Bonn Appeals for Help, Saying It Can’t Afford Refugee Influx

BONN —  West Germany cannot afford to take in hundreds of thousands fleeing poverty in Eastern Europe and the Third World, a top official in Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s government said Tuesday in a plea for help in stemming the refugee tide.

As many as half of the 400,000 refugees expected in Western Europe this year are likely to settle in West Germany, aggravating social tensions already strained by the costs of German reunification, Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said.

While Schaeuble was careful to avoid suggesting that barriers be erected to keep out the increasing armies of migrating poor, the new government policy he explained at a press conference was clearly aimed at reducing the influx.

“We want to, and must, make a greater effort to offer a perspective in their home countries to the people drawn irresistibly by the economic prosperity of the West,” Schaeuble said.

West Germany has become a haven for those seeking a better life because of the constitutional vow to grant asylum to all who are fleeing persecution, a claim increasingly made by Eastern Europeans who leave behind raging ethnic conflicts as well as dim prospects for personal wealth.

Schaeuble suggested that the 12-nation European Community pool its resources to work toward alleviating the poverty, repression and pollution that are driving millions from their homelands each year.

The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees should identify targets for foreign investment or aid that might encourage the discontented to stay, Schaeuble said.

The West German government has annually spent between $65 million and $103 million aiding refugees over the last six years, said Hans-Peter Repnik, deputy chief of the Ministry for Foreign Economic Cooperation.

Meanwhile, public resentment of needy new arrivals has reached volatile proportions, with record numbers of ethnic German resettlers streaming in to claim their guaranteed citizenship.