Authorities have been straining under the almost one million migrants who have sought asylum in the country this year.
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel has come under increasing criticism by opposition groups and some of her conservative allies for opening up Germany’s borders to Syrian refugees, criticism that has increased since the November 13 attacks in Paris.
Germany has accepted the largest number of asylum-seekers of all European countries, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
The data released Monday did not specify the nationalities of the new arrivals.
That pushed the total for 2015 well above the 800,000 that Thomas de Maiziere forecast for the full year in mid-August, a few weeks before the flow of people arriving via Turkey, Greece and the Balkans accelerated. Due to the colder weather and Turkey´s efforts to stop people making the crossing to Greece, the number has decreased to between 2,000 and 3,000 per day from 8,000 or more in October.
It said the number trumped previous estimates set for the whole year, with 484,000, over half, coming from Syria, according to the data.
But the Interior Ministry said the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees had managed to shorten the time it takes to process the newcomers from an average of around seven months in 2014 to five months this year.
All administrative offices dealing with migrants-from social security to the job center-will be able to access the information on a centralized system and across different states, the officials said.
The processing time for Syrians is therefore particularly short – at around three months.
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Berlin has recently listed these states as “safe countries of origin”, meaning their citizens are not normally be eligible for political asylum, a move that has brought numbers from the Balkan countries down sharply.
