| This Tuesday, police conducted raids across Germany and found more than 100 undocumented immigrants who allegedly paid €3,000 to 7,000 per person to be smuggled into Germany.
Through July, illegal crossings into all of Germany more than doubled compared to those recorded in the same period last year: Federal police recorded more than 56,000 cases of illegal entries in that time period.
President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has joined in the chorus urging for the reform of European asylum policy the Dublin Accord from 1997 which he referred to as outdated and prehistoric: “That was another world, there was no mass migration,” he said.
14,000 irregular immigrants have been apprehended on the Polish border alone. The refugee situation has been taking a toll on bilateral relations between Germany and Poland after it emerged that Polish consulates in Africa and Asia sold temporary work visas to migrants for thousands of dollars. Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that he did not want migrants to “simply be waved through” by Poland — which ruffled feathers in Warsaw.
For weeks, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser insisted the best approach was Schleierfahndung — surveillance units patrolling the long border lined with forests. Now she has changed her tune and is also considering stationary border controls on main roads crossing from Poland and the Czech Republic to Germany. |
