Ulm (Germany)- German authorities have said they are facing a backlog of 250,000 asylum bids amid an unprecedented influx of migrants that is expected to reach nearly 500,000 over the course of 2015.
The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (Bamf) confirmed on Tuesday.
“That number sounds enormous, and in fact it is enormous,’’ Bamf President Manfred Schmidt, said during a visit to an asylum seekers’ home in the southern German town of Ellwangen.
According to Schmidt, 100,000 of the asylum bids are from countries, including Syria where the outcome is easy to determine, even this will take three months to complete.
State expenses related to processing and accommodating migrants are expected to more than double this year to five billion Euros (5.49 billion dollars) from 2.2 billion in 2014.
German authorities were resorting to tent cities to house the arriving asylum seekers, who came from countries like Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo and Serbia.
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Right-wing violence against immigrants and attacks on their accommodation are becoming an almost weekly occurrence with 202 incidents recorded in the first half of 2015. (dpa/NAN)
