Berlin (dpa) – Germany has dramatically stepped up the number of
deportations this year as the nation struggles to come to grips with
a refugee crisis.

By the end of November, 18,363 unsuccessful asylum applicants were
deported compared with 10,994 for the whole of 2014, according to
Ministry of Interior information in the hands of dpa.

The southern state of Bavaria, which has been at the frontline of the
refugee crisis, alone returned 3,643 to their homelands between
January and the end of November. This was three times the 1,007
people deported by the state in 2014.

The number of refugees entering Germany is expected to surge to more
than 1 million this year with Europe‘s biggest economy having emerged
as the main destination in the EU for asylum seekers, many fleeing
wars in the Middle East and Africa.

Bavaria, which is the first point of entry for a large number of the
refugees, has also spearheaded calls for Chancellor Angela Merkel to
place an upper limit on the numbers of migrants crossing into the
nation.

Deportations from the state of Hesse in central Germany also tripled
this year to 2,306, while those returned to their country of origin
from Baden-Wuerttemberg doubled to 2,140, according to the ministry‘s
information. The number of deportations was less from other states.

The German parliament agreed in October to tighten up the country‘s
asylum laws, paving the way for a more rapid processing of
applications and quicker decisions on the repatriation of migrants
who do not qualify for asylum.

Under the package of measures, Albania, Kosovo and Montenegro have
now been defined as “safe countries” in order to speed up the process
of sending back asylum seekers from the west Balkans.

Leading German politicians also called on Monday for the European
authorities to introduce new measures to guard against the threat of
refugees with stolen or forged passports entering the EU.

Their calls followed a warning from the EU-border agency Frontex
about the number of forged or stolen Syrian passports, which were
likely to be in the hands of terrorist group Islamic State.

“We need as quickly as possible to ensure the complete the
registration of all people arriving in Europe,” the chairman of the
parliamentary interior committee, Ansgar Heveling, told newspapers of
the German Funke media group.

Burkhard Lischka, a member of the centre-left Social Democrats, also
told the Funke group that the authorities needed to make individual
assessments of Syrian refugees entering Germany and to assemble
details of the serial numbers of stolen passports.