Germany reaches migrant deal, with restrictions on relatives

Nearly 40 percent of German voters think Chancellor Angela Merkel should quit over her liberal asylum policy after almost 1.1 million newcomers arrived previous year, a poll has revealed.

Reception centres for migrants coming from “safe countries of origin” will be created in order to proceed more quickly with their asylum request. People have been flooding the continent from nations ravaged by years of war, such as Iraq and Syria, where most citizens have been forced from their homes, or beset by rampant poverty like parts of parts of North and East Africa.

The number of asylum seekers crossing the German border from Austria every day fell to some 700 over the last several days from more than 2,000 earlier in the year.

With public backing for the chancellor’s open-door policy waning in Germanyand the stumbling European Union response, Merkel was under growing pressure to resolve a political brawl in her three-party coalition that intensified after New Year’s Eve sexual assaults on women in Cologne.

The new German rules on family reunification will mean migrants with so-called “subsidiary protection”, a status just below that of refugee, will be blocked from bringing their families to join them in Germany for two years.

“We don’t agree on everything naturally”, Renzi told reporters following a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Mrs Merkel said: “We want those with prospects of remaining to be integrated, but we also want to say that we need those who have no prospect of remaining to return”.

Senior figures from the Social Democrats (SPD), Merkel’s second coalition partner, have also broken ranks in recent days by challenging her welcoming approach to asylum seekers. Moreover, some Syrians who were enjoying the leisure of entering Germany is also expected to affect them.

Merkel’s cabinet should sign off on the measures next week before parliament passes them into law, Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said Friday. A spokesman for the Cologne prosecutor’s office, Ullrich Bremer, later said some suspects were in Germany illegally in addition to those asylum seekers.