Steinmeier says Germany has no ‘first- or second-class’ citizens as AfD pushes ‘remigration’ plans

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier warned Tuesday against dividing citizens by origin, amid a heated debate over plans by the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) to send immigrants back to their home countries.

"Our constitution is clear: there are no first- or second-class citizens," Steinmeier said at an event in Berlin. He stressed that people who become German through naturalization hold the same rights as those born with citizenship.

"It is not merely our grandparents' origins that make us German. Nor is it the blood that flows through our veins," he said. What matters, he added, is a shared language, the will to live together peacefully in freedom, and loyalty to the constitution.

"This country belongs to everyone who lives here lawfully, who shapes it every day, who grows up and grows old here, who learns and works here, who hopes and argues here," the president said.

"I wish for a Germany in which everyone remains faithful to the constitution's promise of equal citizenship. A country that chooses solidarity over exclusion, and that rejects anyone who indulges fantasies of ethnonationalist isolation."

Steinmeier did not name the AfD in his speech, but German media widely interpreted his remarks as a rebuke of the party's "remigration" agenda and senior figures' calls to return immigrants to their home countries, regardless of legal status.

AfD co-chair Alice Weidel intensified the migration debate with controversial remarks on Sunday, saying that if her party takes power, "all Syrians will be sent back to their home country." In an interview with public broadcaster ZDF, she criticized the government for allowing Syrian immigrants to acquire German citizenship, arguing that they should return now that the civil war has ended.

"We have a total of 1.3 million Syrians here, and they are being naturalized in large numbers," Weidel said. "Why, exactly, is the German state naturalizing Syrians? We were told that once the grounds for seeking refuge no longer applied, they would all be sent back."

The AfD has made migration a central campaign issue ahead of regional elections next month in three states. The party accuses Chancellor Friedrich Merz's conservative-led coalition of failing to curb irregular migration, saying government measures are too slow, too weak and poorly enforced.

Opinion polls show the anti-immigrant AfD well ahead in the eastern states of Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, with support estimated at 36% to 43%. Whether it can win an outright majority in either state parliament remains unclear, as seat allocations may depend on smaller parties clearing the 5% threshold. In Berlin, both the capital and a federal state, the AfD is projected to finish second with about 18%.