Tension exposed as the Germans worry about immigration

“I was crying,” Alya says, when I saw news about Munich’s attack last week, which left a young child and her mother dead.

“Why should someone do something like that? Why? I can’t understand it.”

The Afghan man in custody after the latest in a series of attacks in German cities, where the suspect is a asylum seeker.

Last Thursday, it was a mother and daughter in Munich; Last month, another child and adult were killed in Ascafenburg.

Ala came here a decade ago from Syria with her son to the baby. Now at the age of 10, he and his mother are greeted at their home.

They were among a record 1.2 million people who applied for asylum in Germany from 2015-16, many of them from Syria, but also from countries, including Afghanistan and Iraq.

The attacks set a security and migration front and the center of the election campaign, days before the Germans vote for their next government on February 23.

Ala is desperate for those who commit violence in a country that, in her opinion, “gave us everything.”

BBC for the first time heard his story a decade earlier when they were filmed at a refugee center in the city of Oberhausen.

Rami looks at a picture of himself since 2015. He is a tiny, wrapped jacket when his mother escapes from Syria’s torn war.

“How can I go with him to this boat?” She wonders herself, remembering how they passed the Aegean with 60 others packed in a small boat.

“I didn’t know I went through it,” Rami says. He scares him to see him now.

Ten years on, Alya has been trained in the care of the elderly and married again. She is looking for a job while Rami goes to a local school and is a passionate football fan.

They both speak German: Rami grew up with the language and Alya has studied it.

They are grateful to their adopted country and plan to stay; Rami dreams of becoming a doctor, police officer or football player.

The mother and the child, surprisingly, have changed over the last 10 years.

So is Germany.

In 2015, there were scenes of sweets that were distributed to refugees arriving at the Munich railway station, as an incomparable number of people fled to Europe due to conflict, instability or poverty.

German Welcome culture, Or the welcoming culture was encapsulated when then Chancellor Angela Merkel said, “We can rule this.”

For her supporters, it was a pragmatic and compassionate reaction; For her critics, one of her most unfaithful mistakes.

A decade later, and anyone I have talked to agrees that attitudes have hardened in society and politically.

Ala says she has “many German friends” but has found a wider change in mood in Germany and mentions, hearing the phrase Foreigner outside – Foreigners outside.

However, it is “very sad” for refugees and migrants who do not study German or, according to her, have not been able to integrate properly.

“The key to this country is the language,” she says, as he adds, “There is also a positive country that many people have learned the language and they have started working.”

Near the main park of Oberhausen, the 66 -year -old Georg, says he deals with people of all origin, but is worried about the cases of “radicalization”.

He lived in the city bigger of his life and worked as a car mechanic and tiles. He mourns what he sees a common decline in Oberhausen, pointing to the old infrastructure and lack of investment.

Many in Germany also talk about the desire for more public safety and disappointment with the countries that rule the country after the unification.

The exit government of Germany has resumed border control as it tries to reduce the number of asylum seekers and opposition parties want to continue.

Georg says this is a difficult question, but he believes that there must be security: “No matter who is responsible. It is not like at the moment. It has to change.”

Prior to the migration crisis in Europe, Oberhausen was already a multicultural city.

Local government data shows that in 2010, 22% of people in Oberhausen either were not born as German citizens or had an immigrant parent.

By 2016, this figure increased to 28%, while the last digit of 2023 was up to 37%.

Walking through the center, the strained character of the German migration debate became quickly obvious.

About one angle is a demonstration against the final right alternative for Germany (AFD), which has accepted the concept of “remigination”; A phrase widely understood that it means mass deportations.

On the main street is a stand for AFD party, but soon attracted the shouts of the “Nazis”.

Two colorful men end in a heated dispute with party activists we openly shoot.

We hear one of the AFD campaigns we have talked to earlier, say, “Go back to your Hometown (Homeland) If you don’t like this here. ”

When I challenge this man, Joerg Lange, then he denies that the remark is racist.

A municipal councilor, he tells me that voters will have their opinion and skepticism of votes, that one of the men grew up here, despite their command of the language.

“Would you say the same to a white man?” I ask.

“No, of course not,” replies G -n Lange – but again he denies that she is racist.

“He attacked me personally,” says G -n Lange. “He said” You’re a Nazi. “And then, of course, you have to say that if something doesn’t fit you here in Germany, then you can come back. Then leave us alone here.”

Police are arriving, during which time I talk to the two men involved in the dispute, who and Messep, who are both in their thirty years.

“He told us to come back!” He says kwame as Mestep says that walking back would mean to get away, “on three streets away from here.”

“We went to school here, we grew up here … We have children here,” they tell me. “We pay taxes, we pay a lot of taxes!”

I ask the couple whether their role in the dispute adds to the increasing temperature of the political debate.

Kwame, who has used the term “Nazis” in the dispute, says that the “humiliating” language he hears about people of color, “triggered”. “We feel like, wow, are we still in the same place right now?”

Dance choreographer, he tells me that he came to Germany from Ghana at the age of 13 until Mestep describes how he was born in the city.

“I’m a German,” says Mistep. “I am proud of this city”, Chimes in KWAME. “Wherever I go around the world (I say), I’m from Oberhausen.”

Both believe that their community has become “drastically” more divided in recent years.

The political climate, which includes a constantly strong AFD surveys, has led to a strengthening of the language from some of the major political parties in Germany.

The conservative Christian Democrats who guide the ballot box called for a “border prohibition” of anyone who enters Germany without the right documents, even seeking protection.

The Social Democrats have promised to accelerate asylum procedures and increase deportations.

AFD wants to close the borders of Germany and leave the Common European Asylum Policy.

Ala hopes Germany will hold its doors open to refugees: “There is still a war everywhere. And people need it … Maybe there are many good people who run away from the war.”

The future of Germany’s migration policy will depend on which parties form a coalition after these elections and what they can agree with.

But to the right, the displacement is already in progress, in fact, rhetoric.