As the country enters a decisive election year with anti-migrant populists on the rise, the mass arrival of refugees’ wives and children would have created a major challenge for Chancellor Angela Merkel as she seeks a fourth term. Merkel’s popularity plunged after the arrival of nearly 900,000 asylum seekers from the world’s crisis zones last year, but has recovered of late as arrivals have fallen. However, for a rising number of the newcomers themselves, many of them men who arrived without their families, the situation is untenable. Critics slam the restrictions as “inhumane”. Since the start of the year, 32,551 refugees – the overwhelming majority of them Syrians (28,444) – have filed legal complaints to gain recognition as refugees under the definition set out by the 1951 Geneva Conventions.
Categories: Europe, Europe and Australia, European Union, Germany