DHAKA: Germany can cope with at least 500,000 asylum-seekers a year for several years.

The country’s vice-chancellor Sigmar Gabriel has said, reports the BBC.

Officials have said they expect more than 800,000 asylum-seekers in 2015 alone - four times the 2014 figure.

Gabriel repeated that other European countries should take their fair share.

The UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, says a record 7,000 Syrian refugees arrived in Macedonia alone on Monday and 30,000 migrants were on Greek islands.

The migrant influx has unsettled European governments and prompted diverse responses – Hungary’s conservative leadership has been building a border fence to try to keep them out while the German leadership expresses pride in crowds who turned out to welcome them in.

A Greek minister said on Monday that the island of Lesbos, which sits off the Turkish coast, was ‘on the verge of an explosion’ due to a build-up of 20,000 migrants trying to reach the European mainland.

The government and UNHCR have brought in extra staff and ships to process the migrants.

BDST: 1539 HRS, SEPT 08, 2015
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