Germany has pledged to spend 150 million euros ($189
million) helping migrants return home, the minister of development said in an
interview published Friday.
The aid fund will benefit both failed asylum seekers and
migrants who choose to return to their home countries.
"For the next three years, we will put aside 50 million
euros a year for this return programme," minister Gerd Mueller told
Augsburger Allgemeine daily.
The funds will be made available to Iraqis, Afghans and migrants
from the Balkans.
The aid will help those migrants "make a new
start" in their home countries, Mueller said. "We can offer them
education, professional training, employment and social benefits."
Since receiving 900,000 asylum requests in 2015, Germany has
tightened up its borders and regulations for would be migrants.
Under pressure from her Christian Democratic Union party,
Chancellor Angela Merkel has got tougher on immigration ahead of her bid to win
a fourth term in next year's elections, vowing never again to allow such a wave
of arrivals from Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan.
Her previous "open door" policy towards refugees
has drawn increasing criticism, in part due to a number of high profile crimes
committed by recently-arrived migrants.
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