Recent revelations about a plan for violent mass deportations – even of immigrants with German citizenship – allegedly being carried out by the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in collaboration with neo-Nazi organizations have sparked intense concern among the immigrant population.

According to a survey by the infratest-dimap Institute on behalf of the “Panorama” program of the first German public television channel ARD, 51% of respondents with an immigrant background said that these plans cause “great” or “very great” fear.

However, 48% of respondents without foreign roots say the same.

In the eastern states the fear is slightly higher (49%) than in the west (42%) and more intense among supporters of the Greens (69%) and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) with 61%.

The lowest rate of concern (8%) is found among those who support the AfD. In addition, 76% of them respond that they feel “a little” or “not at all” afraid of the possibility of implementing such a plan.

Following the revelations by the investigative journalism website Correctiv about the secret meeting of AfD officials with neo-Nazi organizations in Potsdam, the party distanced itself from the “re-immigration” plans and, in a statement, stressed that it supports the “legal and constitutional » return of foreigners who are obliged to leave Germany and are not entitled to asylum. “We resolutely reject unconstitutional demands, such as the deportation of German citizens with an immigrant background,” the text said. However, in another statement, the AfD spoke of the need to remove obstacles to the removal of German citizenship, which it advocates for criminals, terrorists and rapists of foreign origin.

“The automatic non-deportation of criminals because they also have German citizenship must be abolished,” said the head of the AfD parliamentary group, Alice Weidel. Last December, Björn Hecke, head of the party’s organization in Thuringia and one of the AfD’s most extreme figures, said he still calls those who have obtained German citizenship but come from abroad “foreigners”. “We could live without any problems with 20-30% less people in Germany. It would actually be better for the environment too,” he added.

However, when asked by ARD if he was referring to immigrants with these numbers, he denied it and spoke of a number that results from Germany’s demographic problem.

However, German citizenship is particularly protected in the Constitution, which stipulates that it cannot be revoked, even for people with dual citizenship, as constitutionalist Ulrich Karpenstein explains to ARD. Only in exceptional cases, e.g. committing a terrorist act abroad, there is the possibility of revocation of citizenship. “The plans being formulated are clearly unconstitutional.

To be implemented, the constitution, international conventions for the protection of human rights should be ignored. And something like that presupposes a coup”, emphasizes Mr. Karpenstein.

In 2022, 23.8 million people with an immigrant background lived in Germany, which corresponds to 28.7% of the country’s total population.

Of these, 12 million have German citizenship.