{"id":576,"date":"2025-11-17T16:13:36","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T21:13:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/migration-reporting2025\/?p=576"},"modified":"2025-11-17T16:13:25","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T21:13:25","slug":"did-the-german-moderates-welcoming-culture-for-syrian-refugees-fall-alongside-assad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/migration-reporting2025\/did-the-german-moderates-welcoming-culture-for-syrian-refugees-fall-alongside-assad\/","title":{"rendered":"Did the German moderates\u2019 \u2018welcoming culture\u2019 for Syrian refugees fall alongside Assad?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The night the news broke that Bashar al-Assad, Syria\u2019s longtime dictator, had fallen, Hesham Moamadani felt his world tilt. On the desk beside him lay his freshly minted German passport, issued only days earlier, its polished red cover catching the light of the TV. Nearly a decade had passed since he\u2019d crossed into Germany\u2019s borders with nothing but the clothes on his back, fleeing Assad\u2019s dictatorial regime and indiscriminate violence. That day, he sat in his Berlin apartment with a document that confirmed his place, only for the very reason he\u2019d fled to flicker out into the oblivion of the German evening news. A mix of conflicting emotions\u2014joy, overwhelm, and disbelief\u2014washed over him, soon followed by anxiety for his other Syrian friends who still lacked passports.<\/span><\/p>\n

Moamadani was one of nearly <\/span>300,000 people<\/span><\/a> 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\u2019s border openings in 2015-2016 became eligible for naturalization that year, and Moamadani was one of them.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What most didn\u2019t anticipate, though, 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, with many fearful that the regime\u2019s fall continues to serve.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe \u2026 welcoming culture is no longer the dominant force in German political opinion,\u201d said Jonas Wiedner, a German sociologist who studies social stratification and integration issues faced by immigrants in Germany. \u201cThere\u2019s a large majority of people who want to see migration limited, and also want to see foreigners, particularly refugees, reduced in Germany.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

While there\u2019s credence to the claim that Germany\u2019s rightward, anti-immigrant shift is a part of a broader shift observable in many Western countries today, Wiedner noted that Germany stands in a particularly unique position. With their open-border policy history and relationship to Syrian refugees specifically, Wiedner believes that the border policies from 2015 played significantly \u201cinto the hands of the far right.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But the far right is no longer the only demographic embracing anti-immigrant policy in Germany. The AfD (Alternative fur Deutschland), or Germany\u2019s populist far-right party, gained significant voter traction after <\/span>embracing<\/span><\/a> mass deportation policies. Even the traditional center-right political powerhouse, the CDU\/CSU (Christian Democratic Union\/Christian Social Union), whose members hold the largest share of seats in the German Bundestag, has begun ceding to the anti-immigration narrative, too.<\/span><\/p>\n

After a visit to Damascus, Syria, earlier this month, Germany\u2019s Foreign Minister and CDU member Johann Wadephul <\/span>said<\/span><\/a> in a statement to German news network Deutsche Welle that \u201chardly anyone can live here [in Syria] with dignity.\u201d During a meeting in parliament, Wadephul allegedly made a remark that said today\u2019s \u201cSyria looked worse than postwar Germany.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Wadephul\u2019s statements irked other high-ranking German politicians in the CDU\/CSU party, drawing scrutiny from many of his more conservative colleagues. Germany\u2019s Chancellor Friedrich Merz, whose pointed remarks appeared to address Wadepuhl indirectly, noted that \u201cthere is no longer any reason for [Syrian] asylum in Germany, and therefore, [Germany] can begin repatriations.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For now, voluntary repatriation and deportations of Syrians with criminal records remain at the forefront of the CDU\u2019s policies. But only 0.1% of Germany\u2019s Syrians have voluntarily returned to their homeland a year after Assad\u2019s fall. Those like Moamadani know that they are lucky. But to the hundreds of thousands of Syrians under more precarious circumstances \u2014 such as those with temporary residence permits or a subsidiary protection status \u2014 small shifts can feel potentially life-altering.<\/span><\/p>\n

***\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been sitting in an empty Zoom conference for 15 minutes when a pixelated apparition of Stephan Mayer\u2019s round, doughy face emerges from the void. The flickering lights of German apartment buildings flash by in his car window. He mutters a sentence in German \u2014 I respond that I can only understand English. \u201c Make it quick,\u201d he says. \u201cI only have a few minutes.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Mayer, who has been a member of the German Bundestag since 2002, stepped down from his role as Secretary-General of Germany\u2019s CSU party in early 2022 after making death threats to a <\/span>journalist<\/span><\/a> for reporting on his illegitimate child. Under Chancellor Angela Merkel, Mayer served as the Parliamentary State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of the Interior from 2018 to 2021. Now, he is a \u2018Spokesperson for Sports\u2019 of the CDU\/CSU party. As part of his former Parliamentary State Secretary position, however, Mayer said that determining the CDU\/CSU\u2019s stance on migration policy was one of the key aspects of his job.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI followed the discussions about migration, and especially illegal migration, very intensively within the last decade,\u201d he said. \u201cI am deeply opposing the theory that there [has been] a shift in [Germany\u2019s] <\/span>Willkommenskultur.<\/span><\/i>\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Critical to the argument for Syrian repatriation \u2014 a policy Mayer remains a strong proponent of \u2014 is the notion that a post-Assad Syria is safe for return. \u201cFortunately, we now have quite [a] stable government in Syria,\u201d Mayer said. \u201cI just had a briefing with the Federal [Foreign Office], and they are very confident that the al-Sharaa government is stabilizing.\u201d The meeting presumably included Johann Wadepuhl, Germany\u2019s Foreign Minister, who opposed Syrian repatriation after making contentious comments about Syria\u2019s safety after the fall of Assad.<\/span><\/p>\n

But if Syria is truly safe for return as Mayer and some of his colleagues propose, there seem to be other strong incentives keeping return rates at bay.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the early 1990s, the Yugoslav Wars \u2014 a series of ethnic conflicts, wars of independence, and insurgencies in the Balkan region that lasted over 10 years \u2014\u00a0 sparked a major refugee and humanitarian crisis in Europe. Generous estimates put the number of refugees at nearly 1 million. Germany received a large number of refugees \u2014 around 700,000.<\/span><\/p>\n

[TK: more on Germany\u2019s successful repatriation of refugees after Yugoslav Wars; But Syrians have been here for 10 years (as opposed to 3-4) and Germany has invested billions of Euros into their integration. In Wiedner\u2019s words, only now is that \u2018investment bearing fruit’ \u2014 Syrians have stable jobs, speak fluent German, many of them have graduated from German institutions, etc…]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The night the news broke that Bashar al-Assad, Syria\u2019s longtime dictator, had fallen, Hesham Moamadani felt his world tilt. On the desk beside him lay his freshly minted German passport, issued only days earlier, its polished red cover catching the light of the TV. Nearly a decade had passed since he\u2019d crossed into Germany\u2019s borders<\/p>\n

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