The Austrian Interior Ministry has reported that the number of asylum applications in the country has gone down by 43 per cent as the government has become more focused on border security and increasing deportations.
In 2016, the government recorded 37,256 from January to October but that number has decreased to 21,130 applications so far this year. This year’s asylum application numbers are likely to be well under the 35,000 asylum limit which was passed by the previous Austrian government last year, Kronen Zeitung reports.
Of the total number of asylum applications this year, 14,983 were accepted for further processing, while 6,146 were not as they had already begun asylum procedures in another European Union country.
While the number of applications has gone down drastically, the number of deportations have risen. Over the last nine months, the deportation rate has increased by 51 per cent from 3,841 last year to 5,788 in 2017.
Last year, Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka of the conservative Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) promised to increase the deportations of criminal migrants following a brutal murder committed by an illegal immigrant in Vienna. Later in the year, Sobotka advocated for stripping refugee status from those who had been found guilty of serious criminal acts, as well.
The ÖVP were able to win the Austrian national election last month by double digits and are now in coalition talks with the anti-mass migration Freedom Party (FPÖ) who are even more hardline on immigration issues.
FPÖ leader Heinz-Christian Strache has previously made it clear in the run-up to the election that he wants to see asylum applications reduced to zero: “We do not need an upper limit, nor a halving of the upper limit – we need a zero-migration, in fact, a minus-migration, because of all the illegals and criminals who are in the country.”
The Austrian success in reducing asylum applications and increasing the number of deportations is in stark contrast to neighbouring Germany where the federal government has floundered on deportations.
Despite promising to deport one hundred thousand illegal migrants last year, the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel has had difficulty filling a single aeroplane.