A recent study has revealed that while prejudices toward the homeless and gay people have declined, Germans are showing an increasingly hostile attitude toward asylum-seekers.
The study, held once every two years, said Thursday that 54.1% of respondents expressed negative opinions about asylum-seekers, up from 49.5% in 2016 and 44% in 2014.
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For the first time, the study also examined just how prone Germans are to falling for conspiracy theories, discovering that about 46% of respondents believed secret organisations were wielding decision-making authority in politics.
Last year, the Leipzig Study on Authoritarian Trends revealed almost a quarter of respondents had a negative attitude towards migrants.
Thirty-six percent of them agreed that foreigners only come to Germany in order to take advantage of the welfare state, while over a quarter of those polled would send foreigners back to their homelands if employment became scarcer.
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Additionally, 36 percent are convinced Germany has fallen under foreign influence to a perilous degree.
Moreover, 56 percent supported the statement that they feel like strangers in their own country due to an influx of Muslims.
Germany has accepted hundreds of thousands of migrants. However, over the years, the number of newcomers has dropped. According to figures cited by the police, there were 300,000 asylum seekers and 697,000 refugees living in Germany in December 2018.
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Under the open-door policy proclaimed by Chancellor Angela Merkel, Germany had become one of the countries most affected by the migrant crisis in Europe which erupted in 2015.
Germany currently has the largest share of migrants in its total population among EU states — 12 percent, according to the World Population Review.
