The Numbers Story

It's a page three story in Germany that won't be discussed much.  It's told by ARD (public TV, Channel One).

From January to May of 2018.....seventy-eight thousand (78,000) people came to apply for asylum in Germany.

If you go and estimate for all of 2018, that would lead around to 180,000 to 220,000 for the year......which is fairly close to the national average prior to 2013.  On that number, no one should really complain.  Well....almost.

To be honest, it's almost 12,000 fewer than the first five months of 2017.....which ought to be positive news as well.

But there's this one odd statistic in the system.  Out of this 78,000.....just over 18,000 were were noted already in the system, via the EU's Eurodac fingerprint system.

Yes, they'd already signed into one country....got up, and walked out.  So roughly a quarter of the 78,000 folks had already been signed in somewhere else in Europe.  By the Dublin Accords, they can't do it. 

This is part of the argument that the Interior Minister (Seehofer, CSU) is using.....respect the Accords, and force these people to return to the land that they signed into.  This is what Chancellor Merkel is saying.....disrespect the Accords and allow them to continue. 

Looking back....why did they go in the 1990s and start the Dublin Convention, which is what we have today in the Dublin Accords?  They were already thinking of a way to limit 'shopping-around' for asylum.  It was pretty simple.

How the public views it?  Maybe five years ago....Merkel might have had 80-percent of the public lined up and supporting her take on the problem.  Today?  I doubt if she can find more than a quarter of the population who still support the open-door vision that she has.  Oddly, in the 2017 election business....the news media and the two major parties....refused to discuss any of this business.  They were going to pretend that it wasn't a big deal.  Here we are, five months into this coalition, and obviously, it is a big deal. 

As for the 18,000?  By the Accords.....they should be forced back.  I have my doubts that this will occur.  If the Accords are stupid, then all Chancellor Merkel has to do (with SPD support) is dump the Dublin Accords.  If you don't want to respect them.....dump them.  But I doubt that they really want to do that either.