Although the numbers are still relatively low compared to other countries, the number of people seeking asylum in Germany from the Americas (namely Venezuela, Cuba, Colombia and Brazil) had risen by 48 percent in 2018. With the ongoing government crisis in Venezuela, where there is a dispute between two men who have declared themselves president -- Nicolas Maduro and Juan Guaido -- the numbers increased from 206 to 407 asylum applications.

Of those Venezuelans who sought protection in Germany in 2018, one third were granted asylum. Only 3.2 percent of Cubans who sought protection actually received asylum, 2.3 percent of Colombians and no one from Brazil was granted asylum. In total there were 817 people from the Americas who sought asylum in Germany.

Applications from other countries on the decline

Unlike the numbers from the Americas, asylum seekers from many other parts of the world to Germany were on the decline. The numbers of people seeking asylum from Asia had sunk by 15 percent. Similarly, overall, those attempting asylum from Africa had reduced by 21 percent, including those from Eritrea, which had previously represented a large part of those seeking asylum, had sunk even lower, by 44 percent. 70 percent of those from Eritrea who did apply for asylum were granted their request. One country bucked the general African trend, Nigeria. There the numbers shot up by 34 percent to 11,073 people even though those who were actually granted asylum sunk from the previous figure of 17.3 percent to 13.9 percent.

However, the numbers of asylum seekers are only a small fraction of the number of migrants from other EU countries who come to Germany. Overall, those figures based on just the first half of 2018 went up by three percent. The greatest numbers of people came from Romania (102,352 in the first half of 2018), Poland (58, 571) and Bulgaria (32,797); Croatia, Italy and Hungary followed not that far behind, hovering around the 20,000 mark. Overall, in the first half year of 2018 Germany received 316,600 migrants from fellow EU countries, which is in keeping with the trend of the last few years of just over 600,000 per year.