Number of new immigrants in Germany to fall continuously: interior minister

Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-17 22:56:16|Editor: yan
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BERLIN, Dec. 17 (Xinhua) -- The number of new migrants coming to Germany this year will fall for two years in a row since the 2015 European refugee crisis, Germany's federal Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere has said.

De Maiziere told the German newspaper Bild am Sonntag published on Sunday that at the end of November new immigrants were around 173,000, and he calculated for the whole year and found it would be less than 200,000.

New migrants coming to Germany in 2016 were around 280,000, while in 2015 the number of new migrants was about 890,000, according to official statistics.

The influx of refugees has led to the rise of anti-Islam and xenophobic populism in Germany, as many of refugees came from war-torn Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Refugee policy was also considered as one of the major reasons for the lowest ever votes of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in Sept. 24 federal election since 1949.

Migrant arrivals in Germany slowed sharply after several Balkans countries closed their borders and the EU in March 2016 reached a refugee deal with Turkey. Maritime efforts to stop migrants reaching Europe from northern Africa in boats have also been intensified.

Merkel's CDU has reached an agreement with its Bavarian sister Christian Social Union in October to introduce a ceiling of 200,000 immigrants for humanitarian reasons every year.

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