I read an in-depth NY Times article on how migrants are being received in Germany. The past is always just under the surface when it comes to how to accept newcomers into a community. The other question is when newcomers can be considered part of that community. As long as immigrants are seen as “other,” full acceptance and assimilation is impossible… 

Read the article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/10/magazine/the-new-europeans.html

Here are a couple of paragraphs that look into the anti-migrant backlash:

As Germany struggles with these questions of identity, fear is fueling the kind of far-right, populist backlash that, until recently, was contained by a mindfulness of the Nazi past. The migrant influx has been accompanied by a sharp rise in extremist demonstrations and violence directed at foreigners. It has also provided a boon to Alternative for Germany, a far-right party that formed in 2013 in opposition to the euro and that has now galvanized support by vowing to keep migrants out. Supporters at party rallies often chant: “Wir sind das Volk,” or “We are the people,” a refrain previously employed by pro-democracy demonstrators in communist East Germany, when the phrase evoked a yearning for democratic rights. Now it has been co-opted by far-right groups who perceive the “we” as having a tribal or ethnic meaning. In January, Alternative for Germany’s leader, Frauke Petry, suggested that the German police “make use of firearms” if necessary to keep migrants from crossing the border. After the attack in Brussels, she declared: “The dream of a colorful Europe is broken, bombed away yet again. Accept it at last.”

…

In my visits to Eisenärzt throughout the fall and winter, I found plenty of resentment toward migrants. People who expressed these feelings frequently didn’t want their names mentioned. On a walk through town one day, I met a man who, as he was emptying paper into a recycling bin, vented about exploited German taxpayers paying for refugees and about Muslims demanding to build mosques. When I asked him his name, he shook his head. Anyone who says these things in public “is immediately labeled a Nazi,” he said. Often, my efforts to talk to local residents were met with reticence. Graf von Rechberg, the priest, told me Germany’s “brown history” — a reference to the Nazi era — made many people reluctant to voice their true feelings.