  The office that approves the visas will tell you that they'd added more people and found some process methods to trim or cut already.  It's just a huge number of people lined up....with a fair number of them lacking identification, and it makes the whole process more difficult. 

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