NRW controls Many refugees go ‘off radar’
Düsseldorf · Checks of refugee facilities in NRW show than many asylum seekers from northern Africa go missing.
Almost every third refugee from North Africa had vanished when authorities proofed 33 refugee facilities in North Rhine Westphalia (NRW). In the controls carried out in mid April of this year, 202 of 680 registered Moroccans and Algerians had gone missing; they were not in the facilities and not reachable.
According to statistics from NRW Interior Minister Ralf Jäger (Social Democratic Party -SPD), 7,737 Algerians and 8,165 Moroccans came to NRW between January of 2015 and the end of March, 2016. Interior expert Gregor Golland of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) said it was “unsettling” that Jäger did not have “an overview of where the refugees are staying.”
Jäger answered in response to a CDU inquiry that half of the 44 asylum seekers from those two countries did not show up in a refugee facility in Neuss where they had been assigned. In Duisburg, 20 out of 49 had vanished and in Hagen it was 16 out of 42. In Essen, 9 out of 43 had gone missing, in Oberhausen 5 out of 21, in Rheinberg 15 from 42, and in Arnsbreg 5 out of 14. In Siegburg, 5 out of 10 went ‘off radar’. The day chosen to proof whether the asylum seekers were present was the day when allowances were handed out to those living in the facilities.
Golland showed himself to be disappointed that Jäger could not give an answer about the asylum process. It also remains unclear how Jäger hopes to keep his word that all legal means will be used to send back asylum seekers to the northern African countries.
(Orig. text: Wilfried Goebels)
