A Numbers Story

The public TV news folks over at ARD (Channel One) did an interview with the chief of BamF (the German agency handling asylum and immigration).  It's an interesting statistic that he puts out there.

For 2019 (up to early October)....they had roughly 110k asylum requests (from people arriving in Germany and wanting a visa to stay). 

Here's the curious part of the story....roughly one-third of them had some type of reason or valid-nature for the asylum request.  The other two-thirds?  It didn't meet the common standards that the Germans have written down. 

Typically, you have to come from a nation in a civil war situation, being prosecuted for your religion or politics, or under some extreme threat.  If you come from a fairly safe country, and this is more of a economic 'escape' (meaning you want better living standards or a reliable job situation).....then the asylum idea doesn't work. 

In that case, you'd float a different type of request, and display German language capability, job background, college situation, or the ability to support yourself in Germany.  In this case, there's points involved, and a marginal score means no visa. 

So how does 2019 relate to 2018?  Right now....if you figure around 140,000 total requests for 2019....last year, it was a total of 160,000.  So it's slightly less.  You can't say the lesser number means anything....just that those folks took the risk of coming in or 'sneaking in', and this paperwork game by BamF was played out.

On the positive side, the rules (which have been in place for more than sixty years) are now being stressed and used on a daily basis.  Just walking in and claiming asylum.....doesn't really mean anything. 

There's always been two paths....one for the economic migrant, and one for the war refugee.  If you walked in from any westernized nation with two years in some nursing program (a certificate of some type), and some basic German language score....there's tons of jobs open for you and BamF would likely approve your visa.

However, if you came up and your work for the past decade has been selling melons off the street in Tunisia for your uncle, and speak no German at all....your odds of getting entry via economic migrant status is pretty much around zero. 

Most Germans, even those leaning toward the right-wing side, want a simple to explain visa program, which gets people with a dependable nature, a job-history, and unlikely to be on social welfare for more than a month or two. 

The problem here is that a smaller number of Germans just want a front-door wide-open system....which doesn't really evaluate people, and if you got 10,000 'problem-children' arriving in one year, who are on social welfare for three years or more, and continually in trouble with the police....that's all fine with them. 

Why the system is working at this point?  Mostly because both the CDU and SPD parties are in a slight bit of panic....neither can afford to lose voter's trust at this point.