A year and a half after the end of the Syrian civil war and the fall of dictator Bashar al-Assad, few Syrian citizens are returning to their homeland. This is evident from the numbers of extended residence permits, naturalizations and employment agreements in Germany, as reported by the “Focus” magazine.
Most of the Syrian citizens living in Germany hold a limited residence permit for humanitarian reasons, which must be renewed every three years. An inquiry in major German cities has shown that the authorities have almost uniformly extended the residence permits. In Wiesbaden, for instance, 633 permits are set to expire this year, with the integration authority stating that “almost all” will be extended. Similarly, in Bremen, where 1,900 residence permits expired between January and May, almost no one has returned to Syria. The same pattern emerges in the remaining cities.
In fact, Syrians are increasingly opting for naturalization. The Federal Statistical Office recently reported that in 2024, more than one in four new citizens of the country of origin was of Syrian nationality. This year, cities are also expecting record numbers, with the Bavarian state capital of Munich anticipating a total of 24,000 naturalization applications and 8,000 naturalizations and the federal capital of Berlin setting a target of 40,000 new citizens.
According to the numbers of the Federal Employment Agency in Nuremberg, more and more refugees are finding employment in Germany. By December 2024, 239,566 Syrians had a job subject to social insurance, a 10.5% increase from the previous year. The upward trend continued in 2025, with 244,272 refugees employed in March, a 12.6% increase from March 2024.
Contrary to the expectation of some in politics, shortly after the fall of Assad, that Syrians would quickly return to their homeland, this has not come to pass. Migration expert Maria Kalin sees no legal means to force the departure of those who have not returned, stating that if the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees were to revoke asylum applications, each case would need to be individually reviewed, a task that would overwhelm authorities and courts.