Sharing Burdens: Germany to Urge Shift in EU Refugee Policy --- The number of asylum-seekers in Germany is growing rapidly and many towns and cities are struggling to house them. The country's interior minister is pushing for changes to the EU's refugee policies in an effort to share the burden across the continent. -- Recently, German Interior Minister Thomas de Mazière spent the better part of an hour patiently answering questions from high school and college students. Most of them were about development and asylum policy, with the students voicing extreme criticism of the policy whereby economic refugees are treated differently from those trying to escape political persecution. --- No matter how the problem is approached, though, it is clear is that the global refugee drama has arrived in Germany. In 2013, 130,000 people applied for asylum in Germany, close to one-third of all asylum applications in the European Union. This year, the number is expected to surpass the 200,000 mark, a surge reminiscent of a major wave of refugees that hit Europe in the early 1990s. Some cities don't know how to handle the influx, providing an opportunity for right-wing populists and their xenophobic sentiment. --- People are fleeing their home countries for a number of different reasons these days. It might be the civil war in Syria or the Islamic State terror in Iraq. They could also be fleeing the dictatorship in Eritrea or the threats and chaos in a failed state like Somalia. They flee poverty and discrimination in Serbia despite the fact that the country is already negotiating to become an EU member state. Thousands of people who would have a credible chance of being given the right to stay in Germany are being compelled to enter the country illegally. They entrust criminal smugglers, dare to make the perilous journey across the Mediterranean or they find other ways to penetrate Europe's highly fortified borders. -- Once in Germany they are confronted with Article 16 A, which stipulates that people faced with political persecution at home be granted the right to asylum. It includes no provisions for other factors that might drive people to flee their homes: hunger, droughts, crime, poverty or the lack of any prospects in a broken country. But that doesn't stop the refugees from coming and now the interior minister is being forced to come up with answers. --- Shortly after Germany's 1990 reunification, the number of asylum-seekers suddenly skyrocketed, largely the product of the wars in former Yugoslavia. In 1992, some 440,000 people applied for asylum in Germany, more than twice as many as have applied this year. The development contributed to an environment of fear that enabled the right-wing extremist Republican Party to gain seats in parliament in the state of Baden-Württemberg, with more than 10 percent of the votes and for the far-right German People's Union (DVU) party to win seats in Schleswig-Holstein. In Hoyerswerda and other towns in Germany, refugees were even attacked by rabid mobs, shocking the world and bringing shame on the entire country. -- The federal government at the time responded by drastically curbing the right to asylum. Refugees who had arrived from a "safe third country" were stripped of the right to asylum in Germany. Given that every single country that shares a border with Germany is considered to have that status, it means that "the only way a refugee could still apply for asylum in Germany would be to land here by parachute," criticized the refugee advocacy organization Pro Asyl. -- But it is no longer possible for Germany to seal itself off as it did then. Refugees are now illegally crossing the German border in busses or on trains. They are then picked up, sometimes hundreds at a time, and taken to first admission facilities where the asylum process begins. In 2013, 130,000 people submitted asylum applications in Germany. In Italy, which is regularly in the international headlines for refugee catastrophes near Lampedusa, only 30,000 people applied during the same period. --- Few Granted Asylum -- Very few of those who apply are ultimately granted the right to asylum in Germany. This year, it was a paltry 1.6 percent. A further 20 percent, such as those from Iraq, are recognized as refugees under the rules of the Geneva Convention. A further 7 percent are permitted to remain temporarily for other reasons. In total, only about one-quarter of all asylum-seekers are allowed to stay in the country. So far in 2014, that has meant that a total of around 22,000 of the 79,000 cases processed have been allowed to remain. The rest have had to leave. -- Read More, SPIEGEL Staff, http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/germany-to-urge-shift-in-eu-refugee-policy-a-993076.html