According to information from the German federal Interior ministry, over half of the migrants who entered the country in 2020 came without any sort of identification paperwork whatsoever.
The information came as an answer to a question posed by libertarian Free Democrat (FDP) politician Linda Teuteberg, with the ministry stating, “In 2020, the proportion of first asylum applicants aged 18 and over without identity papers was 51.8 per cent.”
Teuteberg commented on the reply saying, “The fact that one in two first-time applicants cannot be identified on the basis of appropriate documents is a major challenge for our asylum system,” German broadcaster NTV reports.
2020 saw a total of 102,581 new asylum applications, over a quarter of them, or 26,520 applications, were for children born to asylum seekers in Germany.
The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) stated that is had examined a total of 190,608 identity documents of asylum seekers and found that around 2.36 per cent or 4,488, were likely forgeries but it is unknown how many migrants submitted fake documents as many had multiple identification documents examined.
Despite the travel restrictions put in place to stop the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus, many countries in Europe still took in a large share of asylum seekers, like Germany.
In Sweden, over 9,600 asylum seekers arrived in the country during the first eleven months of 2020, a number that dwarfed its Scandinavian neighbours who took in significantly fewer asylum seekers last year.
In total, the European Union border agency Frontex stated that the political bloc saw 124,000 illegal migrants cross into member states in 2020, a drop to levels not seen since 2013.
Greece saw the largest drop in new arrivals, with a 76 per cent reduction in numbers while the Spanish Canary islands saw the opposite with an eight-fold increase compared to the year prior, as more than 22,600 migrants arrived on the islands.
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