Considerably more Germans think immigration has a mostly “negative impact” on their country than don’t, a survey has found.
A poll conducted by YouGov on behalf of the German Press Agency has found that a convincing plurality of Germans feel that immigration has a mainly “negative impact” on their society.
It comes as the country’s leftist government pushes forwards with plans to make immigration into the country even easier, with the nation’s Antifa-linked Home Affairs minister, Nancy Faeser, spearheading efforts to boost the number of migrants living in the country.
According to a report by Die Welt, many Germans do not necessarily want more migrants in Germany, with 49 per cent of respondents to the YouGov survey saying that “immigration mainly has a negative impact on Germany”.
By contrast, only 29 per cent of those polled rejected this claim, while 25 per cent didn’t answer either way.
Meanwhile, the country’s overall open borders approach to migration appears to be thought of as a disaster by the German public, with 61 per cent rating the ruling leftist coalition’s approach to migration as bad, with a further 28 per cent describing it as being very bad.
While the negative impact of immigration in Germany has been widely observed, considering its relatively recent history of terror attacks and migrant-linked crime, the negative responses from members of the general public towards it may come as surprising considering the country’s rapidly changing demographics and how that may impact upon responses to immigration questions.
For example, more than one in four in Germany are now reported as coming from a migrant background, with 27.2 per cent of people in the country either being a migrant themselves or having one or more parent that is not originally from Germany.
Overall, the country’s “migrant background” population is said to have hit 22.3 million in 2021, with 54 per cent of this group reportedly being born in a foreign country.
It should also be noted that this statistic does not reflect changes to the country brought about by the recent influx of Ukrainian refugees, as well as other migrants who have arrived in Germany to claim asylum in 2022.
Things are only likely to get more diverse in the future, with the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s most populous region, seeing migrant background children become the majority population in nearly 1,000 of its elementary schools.
Meanwhile, another 1,200 of the area’s 2,787 primary schools have a “migrant background” population of somewhere between 25 and 50 per cent.
“Anyone who still speaks of “integration” as a solution to mass immigration wants to deceive,” one AfD MP reportedly said regarding the statistics. “If the current demographic developments continue, it will be the children without a migration background who will have to integrate.”