Germany will accommodate as many immigrants as make their way to the country, so says the head of the country’s Federal Office for Migration and Refugees Manfred Schmidt. Speaking to the German newspaper Der Spiegel, Schmidt acknowledged that the numbers of people coming into Germany has quadrupled in the last year, with 800,000 asylum applications expected in 2015. “Probably these figures are still rising,” he said, in a stark admission that there is no end in sight to the hundreds of thousands making their way into Europe. While many of the would-be immigrants come from Syria, Schmidt also acknowledged the case for refugee and asylum status being based on economic hardship – one of the greatest concerns of the proponents of controlled immigration to Europe. If Europe opens the doors to those who are defined as living in poverty, this would mean billions of people would have valid asylum claims for European nations. “There