German MPs toughen asylum rules to blunt influx

BERLIN: German lawmakers on Thursday passed new restrictive rules for asylum seekers, streamlining the deportation process as Europe´s biggest economy faces a major influx of applicants.

As a bitter migration debate roils the country and the far-right AfD hits new heights in the polls, Olaf Scholz´s unpopular centre-left-led government championed the measures as a means of curbing new arrivals.

“We will ensure that people without the right to stay will have to leave our country faster,” Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said of the draft law “to improve repatriations”.

Faeser said sending those without a right to asylum back to their countries of origin would free up resources for those most in need of refuge. The tough measures give the police new powers to search for those ordered to leave the country and to establish the identity of migrants.

In addition the maximum amount of time people may be held in pre-expulsion detention will increase to 28 days from 10 currently to allow authorities more time to organise deportations.

Rights groups attacked the hardened policy as inhumane and excessive, with the Association of German Lawyers calling it “hardly in the realm of proportionality”. “We are horrified that people who are fleeing and those who offer them humanitarian aid can be threatened with prison sentences,” sea rescue group SOS Humanity said.