For more than 400,000 Germany’s immigrants, Jan. 1 is marked as their birthday in the Central Register of Foreign Nationals, with the majority of this group coming from Syria, Turkey, and Afghanistan, according to data obtained by the immigration restrictionist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
According to the data from the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF), a quarter of the 416,420 migrants born on January 1 entered Germany in 2015, another 116,000 afterwards, and the rest of them before. AfD MP René Springer, who originally requested the information, has since released it to the public.
Jan. 1 was also marked as a birthday of the 13 of the 47 recently admitted minors from the Greek migrant camps who were allowed to enter Germany during the coronavirus crisis.
So why is Jan. 1 such a popular date for migrant birthdays?
Simply put, it is the date Germany lists on official documents for those migrants who apply for asylum with an ID and who do not know or refuse to say when their date of birth is.