Humanity in Distress and Terrorist Designs

“This information is nothing new."
"The ministry has long noted that in a significant number of cases an asylum seeker who has been registered in the system does not arrive at the reception centre he or she was assigned."
Tobias Plate, spokesman, German interior ministry

REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch   Migrants queue in front of the compound of the Berlin Office of Health and Social Affairs (LAGESO) for their registration process in Berlin, Germany, January 29, 2016.

Little wonder that a government and its various departments tasked with documentation and tracking of an immense influx of refugees have failed in their purpose. It is doubtful that any country has ever had to tackle such an overwhelming intake of foreigners with all the concerns relating to their accommodation and record-keeping, and in the case of the Syrian refugees, attempting to ensure safety and security are not ignored.

Short cuts in registration and security checks were inevitable in an effort to cope with the tide of humanity entering the country.

When Chancellor Angela Merkel charitably stated that Germany would do what no other European country committed to, it was from the perspective of a EU leadership, of a country whose economic stability and political influence was at its pinnacle of command. Perhaps it was just too much for anyone to imagine just what the nation was inviting for itself in the massive headache of settling all the refugees and migrants it had given encouragement to.

And, it has now been revealed it seems that German authorities retained scant information on the hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers crossing into the country.This, from a nation that prided itself on its scrupulous and painstaking record-keeping capacity. A country so given to record-maintenance that after the conclusion of the Second World War and the revelations surrounding the horrors of the Holocaust, much could be pieced together in the way of evidence through the precision of German record-keeping.

Migrants, it seems, were not fingerprinted, their identities confirmed beyond a doubt. This enabled them to play the registration system, entering at more than one location, and in the end, not turning up where they might have been expected to; in many instances simply 'disappearing'. Of the total number absorbed by Germany, an astonishing 1.1-million last year, an estimated 130,000 it is now recognized may have gone underground, according to government figures recently released.

Not knowing where these people ended up, assumes that they are there, somewhere, and perhaps their intentions are not benignly reflective of people desperate to find peaceful haven and future opportunities for themselves. Intelligence agents' minds swivel to concerns over terrorism and organized crime, as an alternative to haven-seeking. While 1.1 million people were registered as asylum seekers, thirteen percent cannot be found, never having arrived at the refugee accommodation they were assigned to.

The interior ministry, in its frail defence feels the figures may be exaggerated through data entry errors. Which does little to assuage the concerns that the unaccounted travellers might represent Islamist extremists or criminals. The asylum seekers who have seemingly vanished loom as a giant headache for authorities. Some among them are believed to have possessed forged passports whose source has been recognized as that used by some of the Paris terrorists.

Refugees queue at the Berlin State Office for Health and Social Affairs last month  Photo: EPA