Germany’s illegal immigration numbers have plummeted just weeks after the European nation started policing its borders.
The latest figures show that roughly 300 illegal migrants are detected crossing on average into Germany every day.
The number is down considerably from the 700 a day the country was recording just one month ago.
The significant drop was revealed in an analysis of police figures in a German newspaper.
The sudden change follows a new policy of border control from the nation’s “traffic light” coalition government.
The government is dominated by the pro-open borders left-wing Social Democrats (SPD) and the Green party.
There is also some input from the free-market liberal Free Democrats.
The idea of increasing border controls was not popular with the SPD.
However, the plan was eventually sold as a humanitarian action intended to protect people being abused by people smugglers in a bid to claw some popularity back after serious defeats in local elections.
Initially intended to be active for just ten days, it has since had two 20-day extensions.
While the number of arrivals is still considerable, the experiment at least shows that even trying to police a nation’s borders can be massively effective.
The policy saw German police deployed to the nation’s borders with all south-eastern facing border countries: Switzerland, Austria, Czechia, and Poland.
Tactics included “flexible, targeted checks” and random checks on those crossing the border.
The checks are being carried out by joint patrols with the police of those border states.
Police have the power to choose what they do when they find an “illegal entrant” in a border region with no right to remain.
They can either prevent the alien from entering Germany or “end that person’s residence.”
In total, the number of illegals registered at the border has fallen by 40 percent.
It is down from 18,492 in the 30 days before the new policy, to 11,029 in the following 30 days, reports Welt am Sonntag.
At the Polish border, 772 people were turned around and sent back in the 30-day period, up from just four people before.
The number of people caught trying to cross the border with outstanding arrest warrants also surged from 22 to 152 as well.
The newspaper reports the remarks of one right-wing CDU lawmaker, whose party is now out of power nationally but which nevertheless presided over a period of enormous mass migration to Germany during the 2015-16 migrant crisis.
Welt cited Armin Schuster, who expressed surprise that the policy was so effective.
Schuster said: “With the notified border controls, even our expectations are significantly exceeded… the massive search successes by the federal police clearly demonstrate how indispensable border controls currently are.”
The results subvert the long-held orthodoxy in Germany that border controls are bad policy because they cause delays at the national borders.
Open borders across Europe are one of the key “achievements” of the European Union and venerated by many.
While Germany’s small border control success may have come as a surprise in Berlin, other European nations have already discovered the utility of policing the frontier.
Hungary built a border fence during the 2015 migrant crisis, for instance.
The border barrier cut arrivals from 10,000 a day to just dozens.
More recently, Poland has built a border fence against Belarus after the Moscow satellite state started to push migrants over the border.
The effort by Belarus has been called an act of hybrid warfare against the European Union.
Serbia is another recent European convert to border control.
The nation has been suffering a surge of gun violence at its borders due to the hours-long battles between rival factions competing for territory.
However, the Serbian government has now introduced fresh measures including a major police deployment which has seen migrant numbers fall.
This, Welt reports, has had a knock-on effect on arrivals to Germany too, as fewer migrants make their way north.
Migration is again surging to Germany.
Over a quarter-million asylum seekers registered in the nation in the first nine months of this year.
The figure is up from 130,000 in the same period of 2022.
