Berlin:German Chancellor Angela Merkel has defended her policies on refugees, in the wake of recent terror attacks. As tensions grow, the government is still trying to deal with the large number of migrants who took advantage of Germany’s open borders last year.
\nThere were endless corridors where officials bustled through with files, offices with computers, microscopes and fingerprint-readers.
\nI saw signs for medical centres and canteens – some places freshly painted, others still being renovated.
\nSecurity staff were watchful, translators wrestled with all kinds of languages.
\nIn individual rooms, intense conversations were under way between officials and families about life stories and dramatic journeys.
\nAnxious children looked up from parental laps, some playing with toys, others restless in stuffy waiting rooms.
\nWaiting is the key to this place.
\nFor this is a new centre designed to end the long wait for hundreds of thousands of people who came to Germany last year as migrants – and who do not yet know whether they will be allowed to stay.
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\n“Welcome culture” was the phrase used as Germany suddenly opened its borders.
\nSince then, the flow of migrants into Germany has hugely decreased as borders have closed and agreements such as the EU’s deal with Turkey have kept many would-be migrants well away from Germany.
\nBut the legacy of last year’s mass arrivals is still very tricky for Germany – and even more so given recent violent incidents, some of which have been linked to recent migrants.
\nI was given special access to a new centre designed to show how Germany is responding to the crisis.
\nIn the city of Bonn, it is a centre for processing asylum applications – one of more than 20 planned to deal with a huge backlog.
\nThe numbers are staggering.
\n“We are pretty certain that by the end of the year everybody who came last year will have their application decided,” I was told by Katrin Hirseland, from the Federal Ministry for Migration and Refugees (BAMF).
\nHow many applications will have to be dealt with? “It will be somewhere between 800,000 and 1,000,000.”
\nThis presents a huge challenge for the government. How will it be done? In Bonn, the ministry has taken over the Ermekeilkaserne – once an army barracks.
\nIt is a site full of history.
\nIn the 1950s, when Bonn was the capital of the new West German state, the defence ministry was based here when the country was allowed an army again despite the horrors of Nazism.
\nThose horrors had persuaded Germany to create a generous law on political asylum for those fleeing persecution.
\nBut it never imagined so many would come in such a short time.
\nArmin Moers, who runs this new centre, is a hugely energetic individual keen to show me how the system will work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Berlin:German Chancellor Angela Merkel has defended her policies on refugees, in the wake of recent terror attacks. As tensions grow, the government is still trying to deal with the large number of migrants who took advantage of Germany’s open borders last year. There were endless corridors where officials bustled through with files, offices with computers, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-world"],"yoast_head":"\n