> but once you decide to give someone citizenship you can't retroactively take it back and deport them. My understanding was that they basically planned exactl

> but once you decide to give someone citizenship you can't retroactively take it back and deport them. My understanding was that they basically planned exactly that. The questions around immigration, integration, asylum and German citizenship make up an eternal debate between centrist/progressive/left on the one and conservative/right groups on the other hand. It flares up every few years and in some form or other persisted since the 50s. To my knowledge, the AFD position is not that different from the usual positions of hard right and Neonazi parties in that regard. However what is new is exactly the plan to revoke citizenship of potentially large parts of the population according to completely arbitrary "integration" criteria. That plan evoked some very unfortunate memories of changes to citizenship laws in Nazi Germany and gave many Germans with some kind of immigration history the realisation that they might not be safe. This is what triggered this intense wave of demonstrations.