The main road through the northern German village of Upahl is lined with wooden plaques, letters illuminated against gray skies and muddy fields.
“Upahl said no”, read one. “Think of our children!” said another.
The signs are in conflict with the planned center for 400 asylum seekers in the town with a population of 500.
Like many communities in Germany, the Northwestern district of Mecklenburg, where Upahl is located, has witnessed an increase in the arrival of asylum seekers and people with official refugee status.
Almost 218,000 asylum applications were submitted in Germany last year – more than double the number in 2020 and the largest number since 2015-16.
In 2022, the largest number of asylum seekers will come from war-torn Syria and Afghanistan, followed by Turkey and Iraq.
In addition, more than a million people came from Ukraine. The latter are given a special status which means they do not need to apply for asylum to be allowed to stay in Germany.
To complete their arrival, a sports hall has been requested in Northwestern Mecklenburg as a temporary home for the newcomers.
– A quiet life in a German village –
But with capacity now exhausted and between 20 and 30 new arrivals per week, local officials voted in January to set up a new center in Upahl using converted transport containers.
It is due to open in March.
“Because of the large number of people coming to us (from Ukraine) plus asylum seekers … we have a situation that we can no longer deal with,” Tino Schomann, the district’s chief administrative officer, told AFP.
“I need more space, more capacity,” he said.
But some residents opposed the center and staged demonstrations against the plan.
“Life in Upahl is very good because everything is quiet,” said Jan Achilles, 46, an environmental analyst who is also a community representative.
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“When 500 people, whether refugees or Germans or whatever, are gathered in a pile, problems arise.”
Retired truck driver Bernd Wien, 66, who has lived in Upahl since 1980, has been a demo.
“We just want to live here quietly, enjoy our retirement,” he said.
After months of pleading with local officials across Germany for more help to deal with the new arrivals, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser held a meeting on Thursday to address the issue.
Before the discussion, Faeser promised to help provide an overview of the “joint humanitarian efforts” needed.
– Fear on the right –
In 2015-16, the left-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party was angered by the influx of German asylum seekers to win votes and eventually enter parliament for the first time.
Right-wing extremists have been seen in recent protests in Upahl and elsewhere, and fears that the current tensions could boost far-right parties.
“The general situation is finally more dramatic than in 2015 because of the war, inflation, economic crisis and new refugees,” Hajo Funke, a political scientist at the Free University of Berlin, told AFP.
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According to a new survey by pollster INSA, around half of Germans – 51 percent – believe the country is taking in too many refugees.
However, AfD support may have reached a plateau because “the fear of violent fascism is spreading among more than 80 percent of the German population”, Funke said.
Upahl resident Anika Reisch, 38, has sympathy for those who come to the village “who are traumatized, who are worried about the future”.
But the mother of two, who runs an insurance business around the corner from the planned new center, still does not want it on her doorstep.
“The people who come here are not good either. They have no privacy at all. He couldn’t… deal with everything he had been through. It doesn’t work out well for either side,” he said.
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