10 years ago, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel opened Germany’s borders to Syrian refugees, sparking the genesis of the nation’s ‘Wilkommenskulture’ — welcoming culture. After Assad’s fall, the rise of the center-right, and escalating anti-immigrant sentiment, Germany’s politicians are increasingly divided on the topic of Syrian repatriation.
Everything happened all at once.
Hesham Moamadani’s German passport, freshly minted just a few days prior, was glistening on his desk. Moamadani was anxiously gnawing on his fingernails. Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s dictator, had fallen. Moamadani once believed the day would never arrive. And yet it did, the news landing ever so mundanely on his screen as if making a mockery out of the beads of sweat dripping from his forehead, never mind Berlin’s subzero December freeze.
Moamadani was one of nearly 300,000 people who were granted German citizenship in 2024, a record for the nation. A large number of Syrian refugees who arrived during former German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s border openings in 2015-2016 became eligible for naturalization that year; Moamadani was one of them. What most didn’t anticipate was that the dreaded Assad regime would collapse abruptly, mobilizing a stream of disputes within the German government on whether or not to repatriate Syrian nationals back to their home country. Particularly inflamed by the rise of anti-immigrant sentiment throughout the West, German politicians remain divided. And Syrians, many of whom have lived in Germany for years but are yet to receive their citizenship, remain in judicial limbo.
“Hardly anyone can live here with dignity,” Germany’s Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said in a statement to German news network Deutsche Welle after a visit to Damascus, Syria, earlier this month. During a meeting in parliament, Wadephul allegedly made a remark that said today’s “Syria looked worse than postwar Germany.” A member of Germany’s center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Wadephul’s statements drew the attention of high-ranking German politicians and drew scrutiny from more conservative party counterparts. Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz, whose pointed remarks appeared to indirectly address Wadephul, noted that “there is no longer any reason for [Syrian] asylum in Germany, and therefore, [Germany] can begin repatriations.”
The rightward shift in mainstream German politics reflects a larger wave of anti-immigrant sentiment that has taken hold of the country in recent years. While for now, voluntary repatriation and deportations of Syrians with criminal records remain at the forefront of the CDU’s policies, only 0.1% of Germany’s Syrians have voluntarily returned to their homeland a year after Assad’s fall. Those like Moamadani know that they are lucky. But for the hundreds of thousands of Syrians in more precarious circumstances — such as those with temporary residence permits or a subsidiary protection status — small political shifts can feel life-altering.
