Almost all asylum seekers who came to Germany during the peak years 2013–2019 want to remain permanently and acquire citizenship, according to new research by the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin).
The findings confirm what liberals in Europe have been denying for a decade: that for many migrants, asylum has functioned less as temporary protection and more as a pathway to long-term settlement.
The DIW study found that 98% of asylum seekers who came to Germany between 2013 and 2019 from the six main countries of origin—Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Eritrea, Somalia, and Iran—want to stay in the long term and are seeking naturalisation.
The main motives for the desired citizenship are improved access to the labour market, greater freedom to travel, legal security, and family reunification.
Citizenship, for many migrants, is also important because it serves as protection against removal.
As the DIW’s report explains: “For refugees, naturalisation has a special significance: it provides permanent protection against deportation to the country of origin, even if the legal situation in Germany or the political situation in the country of origin changes.”
The numbers are now at record levels: last year, around 250,000 people received a German passport—almost 50,000 more than in the previous record year, 2023.
The figures confirm what sceptics long suspected: that the 2015 migration wave was not a temporary asylum crisis but in effect a mass resettlement.
Conservative outlet Junge Freiheit laments that of the asylum seekers who entered the country between 2014 and 2016, one in six has now received a German passport, meaning that they appear in crime statistics as “Germans.”
Although around two-thirds of the asylum seekers from that time are now employed, only 20% of them have a full-time job, with most performing jobs for low-skilled workers.
