Nearly 81,000 people have applied for asylum in Germany since the start of 2023, marking a more than 80% increase from the same period last year, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) announced Tuesday (April 11).

In March alone, 25,175 asylum applications were received.

Since January, the Federal Office has reportedly decided around 68,000 initial and follow-up asylum applications. Of those, 51.1% were approved, with most applicants from Syria, followed by Afghanistan, Turkey and Iran. 5,817 of the initial applications were filed for children under the age of one and born in Germany.

Refugees from Ukraine did not appear in the statistics because they do not have to apply through Germany's regular asylum procedure.

Conservative politicians slam 'worst migration crisis'

Germany's conservative CDU/CSU union called the uptick in asylum applications an indication of the country's "worst migration crisis in years."

Politician Alexander Thom from the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) accused the country's leadership of "not making the slightest effort in getting a grip on the crisis." He criticized the attitudes of Interior Minister Nancy Faeser and Finance Minister Christian Lindner, who see no scope for boosting federal funding for local authorities to accommodate and settle refugees.

This attitude "testifies to a considerable loss of reality in the entire government," Throm said, adding that Germans were becoming increasingly disenchanted with the ruling coalition government's current migrant policy.

Germany is seeing a nationwide shortage in accommodation for refugees. As of April 4, 962 refugees were still accommodated in hostels or hotels, German news outlet Tagesspiegel reported. Among them are 722 Ukrainians.

Close to 32,000 refugees are currently staying in facilities run by Berlin's state office for refugees (LAF) in the capital, an increase of roughly a quarter compared to eight months ago.

With KNA, EPD and AFP