In January of 2016, the Germany federal parliament approved a new law that gives ID cards to migrant arrivals. These new ID cards are part of a newly centralized system that’s designed to give government agencies easy access to information.
New ID Cards & Decentralization
The hope and expectation is that the new migrant ID cards will address concerns that were expressed by the German public after the recent migrant sex attacks on New Year’s Eve in Cologne and the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris.
The ID cards were proposed for the purpose of monitoring the large influx of migrants to Germany during this recent migrant crisis. Particularly, they are intended to prevent double-counting of migrants, misidentification or better yet, missing them altogether.
Up to this present time (Jan 2016), Germany’s system has been relatively decentralized. The blame has been placed largely on this system for allowing migrants to fake identity or even register multiple times and the consequences of faulty migrant identification have proved to be a serious issue.
It has been estimated that nearly 80% of migrants to Germany have falsified papers or have no papers whatsoever. With such a high number or migrants coming in (1.1 million in 2015), this equates to a very substantial problem that needs swift resolution.