'I made it': Germans reflect on Merkel's 2015 migrant influx

Asmaa Hweja (R), who arrived in Germany as a refugee from Syria, poses with the director of the Fluechtlingspaten Syrien association (Syrian Refugee Sponsors) Katrin Albrecht in their office in Berlin on July 10, 2025. Germany is now home to more than 25 million people with a "migration background", meaning either they or their parents were born abroad, some 30 percent of the population. That includes more than a million with Syrian roots. (Photo by John MACDOUGALL / AFP)