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Author: Thomas Ruttig
Germany led in Europe in almost all categories of incoming refugees and asylum applications in 2015 and 2016, both in absolute and relative figures. Roughly six out of ten migrants who came to Europe ended up in Germany. Afghans were strongly represented in all those categories. This prompted the German government to change its 2015 asylum policy, which was widely seen as generous overall, towards more rigidity. It even applied specific measures to make the country less attractive for Afghan refugees, with the aim of decreasing their number. It also took the lead in pushing the Afghan government to readmit rejected asylum seekers. This made Afghans – in contrast to Syrians, Iraqis and Eritreans – ‘second class asylum seekers’, finds AAN co-director Thomas Ruttig in this last of a three-part dispatch series. At the end, he draws some conclusions from all three parts of this series.