Chinese tourist fills wrong form for lost wallet, lands in refugee shelter

A Chinese tourist who lost his wallet at the airport in Germany was mistaken for a refugee and got stuck in a camp for asylum seekers for almost two weeks, French news agency AFP said, citing local media reports.

According to details, pickpockets snatched the wallet from the 31-year-old Chinese man in Heidelberg.

“This was luckily a unique case”, the Red Cross worker told the outlet, adding it would take around six months for him to go through the entire asylum process.

He realised the error when an uncharacteristically well-dressed man tried to ask for help at a local Chinese restaurant.

“He spent 12 days trapped in our bureaucratic jungle because we couldn’t communicate”, he said. “Especially during the refugee crisis I’ve seen how much red tape we have”. His wallet was stolen (or possibly lost), and he turned to the police. He was then given pocket money by camp officials. Staff at the center in Duelman noticed he was better dressed than most of the occupants, Schluetermann said.

Schluetermann’s employees called consulates and public authorities to get the passport back and cancel the application for asylum.

A May file photo shows a residential house at a refugee center in Sumte, Germany.

Over the past few years, there has been a dramatic surge in the number of refugees and migrants coming to Europe, often traveling routes over the Mediterranean from the Middle East or Africa. “But when I received his reply, I got the curious response “I want to go walking in Italy”, Mr Schlutermann told the Dülmener Zeitung newspaper.

In 2015, Germany registered almost 1.1 million people as asylum-seekers – more than 206,000 of those in November alone, at the height of the influx via the Balkans.

“It was an extraordinary moment for us all”.

Once the misunderstanding had been resolved and Mr. L was free to continue his trip, he had appeared happy to leave, but not angry, commenting that he had imagined Europe to be “quite different”.

He said: “He acted so differently to other refugees”. Few Chinese people have applied for asylum in Germany in recent years, Schluetermann said.