Germany expects up to 750,000 immigrants in 2015

BERLIN, Aug. 18 (UPI) -- Germany has increased its estimate of expected refugees seeking asylum this year from 450,000 to 750,000.

Official projections, expected to be confirmed by the Interior Ministry later this week, suggest 650,000 will arrive in 2015 but could surge to 750,000. The estimate comes as Europe is experiencing a wave of immigration, primarily from the Middle East and North Africa, although Germany is a destination for European Union (EU) residents as well. The estimate, if confirmed, would be the largest wave of immigration to Germany on record, eclipsing the previous high in 1992, when Germany welcomed refugees of the Balkan wars.

Sweden and Germany have taken in the majority, nearly half, of those fleeing poverty, war and human rights abuses and there have been calls by the United Nations and others for a more equitable sharing, by EU countries, of arriving immigrants.

"It is unsustainable in the long run that only two EU countries, Germany and Sweden, take in the majority of refugees," said Antonio Guterres, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees on Monday. "All EU states have the moral duty to welcome them (seekers of asylum) and they have a clear legal duty to protect them."

His comments come after German Chancellor Angela Merkel suggested immigration may become a larger problem for the EU than Greece's debt crisis.

"The issue of asylum could be the next major European project, in which we show whether we are really able to take joint action," she said in an interview Sunday.