German authorities are searching for 12 refugees from Syria who entered the country using fake passports from the same source used by the Paris attackers. The passports were reportedly stolen from a passport office in Raqqa, the unofficial capital of Islamic State, in 2013 following the city’s capture.
The news comes a week after two men were arrested at a refugee center on suspicion of having links to the Paris attacks. The men entered the country at the same time as the Paris attackers and were also using false Syrian passports.
But Germany’s problems go far beyond a few potential terrorists with false passports. The German newspaper Bild is reporting that more than 250,000 of the refugees who have entered the country this year cannot be located because the system of registering refugees was so bad.
Asylum-seekers are expected to register after their arrival in the country, but overburdened refugee offices mean many are left waiting for weeks or have to be taken hundreds of miles by bus to be registered in different cities.
Thousands are disappearing after entering the country and never registering. Border officials do not even take fingerprints of arriving asylum-seekers, it has emerged.
Those who do not register have no entitlement to benefits, but there are concerns they may be disappearing into the black economy or other criminal activities.
“Nationwide we’re seeing a loss of around 30 per cent of the refugees,” an unnamed government official told Bild. “We don’t have the exact numbers. We don’t even know if they’re still in Germany.”
The wave of migrants entering Europe has now topped one million people in 2015, according to newly released statistics – eclipsing even the record year for European migration into the United States more than a century ago.
The total number of migrants to Europe for 2015 passed 1,005,504 this week, according to figures released by the International Organisation for Migration on Tuesday – a number that surpassed the record 1,004,756 European migrants who enter the United States in 1907.
That’s a lot of people to be “lost” in Europe. I suppose it doesn’t do any good to state the obvious: you have to wonder how many of those “refugees” have been infiltrated by any number of terror groups.
But that’s just spoiling the fun. Europe is throwing the biggest shindig in history and has invited a million of their closest friends to celebrate…what? Diversity, I guess. Tolerance, I suppose.
I hope the German people appreciate the lengths to which their government has gone to make life thrilling, exciting, and only slightly dangerous.
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