Germany's Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) said that by the end of September it had received 100,278 initial applications from asylum-seekers.
This is 35.2% more than in the same period last year.
Most of the asylum-seekers who applied for protection for the first time came from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. Of those, 40,472 initial applications came from people from Syria (up 57.1%), and 8,531 from people seeking protection from Iraq (up 22.2%).
The number of applicants from Afghanistan witnessed a sharp rise, with BAMF registering a total of 15,045 initial applications (up 138%) by the end of September.
CONCERNS RISE OVER BELARUS ROUTE
Along with traditional routes through Greece, Italia and Spain, Belarus has become a major migration route in the last few months as a result of a row between Brussels and Minsk.
European Union
...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing...
countries have accused Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko of deliberately encouraging
Lukashenko is allegedly retaliating for sanctions imposed by Brussels in response to the regime's
German newspaper Welt am Sonntag cited sources within the EU's intelligence agency Europol as saying that Belarus is now helping Syrian nationals to fly directly to Minsk from Damascus.
Previously, the country was helping Syrian
...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire...Belarus now also issues 90-day tourist visas to nationals of Pakistain, Egypt and Jordan, the newspaper said.
More than 4,900 people have been picked up at the German-Polish border who had entered the EU illegally via Belarus, Germany's federal police said this week.
NEW COALITION MAY REFORM ASYLUM POLICY
The rise of the Belarus migrant route comes as Germany remains in limbo after last month's election.
The Social Democratic Party (SPD), which won the largest share of the vote, is seeking to form a coalition with the climate-focused Green Party and the business-focused Free Democratic Party.
If the alliance is agreed, the new government could reform refugee policy, making it easier for failed asylum-seekers to still build up entitlement to German nationality through several years of work.
The three parties' main political opponents, the conservative bloc of outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel
...chancellor of Germany and the impetus behind Germany's remarkably ill-starred immigration program. Merkel used to be referred to by Germans as
Mom. Now they make faces at her for inundating the country with Moslem colonists...
, have hit out at the plan, saying it is tantamount to giving up control of migration.
Other parties, like the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), have demanded a more hard-line approach to immigration.
In August, the chairman of the Federal Labor Agency, Detlef Scheele, said Germany needed 400,000 im
During the European migrant crisis from 2015 to 2017, Germany processed over 1.4 million asylum claims, according to data from the EU's statistics agency, Eurostat.