BERLIN. Almost every 20th Syrian now lives in Germany. According to Statista, their number rose to 972,000 people at the end of the year. That is 16 times more than in 2014. Back then, there were just under 60,000. 22 million people live in Syria itself.

513,534 of the Syrians living in Germany are currently receiving citizen’s allowance. This is according to current figures from the Federal Employment Agency. Most of the rest receive support from the Asylum Seekers Benefits Act.

The number of Afghans in Germany has also exploded in the same period. According to Statista, it has increased sixfold to 419,410 between 2014 and 2023. According to the Federal Employment Agency, almost one in two, 197,551, receives citizen’s allowance. Here, too, the vast majority live on asylum seeker benefits. Afghanistan has around 41 million inhabitants. This means that one in every hundred Afghans now lives in Germany.

And the number is increasing. Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has announced that she wants to fly another 10,000 Afghans to Germany. Even security concerns about individual people or fake identity papers play no role. The Foreign Office issued this instruction to the relevant embassies. This is why the public prosecutors in Berlin and Cottbus are now investigating.

The citizen’s allowance currently costs German taxpayers almost 50 billion euros a year – and the trend is rising. One in two of the approximately 5.5 million recipients does not have German citizenship, and here too the trend is clearly rising.

However, this could change with the new citizenship law that came into force last month. Foreigners who have lived in Germany for five years will then be naturalized. In exceptional cases, the period can be reduced to three years. This means that Afghans and Syrians who have been here since 2019 at the latest can then obtain German citizenship.