Germany is on pace to take in one million asylum-seekers this year. In the last 11 months, the country has taken in 964,574 new migrants, including more than 200,000 just in November. According to Die Welt (link in German), more than half of the potential refugees—about 484,000 migrants—came from Syria.
Germany has accepted the largest number of asylum-seekers of all European countries, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. “Germany is doing what is morally and legally obliged,” chancellor Angela Merkel said in September (paywall). “Not more, and not less.”
It’s extraordinary also because it’s larger than the total number of refugees that the US—with a population of 320 million to Germany’s 80 million—has accepted in the last 10 years. Since 2005, the US has accepted a total of 675,982 refugees from regions all over the world, according to data from the Refugee Processing Center, an arm of the US Department of Justice’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration.
President Barack Obama in September announced a plan for the US to resettle 10,000 Syrian refugees over the next year, and has recently called on Americans to welcome Syrian families as modern-day pilgrims. But his campaign to show the US can shoulder more of the weight of Europe’s migrant crisis has faced its own challenges: Obama’s refugees plan has drawn criticism from several, mostly Republican state governors who cite security concerns for US citizens after the Nov. 13 terror attacks in Paris.
Just last week, Texas filed a lawsuit against the federal government for moving forward with plans to resettle two Syrian families in the state—although in recent years, the state has taken in more refugees than any other in the US.