Migration stats weigh on German govt

Germany's Chancellor Olaf Scholz is coming under pressure to go through with pledges to tighten up the country's immigration laws after newly published figures from the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees showed a 51-percent rise in asylum applications made in the country in 2023.

In an interview with Der Spiegel newspaper last October, when quizzed on immigration, Scholz announced a variety of measures to make it harder to enter the country, and also vowed to be tougher on deporting people with no right to stay in the country.

"On the one hand, there is the immigration of workers that we need. And there are those who are seeking asylum because they are the targets of political oppression," he said. "On the other hand, though, that means that all those who don't belong to one of those groups cannot stay. That is why we are limiting irregular migration to Germany. Too many people are coming."

In 2023, 351,915 asylum applications were registered in Germany, a figure that Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said showed the country "must consistently continue our course to limit irregular migration".

A breakdown of the figures showed that of the asylum applications, the largest number — 104,651 — came from people from Syria, followed by Turkey (62,624), Afghanistan (53,582), Iraq (12,360), Iran (10,206), Georgia (9,399) and Russia (9,028).

And in 52 percent of cases on which a ruling had been reached, protection status had been granted.

Scholz's coalition government has been coming under fire on a variety of fronts, including the economy and agricultural policy, and immigration is a particularly volatile issue that the increasingly popular far-right Alternative for Deutschland, or AfD, party will be keen to exploit.

Previously, AfD support had mainly been in the east of the country, but following electoral success further west last October, its co-leader Alice Weidel said: "AfD is no longer an eastern phenomenon, but has become a major all-German party. So we have arrived."

In a survey carried out by the Infratest Dimap research organization last fall and quoted by the Politico website, when asked what topics had influenced supporters' decision to vote for AfD, immigration, at 65 percent, was the biggest concern.

Scholz's government faces a difficult balancing act because of a nationwide skills shortage that means Germany is increasingly in need of migrants to help maintain certain sections of society.

In April 2023, a survey by the Competence Center for Securing Skilled Workers showed that the previous year, there were 1.3 million job vacancies in Germany requiring skilled or qualified professionals, and almost half remained unfilled.

With many neighboring European Union nations that might be the obvious source of new employees facing similar demographic challenges to Germany, the country might need to look further afield to fill those vacancies.