Germany’s anti-mass-migration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has revealed that nearly four in ten long-term welfare recipients are foreign nationals.
Figures from Germany’s Federal Employment Agency, requested by the AfD in the Bundestag parliament, have shown that there are around 1.4 million people in Germany who have received the so-called “citizen’s allowance” welfare payments for at least five years, or around forty per cent of all those who receive the state support, Die Welt reported.
According to the data, 62.2 per cent of recipients of the citizen’s allowance for at least five years are German citizens, while 37.8 per cent are foreign nationals. This means that migrants are significantly over-represented, with only around one in five people in the country being foreign nationals.
The true impact of migration on the programme is likely higher, since the figures do not distinguish German citizens born abroad, who immigrated to the country and were later naturalised.
Despite its misleading English translation, the Bürgergeld is not limited to German citizens. The welfare scheme, introduced by the former Social Democrat-led coalition government of ex-Chancellor Olaf Scholz, offers means-tested payments of €563 ($629) per month to unemployed people or those deemed to have insufficient income for ordinary living expenses, including food, clothing, and other personal needs.
The figures on long-term recipients show lower migrant usage than the programme as a whole, with previous government figures released in 2024 showing that 48 per cent of Bürgergeld recipients were foreigners, or 2.7 million people.
The AfD has called for a welfare-system reform that requires recipients who have been receiving benefits for more than six months to provide at least 15 hours of community service per week, and to cut off those who fail to do so.
AfD lawmaker and party policy expert René Springer said: “It cannot be that so many people receive citizen’s income at the taxpayers’ expense, even though they could go to work.”
Beyond costing the nation a disproportionate amount of money through welfare payments, foreign nationals are also significantly overrepresented in crime, with recent data from the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) showing that foreign nationals accounted for 42.9 per cent of all suspects. Again, this likely downplays the impact of migration because it excludes naturalised migrants and the children of migrants.
Meanwhile, separate figures the AfD obtained last week from the Interior Ministry found that 87.3 per cent of the 148,000 people wanted on outstanding arrest warrants in Germany are foreign nationals, compared with 1.5 per cent who are dual nationals and 11.2 per cent who are German citizens.
AfD MP Sebastian Münzenmaier said the figures showed the country needs a “rigorous change of course”, arguing the government should be much tougher on immigration, including by immediately deporting foreign criminals to their homelands.
