The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) said on Friday it is struggling to cope with a backlog of unprocessed asylum applications.
Frank-Jürgen Weise, the head of the office said between 670,000 and 770,000 people who arrived in Germany in 2015 were still waiting for a decision on their asylum requests.
"This situation is unacceptable," Weise said. "It's terrible and unacceptable for the people to have to wait so long."
He added that between 300,000 and 400,000 refugees still haven't even been registered.
Germany under pressure
For the tens of thousands of refugees who have arrived in Germany over the past several months, the process for being granted asylum can be a long and tedious affair.
Firstly, new arrivals must register with the authorities, after which they're assigned to a specific state based on the country's quota system.Once they arrive in their designated state can asylum seekers file their application.
In order to help speed up the process, the office is pursuing plans for new "arrival centers" that will process refugees in less than 48 hours. The government office expects to process over 1 million asylum applications by the end of 2016. That number will include new arrivals as well as the backlog of applications from 2015, Weise said.
Germany's federal refugee office said it has failed to make a final decision on thousands of asylum applications and wants to create expedited processing centers to handle over a million asylum requests in 2016.
Deutsche Welle
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