Migrant Crisis: Germany Gets Serious with Laws for Balkan Asylum Seekers
As the European Union continues to struggle with the crisis that it is faced with, Germany's cabinet has approved a new asylum law that aims to reduce the number of Balkan migrants entering its territory.
While the change will need parliamentary approval before it becomes official, it is looking to prevent refugees from Kosovo, Montenegro, and Albania from running to Germany for asylum.
Earlier this month, Germany has started to impose border control checks to somehow slow down or decrease the huge wave of migrants and refugees entering the country.
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According to BBC News, all EU countries have their own lists of "safe countries," which are those countries that asylum seekers can be moved or returned to when their individual asylum applications are rejected. Member states of the EU are expecting to agree on a common list that would include Kosovo, Albania, and Serbia.
Aside from the new law, cabinet members also agreed to other methods that could help assist Germany's 16 federal states in coping with the increasing number of migrants and refugees moving toward the country.
The United Nations refugee agency says more than 514,000 people have already crossed the Mediterranean this year, in hopes of finding new lives in Europe, away from war and violence.
While the majority of the migrants and refugees are said to have come on the way through Greece, almost 3,000 people are reported to have either died on the way or are still recorded as missing.
Statistics reveal that though the largest number of asylum seekers are coming from Syria, about 40 percent of the applications actually have addresses from Western Balkan countries such as Kosovo, Albania, and Serbia.
The figures are only getting larger as the U.N. says Germany alone is expecting to accommodate between 800,000 to 1 million refugees who are looking forward to life anew in the country this year, the numbers, if attained, are more than four times compared to that of last year.
