Immigration to Germany
Immigration to Germany, including both the territory of modern Germany and its numerous predecessor states, has been a significant part of the country’s history. Historically, migration was mainly from other European countries, such as Poland, Italy, and Austria, while contemporary immigration is predominantly from non-European countries, including Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and nations in Africa and Asia. Since 2012, more than one million people have relocated to Germany annually, with the number exceeding two million in both 2015 and 2022, making it the world’s second most popular destination for immigrants after the United States. As of 2024, around 17.4 million people living in Germany, or 20.9% of the population, are first-generation immigrants, while the population with a migrant background in the wider sense stood at approximately 25.2 million, accounting for 30.2% of the total population of 83.5 million.
Even before Germany's formal founding in 1871, its predecessor states, such as the Holy Roman Empire and the German Confederation, were common destinations for the persecuted or migrant workers. Early examples include Protestants seeking religious freedom and refugees from the partitions of Poland. Jewish migrants, mostly from Eastern Europe, was also significant in successive waves. In the 20th century, rising antisemitism and xenophobia resulted in the mass emigration of German Jews and culminated in the Holocaust, in which almost all remaining German Jews and many other religious or ethnic groups, such as German Roma, were systematically murdered. In the decades since, Germany has experienced renewed immigration, particularly from Eastern and Southern Europe, Turkey and the Middle East. Since 1990, Germany has consistently ranked as one of the five most popular destination countries for immigrants in the world. According to the federal statistics office in 2016, over one in five Germans has at least partial roots outside of the country.
In modern Germany, immigration has generally risen and fallen with the country's economy. The economic boom of the 2010s, coupled with the elimination of working visa requirements for many EU citizens, brought a sustained inflow from elsewhere in Europe. Separate from economic trends, the country has also seen several distinct major waves of immigration. These include the forced resettlement of ethnic Germans from eastern Europe after World War II, the guest worker programme of the 1950s–1970s, and ethnic Germans from former Communist states claiming their right of return after the breakup of the Soviet Union. Germany also accepted significant numbers of refugees from the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s and the Syrian civil war in the 2010s.
Motivated in part by low birth rates and labour shortages, German government policy towards immigration has generally been relatively liberal since the 1950s, although conservative politicians resisted the normalization of Germany as a country of immigrants and citizenship laws accordingly remained relatively restrictive until the mid-2000s. A major reform of immigration law in 2005 saw the state commit, for the first time, resources to the integration of newcomers and significantly liberalised the labour market for skilled professionals while restricting it for unskilled labourers. Smaller immigration reforms in 2009, 2012 and 2020 contributed to the broad trend of liberalisation. The 2021 federal elections saw the formation of a center-left government which promised to reform immigration law. In 2023, the coalition began implementing a series of reforms including the Skilled Workers Immigration Act that among other things eased requirements for foreign workers, relaxed naturalization requirements and legalized multiple citizenship.
History of immigration to Germany
Pre-unification
The Counter-Reformation in the 16th and 17th centuries led large numbers of Protestants to settle in Protestant — or at least religiously tolerant — principalities and cities of the Holy Roman Empire, much of which would later become Germany. According to one estimate, a total of 100,000 Protestants moved from Habsburg lands to what is now southern and central Germany in the 17th century.Large numbers of Huguenots also fled France after the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in 1572, around 40,000 of whom settled in what is now Germany. Although many returned to France after the 1598 Edict of Nantes, which proclaimed a policy of religious tolerance towards Huguenots, repeated waves of conflict and persecution over the next few centuries spurred new waves of emigration. Brandenburg-Prussia, Hesse-Kassel, Brandenburg-Bayreuth, and Hanover were major destinations of Huguenots during this time.
Several thousand English and Scottish Presbyterians also fled the violent reign of Mary Tudor; many settled in Frankfurt. Many Dutch Calvinists settled in northwestern Germany after the Dutch Revolt.
After World War II until reunification (1945–1990)
Forced emigration of ethnic Germans from eastern and central Europe
Towards the end of World War II and in its aftermath, up to 12 million refugees of ethnic Germans, so-called "Heimatvertriebene" were forced to migrate from the former German areas, as for instance Silesia or East Prussia, to the new formed States of post-war Germany and Allied-occupied Austria, because of changing borders in Europe.Guest worker programs
Due to a shortage of laborers during the Wirtschaftswunder in the 1950s and 1960s, the West German government signed bilateral recruitment agreements with Italy in 1955, Greece in 1960, Turkey in 1961, Morocco in 1963, Portugal in 1964, Tunisia in 1965 and Yugoslavia in 1968. These agreements allowed German companies to recruit foreign citizens to work in Germany. The work permits were at first issued for a duration of two years, after which the recruited workers were supposed to return to their home countries. However, many companies repeatedly renewed the work permits; some of the bilateral treaties were even updated to give workers permanent residency upon arrival. As a result, even though many did ultimately return to their countries of origin, several million of the recruited workers and their families ended up settling in Germany permanently. Nevertheless, the government continued to encourage the public perception of the arriving immigrants as temporary guest workers and for many years made little provision for their integration into German society.East Germany set up similar foreign recruitment schemes, although at much smaller scales and exclusively with other socialist states. Most foreign workers recruited to East Germany, known locally as Vertragsarbeiter'', came from North Vietnam, Cuba, Mozambique and Angola. The government portrayed East Germany as a post-racial society and called the foreign workers socialist "friends" who would learn skills which could then be applied in their home countries. In reality, racism and exploitation were widespread. The workers were generally strictly segregated from locals and did menial work that locals refused to do. Considerable portions of their paychecks were often diverted to their home governments, making their livelihoods precarious. Female Vertragsarbeiter were not allowed to become pregnant during their stay. If they did, they were forced to have an abortion or faced deportation.
Following German reunification in 1990, many of the roughly 90,000 foreign workers living in what had been East Germany had no legal status as immigrant workers under the Western system. Consequently, many faced deportation or premature termination of residence and work permits, as well as open discrimination in the workplace and racism in everyday life. The vast majority ultimately returned to their home countries.
Immigration from East Germany to West Germany
During the 1980s, a small but steady stream of East Germans immigrating to the West had begun with the gradual opening of the Eastern bloc. In 1990, the year of German reunification, the number swelled to 389,000.Aussiedler
As Eastern bloc countries gradually began to open their borders in the 1980s, large numbers of ethnic Germans from these countries began to move to Germany. German law at the time recognized an almost unlimited right of return for people of German descent, of whom there were several million in the Soviet Union, Poland and Romania. Germany initially received around 40,000 per year. In 1987, the number doubled, in 1988 it doubled again and in 1990 nearly 400,000 immigrated.Upon arrival, ethnic Germans became citizens at once according to Article 116 of the Basic Law, and received financial and many social benefits, including language training, as many did not speak German. Social integration was often difficult, even though ethnic Germans were entitled to German citizenship, but to many Germans they did not seem German. In 1991, restrictions went into effect, in that ethnic Germans were assigned to certain areas, losing benefits if they moved. The German government also encouraged the estimated several million ethnic Germans living in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe to remain there. From 1993 to 1999, the German government established a cap limiting ethnic German immigration to 220,000 people per year, which was later lowered to 100,000. In total, more than 4.5 million ethnic Germans moved to Germany between 1990 and 2007.