Speaking at the Afghanistan committee of inquiry, Seehofer, who was also premier of Bavaria, said that in contrast to 2015 and 2016, "order [had] largely been restored" as far as irregular immigration was concerned.

But he added that a solution still needs to be found to deal with people required to leave the country. Otherwise this risks becoming an ongoing topic and "not good for our democracy," he said.

More than 36,000 Afghans admitted

Germany has taken in more than 36,000 people from Afghanistan since the Taliban took control of the country in August 2021. The Afghanistan committee, now in its final stages of taking evidence, was set up to investigate the circumstances of the German evacuation of locally engaged staff. It is looking specifically into events between February 2020, when the US and the Taliban agreed to withdraw international troops, and the fall of Kabul to the Taliban the following year.

Over three thousand Afghans, including family members, have also been promised admission under the Federal Admission Program. Of these, 682 have entered the country, according to the German news agency dpa.

Afghanistan is one of the main countries of origin for asylum seekers. Many come to Germany with the aid of people smugglers.

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Seehofer defends lengthy process

Seehofer was initially opposed to allowing tens of thousands of local Afghan staff and their families to come to Germany, as he said this would create a "pull effect" and encourage irregular migration.

The former interior minister defended his decision to stick to a process of assessing each application from local staff individually – which has been harshly criticized as being overly complicated and creating delays.

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Asked why he refused to issue visas to Afghan nationals at German borders despite the wishes of the foreign ministry he said "it was politically expedient to use the normal procedure," adding that, in his experience, no one can be returned once they are in Germany.

The 75-year-old former politician, the architect of a controversial "migration master plan" in 2018, also defended the continued deportation of Afghans from Germany as late as August 2021.

He denied that the Afghan government did not want any deportations and that the European border protection agency, Frontex, warned against them out of concern for human rights.

The experience of the so-called refugee crisis in 2015 had always been in the interior ministry’s mind with regard to Afghanistan, Seehofer told the committee.

He was never an opponent of immigration and had not "called for a fence around Germany" but wanted "the right amount of immigration," he said.

With dpa