BERLIN—Around 270,000 Syrians in Germany have the right to bring in their family members, a newspaper said on Wednesday—a statistic that could fuel the debate about migration less than six months before a national election.
Mass-selling tabloid Bild cited a government paper as showing a total of 431,376Syrians applied for asylum in Germany in 2015 and 2016 and said that of those 267,500 would be entitled to family reunifications in Germany.
That could play into the hands of the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which has lost support in recent months as the refugee issue recedes from the headlines ahead of a Sept. 24 election.
Senior AfD member Alexander Gauland condemned the figures, saying it was “absolute madness” to allow so many people to bring their families to Germany:“Billions and billions of tax money are being swallowed and the social state is being steered toward breakdown while our eyes are wide open.”
