[1] In November 2015, a report that was released by the Federal Criminal Police (BKA) stated that "While the number of refugees is rising very dynamically, the development of crime does not increase to the same extent."

Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière (CDU) noted that "refugees are on average as little or often delinquent as comparison groups of the local population.

[3] In 2018 the interior ministry under Horst Seehofer (CSU) published, for the first time, an analysis of the Federal Police Statistic (German: Polizeiliche Kriminalstatistik (PKS) [de]), which includes all those who came via the asylum system to Germany.

[4] The report found that the immigrant group, which makes up about 2% of the overall population, contains 8.5% of all suspects, after violations against Germany's alien law are excluded.

[5] Several studies carried out since the 1990s have suggested that the collection of accurate and meaningful statistics makes it difficult to obtain an overall picture of the effect of immigration on crime in Germany.

The former East Germany also had labour shortages but their "guest worker" programme tended to encourage immigration from other socialist and communist countries.

[11] A 1991 Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich study covering the preceding two decades found that crime rates were higher among immigrants with a strongly different cultural background from Germans.

[16] In November 2015, a report by the Federal Criminal Police (BKA) stated that "While the number of refugees is rising very dynamically, the development of crime does not increase to the same extent."

[20] The first comprehensive study of the social effects of the one million refugees going to Germany found that it caused "very small increases in crime in particular with respect to drug offenses and fare-dodging.

[23] According to Deutsche Welle, the report "concluded that the majority of crimes committed by refugees (67 percent) consisted of theft, robbery and fraud.

"[23] According to the conservative newspaper Die Welts description of the report, the most common crime committed by refugees was not paying fares on public transportation.

"[25] A 2015 study in the European Economic Review found that the immigration of more than 3 million people of German descent to Germany after the collapse of the Soviet Union led to a significant increase in crime.

That held true in virtually any sort of community — big city or small town; affluent or struggling; liberal haven or far-right stronghold — suggesting that the link applies universally” (Taub & Fisher, 2018).

[28] In 2018, the interior ministry's report "Criminality in the context of immigration" (German: Kriminalität im Kontext von Zuwanderung)[4] for the first time summarized and singled out all people who entered Germany via the asylum system.

[29] The first quarter 2019 BKA report stated that no other group is as strongly overrepresented as crime suspects in Germany as asylum seekers, refugees and individuals without residency who cannot be deported (German: Geduldete).

This was attributed by criminologists to the subgroup consisting of men aged 16–29 is disproportionately large at 34% of the total and that young males are overrepresented as criminals in all parts of the world, rather than to their ethnic origin.

Also, the young male immigrants also have high unemployment, low education and experiences of violence, factors which are associated with higher crime rates also among Germans.

Criminologist Christian Pfeiffer attributes this to a "macho culture" in North Africa which carries with it an increased readiness to use violence.

[31] In the 1980s thousands of Arabs and Kurds from districts of Lebanon and Turkey, significant numbers of whom were stateless, sought asylum in Germany.

Unlike the earlier guest workers, were allowed to work but instead received social benefits and often did not integrate into German society.

[32] In an opinion piece in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung in September 2018, the political scientist Ralph Ghadban [de] argued that federal authorities had refused to recognise the specific problem of organized crime gangs based on family ties and ethnicity (Clan-Kriminalität [de]), subsuming it under "organised crime" and that, encouraged by the success of the Arab clans, families from other ethnic groups, including Chechens, Albanians, and Kosovars were developing similar structures.

[33] According to the Wall Street Journal, the ethnic crime clans represent both a security threat as well as an example of what can happen when integration of immigrants fails.

The causes for the higher rate were given as low education and social status of these groups along with cultural traditions of violence against women.

[46] Women with a migration background (German: Migrationshintergrund) are, according to some studies, more often and more seriously affected by domestic violence from partners and have more difficulty extricating themselves from an abusive relationship.

[58] The Rostock-Lichtenhagen riots took place from 22 to 24 August 1992 and were the worst mob attacks against migrants in post-war Germany, resulting in hundreds of arrests.

"[63] A 2018 paper by the Institute of Labor Economics found that xenophobic violence during the 1990s in Germany reduced the integration and well-being of immigrants.

[66] Vigilantism against immigrants is considered to have become more widespread after the sexual assaults by migrants in Cologne and other German cities on New Year's Eve 2015.

[68] A perceived increase in attacks on immigrants led to Chancellor Angela Merkel condemning anti-immigrant "vigilante" groups following the Chemnitz incident.

[69] The Halle synagogue shooting was carried out by a lone German gunman, who claimed in headcam footage he posted online, that "the holocaust never happened...feminism is the cause of declining birth rates in the West which acts as a scapegoat for mass immigration, and the root of all these problems is the Jew.

[71] The Wall Street Journal reported that two notorious crimes committed by asylum seekers in consecutive weeks in December 2016 had added fuel to debates on immigration and surveillance in Germany.