A German food bank said Thursday it would temporarily stop accepting new non-German clients, citing a huge influx of migrants that was displacing locals in need.
“We want the German granny to be able to keep coming to us,” said Joerg Sartor, chairman of the charitable group that serves free meals to the poor in the western city of Essen.
He said especially German elderly people and single mothers had been gradually displaced over the past two years as the share of migrants had risen to three-quarters of recipients.
More than 1.2 million asylum seekers have come to Europe’s biggest economy since 2015, more than half from war-torn Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, in mass influx that sparked a xenophobic backlash.