BERLIN (AP) — Since the far-right, anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party won a regional election last monthNot a day goes by without Ola Akhras and her husband discussing the opportunity to return home. Syria.
The couple lives with their two young daughters in Magdeburg, where the newly elected parliament of Saxony-Anhalt meets on Tuesday for the first time since the Alternative for Germany, or AfD, achieved its best result to date – putting him in a strong position to form Germany’s first far-right regional government since World War II.
In its first session, the 83-seat legislature will elect its president – a position that traditionally goes to the largest party – and the AfD is hoping for a symbolic first victory. The state’s next governor is unlikely to be chosen before December.
“It’s bad, we built our life here, we really liked being here, but now we don’t feel welcome anymore,” said Akhras, who fled Homs for Germany in 2018. She speaks German fluently and works as a doctor at the local hospital, where she is completing her specialist training in internal medicine.
Akhras, who wears a hijab, says she feels appreciated at work, but has recently encountered hostility while shopping and no longer feels safe leaving the house at night. His sense of not belonging has become overwhelming since the elections.
“Our children here will never be recognized as German,” she said.
The mood towards migrants has deteriorated since the arrival of a million migrants in 2015
The mood in society is very different from that of a decade ago, when Germans welcomed more than a million migrants from war-torn countries like Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Chancellor Angela Merkel. Many have built a new lifelearned the language and found work.
However, as Germany’s economic problems Slow growth, high inflation and rising energy prices worsened and public opinion towards the new arrivals deteriorated. The AfD and other immigration critics have blamed the country’s problems on migrants.
The party, established 13 years ago, gained particularly rapid support in the formerly communist and economically weaker states of eastern Germany, notably Saxony-Anhalt. However, it also continues to gain traction nationally. It is the strongest opposition party in Parliament and leads recent polls.
The AfD’s victory in Saxony-Anhalt last month underlined the party’s skill at capitalizing on discontent over issues going well beyond its central theme of fighting immigration. The unpopular national government of Chancellor Friedrich Merz struggle to stubbornly straighten out Germany sluggish economy.
The party’s strong performance destabilized migrants and those Germans who thought the nation was immune to nationalism after the horrors of the Nazi past.
Many migrants fear AfD campaign will lead to more expulsions
It remains unclear whether the AfD will form the next government in Saxony-Anhalt – it is three seats short of a majority in the September 6 elections. But many immigrants and refugees fear that if the far-right party succeeds in running state government, it could attempt to implement its campaign promises, including more and faster expulsions as well as restrictions on the admission of asylum seekers.
There are no figures yet on whether racist incidents have increased since the election, but “advice centers are extremely busy, phones are ringing non-stop, counseling appointments are full and people are in great need of advice and support,” said Undra Dressler, executive director of the Saxony-Anhalt State Network of Migrant Organizations.
“We know people who have left, people who are considering it and people who have made a conscious decision against it and said, ‘I’m staying. I’m not going to accept these terms. Now more than ever, I’m going to get involved,'” Dressler said.
One of those determined to stay is Mohamad Aldabagh, a pharmacist from Homs who fled to Germany in 2015, at the height of the Syrian civil war. That year, hundreds of thousands of people crossed the Mediterranean on flimsy rubber boats in the hope of finding a safer future in Europe.
“Living in Germany for the last ten years has been a very good experience,” said Aldabagh, 34, a father of two young children and working in a pharmacy in Magdeburg. “I have rebuilt my life here and I will not let anyone take it away from me. »
Although he claims to have also been a victim of racism, he believes that skilled workers like him or many foreign doctors working in Germany are necessary and that society cannot afford to mistreat them.
AfD doesn’t want ‘culturally foreign’ workers despite skilled labor shortage
Although the AfD program for Saxony-Anhalt does not completely reject labor migration, it takes a very selective approach to recruiting foreign workers.
The party explicitly proposes to refrain from recruiting workers it describes as “culturally foreign” and to end a state program designed to support the integration of foreign skilled workers, says Rahim Hajji, professor of social and health services at the Magdeburg-Stendal University of Applied Sciences.
“This raises a fundamental question,” Hajji said. “How is a state with an aging population and growing labor shortage supposed to meet its demand for skilled workers if it significantly restricts the pool of international workers it is willing to recruit?
Last August, more than one in four doctors, or 27.1%, in hospitals in Saxony-Anhalt did not have German nationality, according to a survey by the Mediendienst Integration group, which studies migration in Germany.
“We want to contribute to the well-being of society here,” Aldabagh said. “We are needed. We are not the black sheep of this country.”
He then paused and added: “But if we don’t get any more respect, then we will go to another state where the AfD is not as strong. »
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AP writer Geir Moulson contributed reporting from Berlin.
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