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Study: Asylum seekers' chances of staying in Germany vary dramatically by state

27.03.2017

Refugees' chances of gaining asylum in Germany depend not only on threats they may face back home, but also on which German state they live in, a study shows. Its co-author has criticized this as an "asylum lottery."

Asylum seekers in the German states of Saarland and Bremen are most likely to be granted asylum, according to a study published at the University of Konstanz on Monday. The two states' acceptance rates are 69 and 55.7 percent, respectively. Berlin and Saxony have the lowest acceptance rates: only roughly one in four is granted asylum here.

Such differences between the states led Gerald Schneider, a political scientist who co-authored the study, to criticize the application process in Germany as an "asylum lottery."

Refugees are assigned to states

Asylum seekers in Germany are not allowed to choose in which state they want to live and file an application. And although the responsibility for granting asylum officially lies with a federal agency - the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) - it is regional BAMF branches that are usually entrusted with such decisions.  

The study published by Schneider and co-author Lisa Riedel finds that the degree of difference from state to state varies depending on an asylum applicant's country of origin. While acceptance rates for Syrians are fairly similar across all 16 German states, acceptance rates for Iraqis or Afghanis differ widely.

Deportation to Afghanistan is controversial

In Lower Saxony, a large state in northwestern Germany, 75.5 percent of all applicants from Iraq were granted asylum from 2010 to 2015. In  the eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt, less than half as many Iraqis received asylum. In Germany's biggest state, North Rhine-Westphalia, 34.4 percent of all Afghani asylum seekers were granted the right to stay. In Brandenburg, that number was only 10 percent.

While Schneider and Riedel track only whether asylum seekers are granted the right to stay, deportation policies for rejected asylum seekers also vary from state to state.

The question of whether Afghanistan can be considered a "safe country of origin" has been particularly controversial as of late - some states have recently refused to carry out deportations to the civil-war torn nation.

More xenophobic attacks, more rejections

Schneider and Riedel suggest that local factors - including people's attitudes towards migrants - have a significant influence on the decision-makers in the regional branches of BAMF.

They found that the more xenophobic attacks were registered in a state, the more likely the local BAMF office was to reject asylum applications.

"A federal agency should be impartial in its decisions and not be influenced by sensitivities in the states," Schneider said. He and co-author Riedel proposed that BAMF guidelines should be stricter to limit agency officials' leeway in decision-making and that BAMF employees' decisions should be monitored more closely to secure equal treatment for asylum seekers, regardless of which state they filed in.

New arrivals fall, asylum requests soar in 2016
First-time applications in 2016

A total of 722,370 first-time applicants filed requests for political asylum in Germany in 2016, according to the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF). The number reflects a roughly 65 percent increase compared to the previous year, when the total number of new applications stood at 441,899.

New arrivals fall, asylum requests soar in 2016
Follow-up requests 33.3 percent lower

The number of follow-up applications, however, recorded a decline of 33.3 percent. In 2015, 34,750 second-chance asylum requests were filed with BAMF, whereas in 2016 the number fell to 23,175.

New arrivals fall, asylum requests soar in 2016
Total asylum requests 56 percent higher

Combined, the number of first-time and follow-up applications for 2016 stood at 745,545. In 2015, this number stood at 476,649. So, BAMF recorded a 56.4 percent net increase in the total number of asylum requests in 2016 compared with 2015.

New arrivals fall, asylum requests soar in 2016
Applications from Syrians, Afghans, Iraqis

The highest number of requests in 2016 were filed by Syrian nationals. According to BAMF’s report, people from the war-torn Middle Eastern state submitted 266,250 of the new applications (36.9 percent). Afghan nationals came in second, with 127,012 (17.6 percent), followed by Iraqis, who filed 96,116 asylum requests (13.3 percent) last year.

New arrivals fall, asylum requests soar in 2016
Other prominent countries of origin

People from Iran filed 26,426 applications (3.7 percent). Eritreans submitted 18,854 applications (2.6 percent). Albanians totaled 14,853 (2.1 percent), 14,484 people from Pakistan requested asylum (2 percent), and Nigerians submitted 12,709 applications (1.8 percent).

New arrivals fall, asylum requests soar in 2016
Young males make up majority of applicants

Nearly three-quarters of the applications filed in 2016 came from people younger than 30 years old. People aged between 18 and 25 filed 196,853 asylum requests, or about 23.5 percent of the overall total, making them the largest age group. The number of applications for children under the age of 4 stood at 78,192 (10.8 percent).

New arrivals fall, asylum requests soar in 2016
Almost 700,000 decisions reached in 2016

German authorities accepted 433,920 people of the 695,733 applications they decided on in 2016. The overall protection rate for all countries of origin amounted to 62.4 percent.

New arrivals fall, asylum requests soar in 2016
Crimes against refugee centers still high

Ranging from vandalism to arson, more than 900 attacks on refugee centers were recorded in Germany in 2016. The Federal Criminal Police Office reported that, out of the 921 recorded offenses, 857 were suspected to have had far-right motives. In 2015, 1,031 such offenses were recorded, 923 of which were suspected of having a far-right background.

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mb/tj (AFP, kna)