Thousands of Syria migrants may take family into Germany

AROUND 270,000 Syrians in Germany have the right to bring in their family members, a newspaper has claimed – a statistic that could fuel the debate about migration less than six months before a national election.

Mass-selling tabloid Bild cited a government paper as showing a total of 431,376 Syrians applied for asylum in Germany in 2015 and 2016.

It said that of those, 267,500 would be entitled to family reunifications in Germany.

That could play into the hands of the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which has lost support in recent months as the refugee issue recedes from the headlines ahead of the September 24 election.

Senior AfD member Alexander Gauland said it was “absolute madness” to allow so many people to bring their families to Germany: “Billions and billions of tax money are being swallowed and the social state is being steered towards breakdown while our eyes are wide open.”

Neither the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) nor the Interior Ministry immediately responded to requests for comment on the report.

In 2016, the government decided to suspend family reunifications for two years for migrants who get “subsidiary protection” – granted to people who are not considered as being persecuted individually but in whose home country there is war, torture or other inhumane treatment.

Syrians are the biggest group of asylum applicants in Germany.

In 2016, some 280,000 migrants arrived in Germany, a sharp drop compared with 890,000 the previous year.

Bild said while there were no numbers for 2017 yet, the federal police had already caught more than 20,000 illegal migrants on the borders in the first three months of this year.

Separately, the German cabinet on Wednesday approved a draft law that would prevent child marriages conducted abroad from being recognised in Germany.

It says marriages should automatically be void if at least one of the partners was younger than 16 at the time they wed.