German cabinet approves identity card for refugees

Germany has registered 964,574 new asylum-seekers in the first 11 months of the year, putting it on course for more than a million in 2015.

A total of 965,000 people were registered as asylum seekers in Germany from January to the end of November. The figures for November do not contain a breakdown by nationality, but in previous months Syrians, for whom Germany has adopted an open-door policy, have been the largest group at around a third. In the last one to two weeks, German authorities have been registering about 2,000 to 3,000 daily arrivals, de Maiziere said, down from some 8,000 a day earlier this fall.

“This is not a turning point, but a good development”, he said at a press conference.

The number of migrants arriving has not slowed despite the winter cold, with a record high of 206,101 in November.

According to Die Welt (link in German), more than half of the potential refugees-about 484,000 migrants-came from Syria.

The ministry said the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees had managed to shorten the time it takes to process the newcomers from an average of around seven months in 2014 to five months this year.

Mr De Maiziere said the actual number of new arrivals to the end of November is below 965,000 because of people who registered a couple of times or continued to other countries, but he can not say how much lower.

All administrative offices dealing with migrants-from social security to the job center-will be able to access the information on a centralized system and across different states, the officials said.

Berlin has recently listed both Albania and Kosovo as “safe countries of origin”, meaning their citizens are not normally eligible for political asylum, in a move that has dramatically reduced the numbers from the Balkan countries.