Record 57% of asylum seekers had no ID to date in 2024
As huge numbers of migrants continue to enter Germany this year, a record number of them have no identification papers, making deporting these newcomers a near-impossible task.
So far in 2024, 57 percent of asylum seekers — up from 48 percent in 2023 — had no identification to prove their identity, their age, or their country of origin, according to data from the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF).
According to German newspaper Welt, approximately 100,000 migrants entered Germany illegally between January and May, and well over half of them had no passport or national ID.
A lack of identification offers a huge advantage to illegal migrants, as Germany is almost always unable to deport these foreigners. German authorities simply do not know their country of origin, and the countries where these migrants come from will almost never accept a citizen back if they do not have a passport.
Germany currently has 250,000 migrants it would like to deport; however, from January to April this year, only 6,300 of these migrants were actually deported.
Not fleeing war or persecution, but almost never deported
Notably, pro-migrant groups say it is easy to have a passport or ID lost in the process of fleeing war or persecution, but the data from Turkish nationals tells a different story. Only 1 out of 10 Turkish nationals are offered asylum rights in Germany by officials, The reason? The vast majority of them are not fleeing war or persecution. Despite that, 57.5 percent of Turks entering the country illegally do not have any identification papers with them.
Turks are now also the third-largest group of illegal migrants entering Germany, after Syrians and Afghans.
An official from the BAMF who spoke with Welt on the condition of anonymity said that the fact that Turkey is an “OECD and NATO member state” that has “a large number of citizens without any identity papers is absurd.” In fact, Turkey has a strict law that “every Turkish citizen is obliged to have an identity card.” Turks are also not allowed to access services or send their children to school without identification papers.
Another official who deals with deportations told Welt that the majority of Turks can “hardly report anything substantial” during asylum hearings to prove they were fleeing persecution. However, hardly any of these rejected Turks are ever deported.
“As long as we cannot present a passport to the Turkish side, nothing will happen,” said the authority.
Another federal air officer who works on the flights deporting migrants said: “I’m telling you — if we don’t pay attention to who we bring in, we will never solve this through deportations, it is incredibly complicated.”
Notably, other countries, such as Ireland, are facing the same issues, with Ryan Air CEO Michael O’Leary stating that migrants are flushing their IDs down the drain on flights inbound to Ireland.
The practice of migrants discarding IDs on their journey to Europe is commonplace and has been ongoing for nearly a decade now. As Remix News reported in 2020, there are 400,000 migrants with the birthdate of January 1 in Germany due to the fact that all of these migrants entered Germany without IDs.
Migrants also benefit from being able to state their own age, with some of them claiming to be minors when they are actually adults. These migrants are even harder to deport, and they gain access to education and social benefits not available to older migrants. When migrants are tested by medical specialists, the vast majority of cases show they are older than their stated age.
Migration has cost Germany tremendous sums of money. Academic expert and economist Prof. Bernd Raffelhüschen from the University of Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg revealed that immigrants have already cost Germany €5.8 trillion due to social welfare, housing, and other services.
