Germany's Interior Ministry announced on Thursday that the country recorded 91,671 asylum seekers in January - only 35,000 people less from the record in December, wherein a total of 127,320 were listed as migrants in the country - making the total number reach nearly 1.1 million for last year.
With the given the numbers, the government is feeling the pressure to increase efforts to diminish the arrival of migrants, especially since the small decline is just associated with the winter weather, according to FOX News.
Officials are focused on making sure that this year's numbers will be lower than in 2015, with Chancellor Angela Merkel eyeing diplomacy as the prime solution, while refusing to acknowledge that capping the number of refugees would help the issue, according to a previous HNGN report.
Overall, the German government is on the move to toughen asylum policies.
An asylum application involves the surrender of personal details, fingerprints and photographs by migrants over 14 years old upon their arrival in Germany. A temporary permission to stay is then granted until his or her scheduled interview, the result of which would ultimately decide if the applicant gets to stay or not.
