WSJ: Even Rejected Asylum Seekers Don’t Leave Germany

From the Wall Street Journal

BERLIN—Germany rejected more than 3,000 asylum applications by migrants from Afghanistan in the first half of this year. The number of Afghans deported in the same period: 129.

A series of violent attacks by asylum seekers in Germany has highlighted the security implications of the massive influx of migrants and the challenge of getting people deemed not in need of protection to actually leave.

The government is looking for ways to speed the departure of thousands of people whose asylum requests are denied—and has even enlisted consulting giant McKinsey & Co. to help.

“An asylum-seeker who gets rejected must also leave—either voluntarily or via a forced departure,” said Burkhard Lischka, a lawmaker specializing in domestic policy for the center-left Social Democrats. “Otherwise you might as well throw our asylum system in the trash.”

Security officials have commissioned a McKinsey study to analyze “the entire chain of repatriation efforts,” Chancellor Angela Merkel said.

“We have achieved some things already,” she said Thursday. “But we aren’t progressing as much as is hoped.”

As of the end of May, more than 220,000 foreigners were technically under orders to leave Germany, although many had been granted a temporary reprieve. In the same period, 11,300 people were deported and another 25,000 had left voluntarily.

“This is much more than in past years,” Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière said in parliament last month, referring to the departure numbers. “But given the great size of the task, it is still too little.”

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