Influx of Refugees Creates Tension in Germany Daniel Krawczyk is convinced bad things will happen to his Berlin neighborhood once the refugees move in: "They'll break into our basements," he says, "steal our kids' cell phones, bring crime and violence and take away our jobs." The 29-year-old janitor in the eastern outskirts of Berlin is among many locals up in arms over the city's plans to turn an empty high school into a center for up to 400 asylum seekers, part of growing opposition to refugee shelters across the country. The boat-is-full mentality in Germany is finding an echo in the government: "Even an economically strong country like Germany is considerably challenged" by the influx, Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich said recently, in an apparent attempt to reflect voter fears two months ahead of general elections. Meanwhile the far-right is exploiting anti-refugee fears, seeking new supporters as its members participate in rallies against new asylum shelters. About 43,000 persons applied for asylum in Germany in the first six months of 2013, almost double the roughly 23,000 for the same period in 2012. While the numbers are a far cry from the hundreds of thousands who flowed into Germany at the height of the 1990s Yugoslavia wars, German cities still find themselves struggling to cope with the influx of recent refugees, mainly from Syria, Chechnya and Afghanistan. Germany is the top destination for refugees to the European Union, followed by Sweden, France and Britain, all of which also received thousands of asylum applications during the last few months. Berlin in particular is struggling; some of its shelters are so overcrowded that beds for new arrivals are sometimes put up in hallways and community rooms. In the first half of the year, 2,300 new refugees arrived in the German capital, compared to 1,180 in the same period last year. While Germany's states pay for room and board, it is city governments, often broke, that need to advance the money - sometimes taking up loans for putting up the refugees. Germany has rigid quotas for the percentage of refugees every city or region must take in. In the case of Berlin, for example, it's 5 percent of all refugees coming to Germany. Once the refugees arrive the law requires that they be provided housing and board while their applications are processed, something that can take months and sometimes years. In the first six months of this year, approvals accounted for about 15 percent of asylum decisions, with nearly 4,800 being allowed to settle permanently. Protests against new asylum centers are not restricted to Berlin only, but pop up place all over the country as more refugees arrive. In Sachsenheim, near Stuttgart, locals rallied against a planned shelter for 60 refugees. Although the shelter will still open, city officials restricted the number of refugees taken in to 37, with the rest going to other homes. Locals recently launched a petition drive against a new home for up to 200 refugees in Augsburg in Bavaria. And residents in Hamburg's Moorfleet district held a protest when the city announced it wants to turn an old school into an asylum center for 100 people. Last month, an asylum center in Arnstadt, southwest of Berlin, was attacked by two men who hurled firecrackers and shouted racial insults. According to the Interior Ministry, the number of crimes against foreigners or foreign interests rose 16.5 percent in 2012 compared to the year before.