One year after the height of Europe’s migrant crisis, Germany — a nation that took in more asylum seekers than the rest of the continent combined — is confronting the Solomonesque task of deciding who gets to stay. Yet as authorities adjudicate cases, a contentious truism is emerging: Not all nationalities are created equal.

If you’re from Syria or Iraq, sanctuary is almost guaranteed. But if you’re from Nigeria or Pakistan, chances are you journeyed halfway across the world in vain.

Nearly 37 percent of all claims processed by the German authorities are being rejected, including an increasing number of people from countries afflicted with violent insurgencies, such as Afghanistan. Even Syrians are increasingly falling short of winning full refugee status.

Authorities say they’re simply applying national and international asylum law, weeding out those who do not qualify. But critics say that overburdened asylum officials are turning a deaf ear to at least some genuine petitions simply because they come from asylum seekers arriving from nations outside the much-publicized war zones of the Middle East.

[Germany used to be the promised land for migrants. Now, it’s turning back more of them.]

Pakistani Mohammad Nabeel is among the unlucky ones. This month, German migration authorities informed him that his case had been closed before he even had an official hearing. The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) said he had missed his appointment, although Nabeel said he was never notified.

Even if he had been, experts say, his case falls into the gray area that often leads to rejection. The 23-year-old claims he was in love with a rich girl in his hometown. But her family was against the relationship with Nabeel, who was poor and didn’t have the right family name, important factors in some areas of Pakistan for arranging a marriage. The girl’s brother and father set out to kill Nabeel, he says, to protect the girl’s honor. His only proof, he says, are fading scars on his body from being severely beaten by members of her family.

Nabeel arrived in Germany after traveling six months and crossing seven different countries. Now, he may be sent back. “I won’t go back; I’d rather kill myself,” Nabeel says. He plans to appeal the asylum official’s decision.

There are loopholes in the German system allowing for people like Nabeel — who aren’t strictly fleeing from war or political persecution — to temporarily stay in Germany on humanitarian grounds. Some are eventually granted permanent residence. But only about 4 percent of asylum requests by Pakistanis are currently decided in their favor. And Nabeel’s rejection comes at a time when the German government is increasingly taking measures targeting those migrants it deems ineligible for protection. It is determined to enforce deportation more strictly and even hired a consulting firm to help. Negotiations for deportation deals with Afghanistan and Nigeria are underway on the national and the European level.

[Europe pressing harder on countries to take back deported migrants]

Politicians in favor of a more restrictive asylum policy argue that some migrants apply for refugee status based on flimsy evidence and come to Germany for purely economic reasons. Others, they say, could escape the dangers they’re facing by simply approaching the local police or by moving to a different part of their home country.

Daniel Owolabi Ajibade is one of the more than 10,000 Nigerians who applied for asylum in Germany this year. The business consultant claims that members of a Nigerian cartel attempted to kill him because they feared that the high-quality marbles and tiles he wanted to bring into the country would ruin their business with cheap Chinese imports.

Although the 35-year-old has a newspaper article to prove the incident, the chances are high that German migration officials won’t heed his plea. The protection rate for Nigerians is only about 9 percent and to be allowed to stay, Ajibade will have to convince authorities that he had nowhere else to go.

“I’m very afraid of what the outcome will be, since going back to Nigeria would be very risky,” he says. “I understand that there’s a real war in Syria and our problems with Boko Haram are mostly in the north . . . but I wish that the German government would also accept more of us until things quiet down.”

“Our system caters primarily to those who have a concrete claim for protection, as bitter as this might be for some individuals,” said Ansgar Heveling, a lawmaker with Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union and chairman of the German parliament’s Home Affairs Committee. Heveling thinks that the vast majority of applicants are given their due. “If in individual cases a wrong decision is made, we have courts to correct them,” he said.

[Germany said it took in more than 1 million refugees last year. But it didn’t.]

The nongovernmental organization Pro Asyl says that the flood of appeals against the Federal Office’s decision suggest that the system is flawed. So far, 18,666 Syrians went to court this year to fight for a better status of protection than they were granted. Many cases were dropped, but of the 1,943 verdicts, 1,547 were in favor of the plaintiffs.

Stephan Dünnwald, spokesman for the Bavarian Refugee Council, said that there is a danger of the German authorities sweepingly rejecting certain groups of asylum seekers because they’re overburdened or because of political decisions made in Berlin.

“The decision-making is a disaster, because there are so many new and inexperienced deciders who are under a lot of time pressure . . . In some situations, where there should be additional probing, this simply isn’t done. The quality of the interpreters has declined rapidly. There are no quality standards,” Dünnwald said. “Sometimes it almost feels as if people must be beaten to death before they are being believed.”

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