Spiral of BamF

There's a decent article over at Focus this morning (the news magazine) which talk about the issue of 1,200-odd asylum applications which were approved in a fraudulent manner by the German BamF agency (they handle all the paperwork for asylum and immigration).  An investigation continues, and I suspect we will go far beyond the 1,200 cases....maybe even on up to 12,000 cases (my hunch) in the end.   I recommend reading over the article, which will bring up to date over the Bremen episode.

What really happened here?  I will sum it up in forty lines.

Prior to 2013, the Germans operated a 700-person agency (BamF) that knew on an average basis that they would have 250,000 folks appear and ask for immigration or asylum on a yearly basis.  Those folks.....always had IDs and part of the application process was simple because it was done in the applicant's home country, and the embassy folks would confirm part of the story.  I'll refer to this process as version 1.0.

You can figure the process in version 1.0 as being rather simple and the true number of man-hours that BamF had to devote as being probably less than twelve man-hours per applicant.  The existence of the true ID and the embassy background work saved countless hours.

As 2013 came, and the new applicants for immigration and asylum arrived.....a fair number had no legit ID, and they were simply walking into Germany.  I'll refer to this process as being version 2.0.

Background reviews and proving the true ID of the applicants?  That probably doubled and tripled the entire process.  Instead of dealing with 250,000 easy applicants.....by 2014 (end of the year), you were dealing with 450,000 folks, and I would take a guess that each applicant was eating up forty to sixty man-hours of time.  Stories didn't always prove to be true, and some folks were fraudulent in saying their age or nationality.

BamF was now under pressure.

By the end of 2015, they were up to near 950,000 (some even suggest 1.1 million).  I would call this era with BamF as the 3.0 version. They were beyond their capability.

The Merkel team?  They were of zero value to BamF, and actually causing the problem to be even worse.

My humble belief is that some BamF folks saw a mess without much relief, and between bribes and just willing nature to clear their plate as quickly as possible.....just gave into temptation and approved visas without much of a review. 

You can go back and blame the government for the open door policy but the BamF was kinda set to the pattern of an ID existing, and part of the review process being done in advance.  It's like loading sixteen people into a luxury-class Mercedes and expecting it to run at the same level when it had two people in it.