Austria

Immigration
Hundreds of thousands of people, many of them fleeing conflict and poverty in the Middle East, Afghanistan, and North Africa, entered Austria in waves in early September 2015 on their route northwest from the Balkans. Most moved on to Germany, but Austria expected 95,000 asylum aplications as well. Vice Chancellor Reinhold Mitterlehner stated that Austria could not accept more than 100,000 seekers, following a pledge from its larger neighbor Germany to limit arrival numbers and echoing his Social Democrat Chancellor Werner Faymann, who adopted a more compassionate tone and stated that Austria should step up deportations of migrants who could not qualify for asylum.