Germany debates growing refugee challenge

As Germany continues to seek solutions to an ever-growing influx of migrants, on Monday politicians across the country came up with several proposals to reduce numbers and increase federal funding to the 16 states.

The premier of Baden-Württemberg, Winfried Kretschmann, called for a "tailored-to-measure immigration offer" that would allow some people from the western Balkan region to enter Germany legally.

Kretschmann told the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" that Germany could "create migration corridors for professions that are in short supply here, such as carer jobs."

At the same time, he did not rule out extending the list of "safe countries of origin" to include Albania, Montenegro and Kosovo. However, he told the paper that the federal Interior Ministry would first have to prove that the German government's previous placement of Serbia, Macedonia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina in this category had led to a clear reduction in asylum-seeker numbers.

The categorization as a "safe country of origin" means that asylum-seekers from those countries have virtually no chance of having their applications to remain in Germany granted.

Many in Germany see refugee applicants from the western Balkans as prejudicing the chances of asylum-seekers from countries stricken by conflict, or where there is political or other persecution.

Kretschmann has invited 70 representatives from politics, business, refugee agencies, churches and charities to take part in a meeting in Stuttgart on Monday to discuss ways of coping with the rising numbers of refugees.

Calls for more funding

Berlin, which is both Germany's capital and one of its 16 states, called on the federal government to provide per capita funding rather than a fixed amount to help states pay the growing costs of housing and looking after refugees.

"If numbers simply develop upward, then the amount of assistance from the federal government must also be able to develop - and not always be a fixed sum that has to be renegotiated," Berlin's governing mayor, Michael Müller, told the ARD public television service on Monday.

The interior minister of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), Ralf Jäger, renewed his call for the federal government to pay more to the states for dealing with refugees.

In comments to the daily "Rheinische Post," Jäger backed up his appeal by pointing to the growing flood of refugees taken in by his state, saying NRW had received 5,300 last week alone, a weekly record. He said the state could reckon with more than 100,000 refugees by the end of the year, 60,000 more than in 2014.

Visa proposal

In another proposal to cut back on the number of refugees coming from western Balkan countries, the managing director of the German Association of Towns and Municipalities, Gerd Landsberg, called in the daily "Welt" for the reintroduction of visas for countries in the region.

"Introducing mandatory visas could be a step toward limiting the influx," Landsberg said, also calling for Albania, Montenegro and Kosovo to receive the categorization as "safe."

Germany has seen a number of attacks on refugee housing in recent months amid growing resentment in some quarters at the wave of refugees, many of them from war-torn Syria. Cities and municipalities have in some cases been forced to set up temporary tent camps to house the asylum-seekers.

tj/mkg (AFP, dpa, epd)