OPINION: Yes, Germany's slide toward hard-line immigration policies will impact you

Before we begin: Is German nationality the only one you’ve ever held? If yes, then there’s no need to read any further.

If no, this article concerns you.

It concerns you even if you’ve lived in Germany for decades and even if you speak the language fluently. It concerns you even if you earn a good wage and pay your taxes. It concerns you even if you have acquired a German passport – even if you are “well integrated”. And even if you have blond hair and blue eyes.

All of this, for example, applies to me. Yet there’s an important, inconvenient truth that even those of us who tick the above boxes should never lose sight of: despite decades of allowing, sometimes actively encouraging immigration, Germans don’t actually like it – and you are an immigrant.

In everyday life, it can be easy for those of us with decent spoken German and light skin to forget this. Those around us are perfectly accepting; we are treated with courtesy by state officials; politicians are constantly stressing the need for highly-qualified workers from abroad who are willing to learn German.

So after a while, you don’t feel like an immigrant anymore – or, if you do, you feel like the ‘right kind’. The kind who politicians say they want. The kind that many Germans say they don’t have anything against.

The life of a 'good' immigrant

When you’re living this life, it can be easy to ignore the latest round of anti-immigration rabble-rousing – or play it down as something which won’t ever affect you. "So Friedrich Merz is a closet racist with a good ear for a dog-whistle soundbite," you might think. "Tell me something I don’t know! And, to be honest, I don’t really feel comfortable around Hauptbahnhof late at night these days, either…”

Or, you might hear the latest calls to send Syrian refugees back pronto and yawn: 'Oh, that old chestnut again? Anyway, surely they won’t get rid of the barber round the corner... Right?"

And immediately, we have one way in which a hardening of attitudes towards immigrants affects you: if you, like me, have your hair cut by a Syrian national, you may find that this person is already considering leaving – jumping before they get pushed, so to speak.

On careful reading, almost no-one is calling for deportations of Syrian refugees in work. Yet the way the CDU tore into its own foreign minister Johann Wadephul simply for suggesting that, given the current state on the ground in Syria, even those who want to return may need some time, has understandably unsettled many Syrians here.

Even those of ‘the right kind’: in work, paying taxes, learning German. As Pau Palop-García, at the German Centre for Integration and Migration Research, has explained, the ceaseless talk of encouraging ‘good’ and clamping down on ‘bad’ migrants sends “mixed messages” – and makes many who are already here feel unwelcome.

As does the recent scrapping of fast-track citizenship, a move which actively discourages ‘good’ immigration and serves as a reminder of just how quickly the legislative environment can change.

READ ALSO: 'Slap in the face' - Applicants blast Germany's plan to scrap citizenship reform

Which brings us to the second, slightly more abstract way in which the constant drone of anti-immigration sentiment affects you.

Expats versus immigrants

A few months back, my colleague Emma Pearson highlighted the way many foreigners living in France forget their own status: "When is an immigrant not an immigrant? When they’re an expat. The thing is, expats don’t exist. Well, not in the legal and immigration systems, anyway, despite what people may choose to call themselves."

Here in Germany, perhaps fewer of us see ourselves as‘ expats’ than in France, but many of us have the same conceptual difficulty: we don’t always consider ourselves immigrants. Not anymore. Not now that we’re integrated and have citizenship. But, by definition of having immigrated to Germany at some point in our lives, we are immigrants – and will always be.

Even though we are often told that we aren’t considered foreigners any more, of course we still are, in a way. Many of us will have experienced that point in a conversation when someone is holding forth about die ganzen Ausländer (all these foreigners) or all die Migranten (all the immigrants) and suddenly remembers that there is still potential for us to be offended – and reassures us that, no, of course we’re German now, mit denselben Rechten und Pflichten (with the same rights and responsibilities).

Which, legally, we are. Aren’t we?

Well yes. But there are a lot of people in Germany who, deep down, really aren’t comfortable with that idea – the idea that you can ‘become’ German and still keep a link to your homeland or that of your parents. Hence the decades-long distrust of the concept of dual-citizenship and the fact that, since provision for it was expanded a couple of years back, the CDU/CSU have been agitating to limit it again.

READ ALSO: Is dual citizenship in Germany really at risk of reversal?

If you speak to your friendly local conservative politician, they will almost certainly stress that of course they don’t have a problem with you being a dual-citizen of Germany and the UK or Germany and the Netherlands or wherever else (in Europe!).

All they want to do, they will say, is strip convicted criminals of German nationality. Which sounds reasonable enough, right? In fact, you might feel safer around Hauptbahnhof…

And once again, you’re thinking: "Well, they don’t mean me…"

It’s just that, they do. Whether they mean to mean you or not.

Just as a thought experiment: if legislation were introduced accordingly and you were to be accused and convicted of a serious crime you did not commit, that would mean you. A German with no other nationality may also suffer a catastrophic miscarriage of justice, but would not be stripped of their passport and deported for it.

Anti-immigration sentiments are seen across Europe

To be completely fair to Germany, this is already the case in much of the rest of Europe.

Many countries have legislation allowing for dual-nationals to lose citizenship on conviction – the UK and France, for instance. Moreover, France's far-right Rassemblement National would like to stop dual-citizens working as civil servants there – and is currently polling around 30 percent of the vote.

Here, the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) is at 25 percent. And my hunch is that, for all their claims that law-abiding citizens have nothing to fear from them regardless of their background, for all their attempts to woo the socially-conservative Turkish- and Russian-German communities, they won’t look kindly on dual-citizens if they gain power.

Which means they won’t look kindly on you, either.

So, yes, all of this should concern you, too.