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 (in German, Fachkräfteeinwanderungsgesetz, or FEG) that among other things eased requirements for foreign workers, relaxed naturalization requirements and legalized multiple citizenship.

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.

Towards the end of World War II and in its aftermath, up to 12 million refugees of ethnic Germans, so-called "Heimatvertriebene" (German for "expellees", literally "homeland displaced persons") 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.