German asylum applications soar

BERLIN, Aug 19, (Agencies): Applications for asylum in Germany more than doubled in the first seven months of this year, government figures released on Wednesday showed, as concern grows over the country’s ability to cope with the record-breaking migrant influx.

From January to July, 218,221 people sought asylum in Germany, a 125percent rise from the same period in 2014. Asylum applications are rising by the month, with figures showing an increase of six percent since June.

Germany is the biggest recipient of asylum-seekers in the European Union, which has seen a huge inflow of refugees this year as they flee war and poverty in countries such as Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Eritrea.

Syrians continue to make up the largest group of applicants, but Germany has also seen a significant number of asylum-seekers from Balkan countries such as Albania and Serbia.

The latest figures came a day after coalition sources said the government would sharply raise its forecast for the number of asylum-seekers expected to arrive this year to a record-breaking 750,000.

The nation’s highest annual intake to date was 438,191 in 1992 when Germany accepted large numbers of refugees fleeing conflicts resulting from the break-up of the former Yugoslavia.

A year later, the German parliament changed the constitution to impose stricter rules on asylum. Numbers then sank to a low of 28,000 in 2008 before they started climbing again.

Meanwhile, they dress in shorts to blend in with the tourists, buy cheap life jackets and balloons to protect themselves and their belongings at sea and play cat and mouse with police over places to sleep.

They are among tens of thousands of Syrians who have descended on the Aegean port city of Izmir this summer before catching a boat to Greece, their gateway to the European Union.

Iraqis, Iranians, Afghans and others also pass through, part of the biggest global movement of refugees ever recorded.

Paying traffickers to smuggle him by sea in the dead of night is a “deal with the devil” that Alaaeddin, a Syrian who fled Aleppo after four years of war, says he has no choice but to make.

“I am afraid of the smugglers, men who take money from desperate people,” the 29-year old says, asking that his surname not be used because he fears for his safety. “But it is impossible for me to go back, and if I stay here, I fear I will be lost. I have to keep moving if I am to have a life.”

The crisis has dragged the wars of the Middle East to Europe’s doorstep, crippling depression-hit Greece and sapping Turkish resources as it cares for 1.9 million Syrians and 200,000 Iraqis.

Turkey has won international praise for its open-door policy on Syrians, making it the world’s leading host of refugees. But European Union Affairs Minister Volkan Bozkir warned in July that it was at capacity and that any new wave would end up pressing on Europe’s borders.

On any given day, as many as 5,000 migrants throng Izmir’s streets waiting for passage to Greece, aid groups say. By night, buses and trucks run them to remote coves, and at first light, they crowd into inflatable motor boats or rickety dinghies that ferry them to Greek islands less than 10 miles (16 km) away.

Worried about piracy, they carry little cash and seal passports and phones in balloons in the event boats capsize. Humanitarian “We are face-to-face with a humanitarian crisis on our streets that we cannot cope with. We’re unable to meet so many people’s needs for housing, food, water, hygiene and health,” says district mayor Sema Pekdas, adding those leaving for Europe are a small proportion of the 200,000 Syrians in Izmir.

Outside her office, families crowd the street, waiting to board buses to the shore.

Strife and persecution around the world displaced 59.5 million people — half of them children — last year, the greatest number ever recorded, the UN refugee agency UNHCR says. Millions more are fleeing poverty and instability for a better life in affluent but increasingly hostile Europe.

The so-called eastern Mediterranean route from Turkey has become the main gateway to Europe, according to Frontex, the EU border-management agency. A record 49,550 migrants reached the EU via Greece in July — more than in all of 2014, it says.

Hundreds of islands ensure calm waters in the azure Aegean Sea, offering safer passage than north Africa to Italy, where most of the more than 2,000 migrants who have drowned so far in 2015 perished.

But the Aegean can be treacherous. A boat overloaded with 31 Syrians sank on Tuesday, and six, including an infant, drowned.

Kos and Lesbos, normally tranquil Greek resorts, have been overwhelmed in recent weeks by migrants and refugees, who have at times clashed with one another and police.

The atmosphere is less bleak in Izmir’s rundown Basmane neighbourhood, where a half-millennium ago during the Ottoman era, Jews fleeing the Spanish Inquisition also found safety.

In related story, a Greek government-chartered ferry was transporting some 2,600 Syrian refugees to the Greek mainland on Wednesday, as islands struggling with an influx of migrants warned that the crisis is endangering public health.

The Eleftherios Venizelos left the island of Kos with some 1,700 Syrian refugees on board and was expected to arrive in the northern port city of Thessaloniki on Thursday morning, after calling at the islands of Kalymnos, Leros and Lesbos to pick up another 900 people.

The Syrians will be put on buses to the border with Macedonia, officials said.

“The situation is out of control,” Leros mayor Michalis Kolias said in a letter to the government, asking for help in getting hundreds of migrants off the island.

“The lives of irregular migrants and of the island’s residents and visitors are in danger,” Kolias said, pointing to health risks from overcrowding.