The German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer is planning a new law to manage migration which is expected to be passed by the German cabinet in April 2019. The new law will seek to get tough on asylum seekers who lied about, or tried to obscure, their real identities in the hope of obtaining asylum.
The number of first-time asylum applications in the European Union has fallen to 580,845, Eurostat has reported. At the height of the migrant movements into Europe in 2015, asylum applications exceeded 1.2 million.
Have thousands of war criminals sought asylum in Germany in recent years? A newspaper report alleges authorities failed to investigate a large amount of leads they received at the height of the refugee crisis.
The processing time for asylum applications in Germany has dropped to six months on average, the German government said. Opposition party The Left criticized the duration of the procedures, which the government had intended to take no longer than three months.
The German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees noted in its latest statistics that there was a significant rise in the numbers of people seeking asylum in Germany from the Americas in 2018.
Germany's refugee office could be given four years instead of three to recheck asylum approvals. The government has also paved the way for a new law to better facilitate the exchange of asylum seekers' data.
The Dutch coalition government has agreed a compromise deal granting asylum to several hundred young migrants who have been in the Netherlands for at least five years. The deal reached late on Tuesday enabled the government to avoid a political crisis.
When Belgium signed up to the UN Migration pact in December, the Prime Minister said he wanted to be 'on the right side of history.' At the same time, the government has faced criticism for 'stigmatizing and criminalizing' migrants.
Most asylum seekers at the Schweinfurt anchor center in Bavaria don't have good chances of being allowed to stay in Germany. They come from countries with a low 'protection rate' — regardless of the personal suffering many of the migrants have endured to make it to Europe. InfoMigrants visited the center and talked to its residents.
The Spanish Ombudsman has opened ex officio action before the General Commissariat for Foreigners and Borders as a reaction to the long delays people seeking to register an asylum application in Madrid face.
In Switzerland, faster asylum procedures introduced several years ago have led to fewer 'unjustified applications', authorities say. But a Swiss asylum lawyer argues that the system as a whole is far from efficient.
Germany should adopt asylum procedures similar to those in Switzerland and the Netherlands, a migration expert says. Dietrich Thränhardt says fewer migrants would claim asylum in Germany if the system were faster and more efficient.