Asylum-Seekers Flood Munich, Stir Crisis : Germany: Transport containers become homes. Earlier waves of immigration compound the problem.

For the worried Munich city welfare official, it was one more piece of bad news.

The rise in the number of foreigners seeking political asylum in Germany had reached a point where the already overcrowded Bavarian capital would have to house new arrivals at a rate of 250 a week instead of the previous 150.

“Where are they going to go?” asked the official, Hans Stuetzle, director of the social affairs department of the Munich city government.

For some, the answer was already clear: They were going to one of 43 transport containers sitting in a corner of the city’s famous Oktoberfest grounds.

The containers, each furnished with four bunk beds, metal lockers and a small table, serve as ersatz dwellings in the latest escalation of the city’s housing crisis.

Other containers are being prepared in an industrial warehouse southeast of the city, and Stuetzle hopes to get space at the city’s aging Rhiem Airport when it closes in May.

With between 8,000 and 10,000 homeless in the city, a public housing waiting list with 50,000 names on it and unused factories, schools, offices and military barracks already serving as temporary living quarters for thousands, containers and tents are the only remaining option, Stuetzle said.

Last summer, the city was forced to remove asylum-seekers who had been housed in a school gymnasium after a court ruled that retaining physical education in the school curriculum takes priority over housing the foreigners.

“There’s not one building in the city that I can legally take to put these people,” Stuetzle groaned. “We’re at our wits’ end.”

And so the asylum-seekers wait, four to a container, for German courts to rule whether they are, indeed, political refugees who must be permanently resettled in the country or merely economic opportunists who are searching for a better life and must be expelled.

While up to 95% are usually rejected, the judicial process can sometimes take years.

Despite emergency government measures to reduce the numbers, all signs indicate that the problem in Munich, as in other German cities, is likely to get worse in the months ahead.

Drawn by Germany’s dazzling affluence and its unusually liberal law governing political asylum, the number of foreigners seeking permanent refuge in the country topped 31,000 in January, a jump of nearly 50% over the 1991 monthly average.

They come from virtually everywhere--from Albania, Bulgaria and other parts of the former Communist Eastern Europe; from Sri Lanka, Pakistan and West Africa, and from Turkey, Vietnam and Ethiopia. Several thousand have also arrived after fleeing the civil war in Yugoslavia, most of them Croats who are taken in by friends and relatives among the city’s large Croatian minority.

While the numbers would appear to be manageable for a country of 80 million, they come in the wake of two other waves of immigration.

A major population shift that began in late 1989 has brought in an estimated 1 million people from eastern to western Germany, and internal migration continues at a rate of 20,000 a month. The arrival of ethnic Germans from the old Soviet Union and its East European satellites over the past two years totaled more than 620,000, and an estimated half-million more have reportedly already applied for emigration to Germany from what is now the Commonwealth of Independent States.

Both of these developments severely strained the resources of western cities before the waves of asylum-seekers began arriving. “They (the asylum-seekers) are the straw that breaks the camel’s back,” Stuetzle said.

The influx has already intensified social tensions and triggered attacks against foreigners by right-wing extremists. While the violence and harassment are consistently condemned by mainstream political parties, the public is growing increasingly resentful of the foreigners’ presence.

“Conditions here are very hard,” said a 28-year-old Ghanaian refugee living on the Oktoberfest grounds. “People here don’t like us. They sit and stare.”

The young man, who said he ran away from his homeland for reasons he declined to discuss, added that he wants to stay in Germany despite the tension.

Peter Hausmann, spokesman for the Christian Socialist Union, Bavaria’s largest political party, noted that the tension stems in part from the perception that the asylum-seekers are aggravating the housing crisis for many Germans.

For example, Hausmann said, the state has been forced to place asylum-seekers in barracks vacated by departing U.S. troops in three Bavarian cities after it had already earmarked the facilities for university student use--part of a plan to ease overall housing pressure and bring down high rents.

“Now we’re afraid we’ve not only increased housing pressure but also animosity toward foreigners,” he said.

Hausmann and other political figures in the region worry about the shifting mood and call for an immediate constitutional amendment so that the law would no longer allow automatic entry to anyone who declares himself a victim of political persecution.

“It’s no longer enough to say the mood is wrong,” Hausmann said. “We have to change the reason for the mood.”

In an attempt to ease social tensions, the government has pledged to telescope the processing of asylum-seekers’ cases to a maximum of six weeks.

It has also agreed to build special transit camps in each state to isolate the asylum-seekers in a further step to reduce potential conflict with the local population.

Meanwhile, the problems of local welfare authorities grow.

Stuetzle, for example, explained that he would probably have to relocate the foreigners’ small container community away from the Oktoberfest grounds before the start of a spring festival planned nearby next month.

“There will be a lot of beer flowing, and people will be coming in from outside,” he said. “We’re afraid they will drink and then do something stupid. It’s peaceful here now, but you never know.”

Siege of the Refugees

All signs indicate that the refugee problem in Munich, as in other German cities, is likely to get worse in the months ahead. Three major waves of refugees, including the current one, are blamed for the overflow in western cities: * From within Germany--A population shift that began in late 1989 has brought in an estimated 1 million people from east to west Germany. Internal migration continues at a rate of 20,000 a month.

* Ethnic Germans--More than 620,000 ethnic Germans arrived from the former Soviet Union and its East European satellites over the last two years.

* Foreign influx--Attracted by Germany’s affluence, the number of foreigners seeking permanent refuge in the country topped 31,000 in January, up nearly 50% over the 1991 monthly average.