The influx and quantity of refugees in Germany is currently higher than in 2015 and 2016, when this influx was visualized by human columns passing from Syria through Turkey and the Balkans. Now there are no such columns, but there are statistical data, the understanding of which will require an additional philological exercise.
Special status for refugees from Ukraine
At first glance, the scene is even quite calming. This is how the German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge) outlined it in its report for the year 2022:
The service has calculated how many asylum requests it received in which year. Yes, the number of 224,000 requests received in 2022 was twice as high as the 120,000 requests in 2020, but it was a Covid-19 year with restrictions on the movement of people, in which the accumulated migration potential is now being realized with a delay of a few years. However, compared to the already mentioned years of influx of refugees, the year 2022 looks extremely decent. 224 thousand is twice less than 477 thousand in 2015 and three times less than 745 thousand in 2016!
However, the statistics of the German Migration Service for the past year no longer reflect reality, as all the cards have been mixed up by Russia’s attack on Ukraine. This caused millions of people to flee Ukraine. The European Union granted all of them the right of residence in the EU member states with one decision of the European Commission, or order for the EU member states to grant them the right of residence without the usual asylum application processing procedures. In the parlance of German bureaucrats, a division was created between “Verteidigungsuchende” from Ukraine and “Flüchtlinge” from the rest of the world.
A flood of words against the influx of refugees
Correct and even beautiful words about the reception of refugees, unfortunately, cannot replace a shelter, where they can stay if they are considered to be accepted, even temporarily, while their asylum requests are being processed. And then it turns out that 224 thousand should be added to one million, getting almost twice the number of 745 thousand in 2016. It is even surprising that shelters for refugees are still being found in Germany, although since the turn of the last year, the permanent residents of all German TV channels are burghers with stories that they can still find only a few free places in their municipalities in hotels that are not usually open during the winter season (including river cruises ships), with which the reception possibilities will be exhausted within a couple of weeks. Not only weeks, but also months have passed without such speeches, during which the stream of refugees flows and the total number of refugees grows, while the level of the flood of words from politicians and journalists rises even faster. And the tourist season is approaching, when the summer residences of tourists should be freed from their temporary residents, for which there are almost no chances.
In this case, we should only talk about refugees, excluding Ukrainians, whose influx this year is relatively small. However, the flow of refugees suddenly doubled last fall and remained at that level until at least March. The following data is also visualized in the 2022 annual report of the German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees:
As can be seen, the influx of refugees doubled from 13 thousand in July last year to a record 30 thousand in November and 26 thousand in December. The most recent reports say that the service received 87.7 thousand asylum requests in the first three months of this year, of which 27.7 thousand in March.
Germany is still somehow coping with this situation, because the reception of refugees there is a concern with an annual turnover of more than 4 billion euros, as shown in the report of the migration service. It is likely that it is only a part of the total amount of expenses, in the formation of which the EU, municipalities, public organizations and private individuals also participate. Interior Minister Nancy Feser has become one of the most slandered figures in Germany, because she pretends that there are enough resources to accept refugees.
A suspicious case on the border between Belarus and Poland
The technical performance of doubling the flow of refugees is not clear. German journalists have tried to study it. In one case, a nineteen-year-old Afghan gave them some episodes filmed with a mobile phone during an eight-day trip from Kabul to Dresden: by plane to Moscow and then to Minsk, through the forest across the border between Belarus and Poland, and in a car (pictured is a shot of getting into this car) to go to Germany in the hands of the German authorities. People smugglers took six and a half thousand euros for organizing the trip. It is strange that the episodes he filmed and narrated did not include climbing over or through the fence, which is considered to be built on the border between Belarus and Poland. Maybe he didn’t know exactly which country’s borders he crossed, maybe the Poles are trading the right to walk around the fence, or maybe he is reminding the Germans of their debts to the Poles, which, according to the Poles, have remained since the Second World War.
Other scenes include boating across the Mediterranean through winter storms and the horror of yet another refugee boat capsizing and people drowning. However, more and more of them are appearing in Germany.
Who will show the way to Latvia?
As their salvation, the Germans are trying to see either the protection of the external borders of the EU, or the restoration of border control within the EU and the Schengen area, or the redistribution of refugees more evenly among all EU member states. The Germans are convinced that in no other country do refugees enter as easily as in Germany. Another thing is that refugees in Europe do not know any other country at all. At least the English and French would have something to object to the last consideration, but we have to agree that there are few or no people who want to get from Afghanistan to Latvia. Such people could end up in Latvia in somewhat noticeable numbers if Germany sent them here. If the distribution of the countries of origin of such a shipment corresponded to the distribution of the refugees who reached Germany, then the top places of the countries of origin would be shared by Syria with 32%, Afghanistan with 16% and Turkey with 12% after the results of 2022.
The EU bureaucracy does not work so efficiently that its response to the influx of refugees since last fall could be considered the use of 42 million euros agreed by the “Independent” on November 4 for the reception of refugees in Latvia. It is likely that the 60-page document was drawn up since the time when not 30, but 15,000 refugees per month seemed a lot to the Germans and they were looking for ways to divert this flow to others. This does not exclude the possibility that the situation at the end of last year hastened putting an end to planning. Let Latvia get the money and justify receiving it.
We have entered the shadow of 2016
The idea of redistributing the burden of refugees was tried already in 2015/2016. year. Burden sharing started with money sharing. Latvia thus received 14.9 million euros and refugees only for such a long time that the state authorities would bring them here and then ask them to disappear from here as soon as possible, preferably in the direction of Germany. In this way, Latvia got money, the real use of which can be thought of in different ways. From today’s point of view, it can be seen that the management of the refugees’ money has served as a training exercise for the management of covid money in such amounts, compared to which the current 42 million euros is petty cash.
There are enough skills and people willing to deal with 42 million in the same way as with 14.9 million, but there is no guarantee that the European institutions will look at the management of money as leniently now as they did then. Maybe Latvia will be forced to demonstrate the reception of refugees, at least in the same way that Poland had organized the attractions of not allowing refugees (in the picture).
