Asylum policy: Berlin to build on Tempelhof despite drop in refugees

[unhappycamper]

http://www.dw.com/en/berlin-to-build-on-tempelhof-despite-drop-in-refugees/a-19143212

Berlin is going ahead with plans to expand the big refugee center at Tempelhof airport, even though its population has dropped. Campaigners say it's a back door for developers in the much-loved park. Ben Knight reports.

Berlin to build on Tempelhof despite drop in refugees
Ben Knight
25.03.2016

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's new anti-asylum measures are beginning to pay political dividends in the nation's capital, though they are perhaps not as beneficial for the refugees stranded in Greece. According to Berlin's latest official figures, only around 50 refugees are arriving in Berlin every day - a long way below the 1,000 that sometimes arrived daily last fall.

The effects have been clear at the disused but much-loved Tempelhof airport, some of whose hangars were converted into a huge makeshift refugee shelter late last year. Though well over 2,000 were living in the hangars at one point, there are only 1,700 there now - and 600 free beds, the city's social affairs administration has said.

Families and refugees who have had their status as asylum-seekers confirmed are being moved to better accommodation around the city, government spokeswoman Regina Kneiding told the "Tagesspiegel" newspaper.

Plans to accommodate 7,000

But Kneiding also confirmed that plans to build extra temporary accommodation on the airfield would go ahead anyway - in defiance of a referendum in 2014, when Berliners voted to keep the entire airfield free from property development. (The airfield became a vast and much-used park called Tempelhofer Feld after the airport's closure in 2008).