With the November figures now available, 2025 is confirmed as the 13th consecutive year in which Germany has registered over 100,000 asylum seekers. Despite a low success rate for asylum claims, the majority remain in the country, numbering approximately 1 million.
In addition, a new ruling from Karlsruhe, the Federal Constitutional Court, is not making deportations any easier for the ruling government, which ran on a promise to reverse course on immigration.
The data presented by the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) on Wednesday shows that, primarily due to stricter border protection and the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, only half as many asylum seekers arrived in Germany up to the end of November this year compared to the same period last year. In that regard, the government has made progress.
Nevertheless, 106,298 initial asylum applications have already been filed in 2025. There were 8,311 in November, and monthly applications have remained at approximately this level since spring.
As a result, the goals set by Friedrich Merz (CDU) during the federal election campaign remain out of reach.
In January, the current chancellor had announced that, should he win the election, “all attempts at illegal entry, without exception” would be prevented at the borders.
Alongside this “de facto entry ban into the Federal Republic of Germany for all” persons without valid entry documents, Merz promised at the time that “the number of daily deportations” would be “significantly higher than the number of illegal daily arrivals.”
This vow has not materialized.
Only around 20,000 people had been deported by the end of October 2025, which is slightly more than in previous years. The majority of asylum seekers travel illegally from Germany’s safe neighboring countries, including Austria or Poland, but also travel through many others, such as Italy, Turkey, Greece, or Spain.
Now, these migrants are usually turned away if caught crossing the border by federal police. This central tightening of border protection has been implemented by the CDU/CSU and SPD ruling coalition since May.
While the current level of just over 100,000 applications is perceived by many observers in Germany as relatively low against the backdrop of the extreme phase since the middle of the last decade, such figures are causing alarm in other countries. For the sake of comparison, the low point of applications was in 2007, when only 19,100 applied.
Meanwhile, the British Labour government is currently pushing for a sharp asylum reform because, last year, more than 100,000 asylum seekers arrived in the U.K. for the first time in British history, over 110,000 have been registered in 2025, and Nigel Farage’s right-wing Reform party is now leading the polls by a large margin with around 30 percent.
However, the U.K. has a much smaller population, and in many ways, the standard of living is already lower than in Germany, which means 100,000 is a tremendous influx for the island nation. However, Germany’s education, healthcare, housing market, welfare, and security are all on the ropes as more and more foreigners arrive in the country.
According to BAMF, the main countries of origin for asylum seekers in Germany in the current year, in order, are: Syria, Afghanistan, Turkey, Somalia, and Iraq. Only 27 percent of asylum decisions are approved.
This rate has fallen significantly primarily because, in previous years, Syrians were almost always recognized, but since the fall of the Assad regime, they rarely receive a protection status. Despite all efforts, however, no Syrian has been deported yet, and successful deportations to other African and Asian states only occur in a few cases.
Under the EU asylum system, Germany is permitted to return many of the asylum migrants arriving back to the first European state where they were registered in the EU. Known as the Dublin Regulation, it is often not enforced.
Although the more than 100,000 asylum applicants in 2025 predominantly traveled onward illegally from safe EU states to Germany, BAMF reported only 5,112 such “Dublin transfers” by the end of November. Germany had requested the take-back of significantly more migrants, specifically 33,845, and the relevant state only agreed 22,245 times.
A drop in decorations also has to do with various court decisions related to human rights, which prohibit deportations, for example, to Greece or Bulgaria. Many affected individuals also utilize “church asylum” until the transfer deadline expires, or go into hiding on the day of the planned deportation.
Now, Germany’s top court has made it even harder. In a decision published two weeks ago, the court ruled that police officers attempting to collect a deportee who has locked himself in his room must always first apply for a court search warrant, even if they believe they have heard the person inside.
The Constitutional Court ruling referred to a Guinean who was set to be deported to Italy in 2019. When officers arrived at his asylum home in Berlin, he locked his door. The officers believed they heard him and entered without a search warrant, where they found him. The African man filed a lawsuit, and after a number of appeals, Germany’s top court now ruled in his favor.
