Syria wants them back. Germany will pay them to go.
But a generation of one million Syrian refugees is choosing new German roots over the allure of their homeland, with fewer than 2,000 taking up a cash offer to return since the fall of Bashar Al Assad, The National has been told.
Many are marking 10 years in Germany, since the dramatic scenes of 2015, when masses of people, carrying little but the clothes on their backs across Europe, slept at train stations, lit campfires in the streets and persuaded Germans to open their doors.
In interviews, Syrian-Germans say much has changed since. A new government in Berlin preaches border closures and deportations. A new government in Damascus has begun rebuilding from civil war, raising the question of whether Syrians still need asylum in Europe.
Yet many now have deep roots in Germany, with children born and raised there who never knew the old Syria. “We are not between two worlds – we are the bridge that connects them,” one of the 2015 generation, Ahmad Al Hamidi, likes to tell his two children.
Since January, Syrian asylum seekers who return voluntarily have been able to claim travel costs plus €1,000 ($1,160) in “start-up assistance” from the German government. But as of last month, only 1,337 people had done so, Interior Ministry figures obtained by The National show.
A further 227 have had their costs covered by Germany’s 16 state governments, who in turn are reimbursed by Berlin. There are talks on deporting Syrians linked to crime or violence. Right-wing politicians seize on ugly cases to call for “remigration”.
Mr Al Hamidi worries, though, that a purge of bad apples will unsettle the flourishing ones, too. “Someone who lives here, pays taxes here and raises their children here is not a temporary guest,” he said.
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Then-chancellor Angela Merkel was the face of Germany’s open-door policy – sometimes literally, with grateful migrants clutching her portrait as they travelled. Her mantra was “wir schaffen das”, meaning “we can do it” or “we’ll manage it”.
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It is hard to imagine that euphoria now. But ISIS was on the march in Syria and Iraq, and migrant boats washing up on European shores was a newer and more shocking sight. Mrs Merkel had recently been panned for telling a Palestinian girl that some migrants would have to “go back”, reducing her to tears. And German authorities became overwhelmed, at one point admitting on Twitter, now X, that asylum rules were “effectively no longer being adhered to”.
Some saw a deeper element, an act of atonement for Germany’s past. Mrs Merkel hinted at that, saying she was moved by the opening words of Germany’s post-1945 constitution: “Human dignity is inviolable.” Sigmar Gabriel, her vice chancellor, recognised a Christian impulse. “You can accuse her of some mistakes in handling that challenge in 2015 but certainly not of departing from her inner compass,” he wrote in an essay on Mrs Merkel’s tenure that he shared with The National when she left office.
Whatever its motives, Germany had a practical issue on its hands. How could it handle more than 1.2 million people whose asylum claims were registered in 2015 and 2016? How could it unite Germans with Syrians uprooted from vastly different backgrounds?
“When many of us arrived in 2015, we were individuals – quiet, scattered, often grateful for invisibility or for finding one another while navigating shared uncertainty,” said Khaled Barakeh, a Syrian artist who now has a studio in Berlin.
But the “welcome culture” of 2015, he says, would soon turn out to have conditions attached – an expectation from Germans that their new neighbours would be grateful, bring in useful tax revenue and keep quiet politically.
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Whether Germany did “manage it” is a matter of political debate. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party surged into parliament at the 2017 election, on an anti-immigrant platform that warned of “Islamic parallel societies”. Others prefer to highlight success stories.
A Syrian view is that sticking together has often brought results. Under the Assad regime “the Syrians had to learn to organise themselves, to protect themselves, to offer services”, Ms El Jazairi said, especially during the war. “This experience that they had there, they brought it with them everywhere they went in Europe.”
One victory for the “Syrian lobby”, she said, was a change to German passport rules that cut the waiting time from eight years to five. Many Syrians have gone down that road: more than 80,000 became German citizens in 2024, far more than any other nationality. Syrians “often apply for citizenship as soon as they meet the conditions”, Germany’s statistics office noted in June.
Mr Al Hamidi, one of those new citizens, also praises the Syrian community spirit. As more refugees arrived, Syrians already in Germany “took up a key role, not just as interpreters but also as mentors, neighbours and members of societies”, he said.
He sees progress, too, in the job market, where Syrians were often held back by a lack of language skills or recognised qualifications. “The German labour market is like a castle with many doors and not all of them open easily,” said Mr Al Hamidi, a lawyer. “The labour market needs us and we need fair opportunities.”
Economists say Syrians are vital for plugging labour shortages in an ageing German population. The AfD likes to mock that idea, often using “skilled workers” as sardonic code for migrants involved in crime.
From 2020 onwards, the number of Syrian asylum seekers climbed again, arriving either from their battered country or from limbo in refugee camps. Some arrive in Europe unable to read their own language, never mind German.
“A lot of people came from Syria with a literacy problem – they couldn’t write and read,” Ms El Jazairi said. “The level of literacy in Syria is better than other countries, like Afghanistan, for example, but still it was a challenge.” She helped set up courses for mothers and carers with little time for German lessons.
Even while Mr Al Assad was still in power, Germany was eyeing up ways to return the poorly integrated and those denied asylum. Most of the 2015 intake were granted three-year refugee status. More recent arrivals have been given only one year of “subsidiary protection” because they were not at individual risk.
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