"Disastrous results" for Seehofer: anchor centers slow down asylum procedures

"Disastrous results" for Seehofer
Anchor centers slow down asylum procedures

Anchor centers were set up to process asylum applications in Germany more quickly. A request to the Federal Ministry of the Interior now shows: The procedures there even take longer than average. Horst Seehofer's house also explains this with the corona pandemic.

Asylum procedures in so-called anchor centers take longer than average, according to a report. Between January and November 2020 there was an average of 8.5 months between the application and the decision by the authority in an anchor center, as the Funke newspapers reported from a response from the Federal Ministry of the Interior to a left-wing inquiry. On average, the duration of all asylum procedures during this period was 8.3 months, as the request by Left MP Ulla Jelpke further revealed.

The anchor centers, the introduction of which was decided in the coalition agreement, unite several authorities relevant for asylum procedures in one place and are intended to accelerate the procedures. Jelpke sees this goal as not being achieved. The above-average length of the proceedings in the anchor centers was a "disastrous result" for CSU Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, Jelpke told the Funke newspapers. Allegedly, asylum procedures in the centers should be much faster, she said. "But the opposite is true, as we now see."

The left-wing politician criticized the fact that asylum seekers were "crammed into a very small space, they should be cut off from independent advisory structures and the supporting civil society". This model is "completely wrong" not only in view of the need for the most decentralized accommodation possible in times of the corona pandemic. Overall, according to the government response, the average length of asylum procedures increased this year. In 2019, it was still 6.1 months, as the Funke newspapers further reported.

The Ministry of the Interior justifies this in its answer to the left-wing inquiry primarily with the corona pandemic. On the one hand, the delivery of negative notices has meanwhile been almost completely stopped because the applicants' ability to take action was limited during the pandemic. On the other hand, many old cases were closed in 2020, which drive up the cut in the length of the procedure, according to the report in the government response.

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