BERLIN (Reuters) – The number of Germans who fear their government could be overburdened by dealing with immigration has grown sharply this year, though concerns about taxes and living costs still dominate, a long-running survey showed on Thursday.
For the first time, those fears about immigration were shared across the country, not concentrated in poorer regions of former East Germany, according to the poll by R+V insurance, now in its fourth decade.
“An overwhelmingly East German concern has become a topic that worries people equally across Germany,” Isabelle Borucki, a political scientist who worked on the survey, said. “Respondents fear that integration won’t succeed.”
A total of 56% of respondents said they feared the state and its institutions could be overwhelmed, putting that concern in fourth place, up from 45% and ninth place a year ago.
Much lower down the rankings, in 11th place, were fears that immigration could cause social tensions, up from sixteenth place last year.
Ahead of immigration, respondents worried about the rising cost of living, the cost of accommodation and tax hikes and benefit cuts, similar to last year’s readings.
Growing anxiety about immigration has come amid a rise in support for the far-right AfD party, which came second in a major regional election on Sunday after a campaign that featured anti-migrant rhetoric.
The levels of concern were still lower than in 2015, when 65% feared that the state would be overwhelmed. That year then-Chancellor Angela Merkel welcomed more than a million refugees fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Merkel’s successor, has said current refugee numbers are too high, especially given the number that do not go on to receive asylum.
Germany has taken in around a million Ukrainians seeking refuge from the Russian invasion of their country that started last February.
(Reporting by Thomas Escritt, Editing by Friederike Heine and Andrew Heavens)
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