Germany Near ‘No Vacancy’ for Refugees

The country’s ability to accommodate refugees is “largely exhausted,” and German taxpayers are increasingly troubled by the costs of aiding those fleeing war and economic hardships, an official said Sunday.

In a sign of the strained relations between Germans and the refugees, a Nigerian refugee died Sunday after an altercation in Augsburg, and rightists hurled tear gas at a refugee shelter in eastern Germany.

Interior Minister Rudolf Seiters said that a record 256,112 foreigners applied for asylum last year, a 32% increase from 1990. The largest single group--nearly 75,000 refugees--was escaping from the civil war in Yugoslavia.

Seiters said many Germans are growing impatient with paying higher taxes to provide shelter and other social services for those seeking asylum.

In addition to the Yugoslavs, the refugees included more than 40,000 Romanians, nearly 24,000 Turks and 12,000 Bulgarians.

Within the nation, at least 200,000 former East Germans crossed into the West to seek jobs, the Bild am Sonntag newspaper reported Sunday. The end of the Communist system put tens of thousands of people out of work.

Hennig Fleischer, an official with the Federal Statistics Office in Wiesbaden, was quoted as saying that the number of migrants to the West is likely higher than government statistics.

About 1 million East Germans have relocated to the West since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

Although Germany guarantees asylum to foreigners who can prove political repression in their homelands, the government contends that many asylum-seekers come to Germany for mostly economic reasons, then find ways to stay.

Chancellor Helmut Kohl is pressing for a constitutional amendment that would turn back refugees considered to be fleeing economic problems. But the opposition Social Democrats say the right to asylum cannot be overturned.