Three-quarters of Germans believe refugees should stay in the first safe country they reach while four-fifths think the nation should re-instate border controls, in a strong rejection of Chancellor Merkel’s open-door policy on immigration.

A new opinion poll has revealed the state of German opinion over the migrant crisis, which is very distinctive in some regards but quite conflicted in others. While respondents responded well to the suggestion of border controls, two-thirds still agreed with the statement ‘Germany is a Nation of Migration’, suggesting many were still happy to take refugees – but only genuine ones.

This hardening attitude towards migrants from Syria may have been shaped by revelations by top German police officers that since Merkel’s open-arms welcome to Syrians, every refugee coming to the country was claiming to be one – even if they were clearly not of Syrian heritage, as reported by Breitbart London.

The research, conducted by the German Initiative Markt-und Sozialforschung found strong regional differentiation in the results, with people in former East Germany being significantly less likely to describe the demographic change wrought by an influx of refugees “welcome”. In the west of the nation, 51 per cent agreed with the notion, and women were even more likely to welcome the change, at 54 per cent.

In all parts of Germany people were opposed to allowing the arrival of migrants unregistered from Hungary by way of Austria, but again there were regional variations. Those in the East were most opposed (69 per cent), while in the southern states where the majority of refugees actually arrive was as low as 55 per cent, still a majority against the arrivals.

The east German state of Saxony is the key area for resistance to federal refugee policy, with state capital Dresden home to the anti-migration and Islamisation movement PEGIDA.

On the most fundamental matters of mass migration, however, the figures were significantly more clear. A significant 90 per cent of Germans believe there should be a limit on the number of ‘refugees’ the nation should take a year, in contrast to present government policy which has seen the estimated number of arrivals shoot up from 300,000 to 1.5 million in just five months, which scant efforts to stem the flow.

This latest poll comes hot on the heels of another piece of research released last week, which revealed the majority of Germans were now “scared” by refugees.

Strangely, despite being at odds with the positon of their own government, the actions of Chancellor Merkel have hardly affected her popularity ratings. Although a new poll last month found the German leader to be at her lowest ebb this year, as reported by Breitbart London, she has hardly taken a beating, finding herself only three points down and still at 49 per cent. The figure still puts her well ahead of any other figure in German politics.

Despite the split emerging between the two parties supporting Merkel’s government, the ideologically similar Christian Democratic and Christian Socialist Unions, they remain the most popular in the nation, trailing the Social Democrats by 15-points.