Global Housing Shortages Are Crushing Immigration-Fueled Growth

2024/05/07 Leave a comment

Of note, Canada not alone (but doesn’t excuse the policy and program mistakes….). Money quote: “Canada’s experience shows there’s a limit to immigration-fueled growth:”

For decades, the rapid inflow of migrants helped countries including Canada, Australia and the UK stave off the demographic drag from aging populations and falling birth rates. That’s now breaking down as a surge of arrivals since borders reopened after the pandemic runs headlong into a chronic shortage of homes to accommodate them.

Canada and Australia have escaped recession since their Covid contractions, but their people haven’t with deep per-capita downturns eroding standards of living. The UK’s recession last year looked mild on raw numbers but was deeper and longer when measured on a per-person basis.

All up, thirteen economies across the developed world were in per-capita recessions at the end of last year, according to exclusive analysis by Bloomberg Economics. While there are other factors — such as the shift to less-productive service jobs and the fact that new arrivals typically earn less — housing shortages and associated cost-of-living strains are a common thread.

So is the immigration-fueled economic growth model doomed? Not quite.

In Australia, for instance, the inflow of roughly one million people, or 3.7% of the population, since June 2022 helped plug a chronic shortages of workers in industries such as hospitality, aged care and agriculture. And in the UK — an economy near full employment — arrivals from Ukraine, Hong Kong and elsewhere have made up for a lack of workers after Brexit.

Skills shortages across much of the developed world mean more, not fewer, workers are needed. Indeed, the US jobs market and economy are running hotter than many thought possible as an influx of people across the southern border expands the labor pool — even as immigration shapes up as a defining issue in the November presidential election.

While the US has seen a widely-covered surge in authorized and irregular migration, the scale of the increase actually pales in comparison to Canada’s growth rate. For every 1,000 residents, the northern nation brought in 32 people last year, compared with fewer than 10 in the US.

Put another way: Over the past two years, 2.4 million people arrived in Canada, more than New Mexico’s population, yet Canada barely added enough housing for the residents of Albuquerque.

Canada’s experience shows there’s a limit to immigration-fueled growth: Once new arrivals exceed a country’s capacity to absorb them, standards of living decline even if top-line numbers are inflated. The Bank of Nova Scotia estimates a productivity-neutral rate of population growth is less than a third of what Canada saw last year, which would be more in line with the US pace.

So even as that record population growth keeps Canada’s GDP growing, life is getting tougher, especially for younger generations and for immigrants such as 29-year-old Akanksha Biswas.

Biswas arrived in Canada in the middle of 2022, just as per-capita GDP started plunging amid the start of the post-pandemic immigration boom and the Bank of Canada’s aggressive interest-rate tightening cycle.

The former Sydneysider moved to Toronto for what she believed would be a better life with a lower cost of living and greater career prospects. Instead, she faced higher rent, lower pay and limited job opportunities.

“I actually had a completely different picture in my mind about what life would be like in Toronto,” said Biswas, who works in advertising. “Prices were almost similar, but there’s a lot more competition in the job market.”

Canada’s working-age population grew by a million over the past year but the labor market only created 324,000 jobs. The upshot: The unemployment rate rose by more than a full percentage point, with young people and newcomers again the worst hit.

Biswas spends more than a third of her income on the monthly rent bill of C$2,800 ($2,050), splitting the cost with her partner. She’s dining out less and making coffee at home instead of going to the cafe. She’s also pushing back plans to have children or buy a home.

“I don’t see my future here if I want to raise a family,” she says.

While millions of Americans also face a housing affordability crisis, their real disposable income growth has stayed above the rise in home prices over much of the past two decades. Not so in Canada. The median price for homes in Toronto is now C$1.3 million, nearly three times that of Chicago, a comparable US city.

The chronic underbuilding of homes and decades of continuous rises in prices has drained funds from other parts of the economy toward housing. That lack of investment in capital — combined with firms’ focusing instead on expanding workforces due to cheaper labor costs — has driven down productivity, which the Bank of Canada says is at “emergency” levels.

Growing anxiety around the housing crunch forced Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government to scale back on its immigration ambitions, halting the increase of permanent resident targets and putting a limit on the growth of temporary residents for the first time.

Canada’s goal is now to cut the population of temporary foreign workers, international students and asylum claimants by 20%, or roughly by half a million people, over the next three years. That’s expected to slash the annual population growth rate by more than half to an average of 1% in 2025 and 2026.

Meantime, Biswas and her partner are calling it quits on their Canada experiment and moving to Melbourne, where they reckon they can afford a two-bedroom apartment for less than what they paid for a one-bedroom space in Toronto.

But life won’t be easy Down Under either as many of the same strains are playing out, with Australia facing its worst housing crisis in living memory.

Building permits for apartments and town houses are near a 12-year low and there remains a sizable backlog of construction work, largely due to a lack of skilled workers. The government has tried to plug the labor supply gap by boosting the number of migrants, only to find that’s making the problem even worse.

Just like Canada’s experience, the ballooning population is not only exacerbating housing demand, it’s also masking the underlying weakness in the economy.

GDP has expanded every quarter since a short Covid-induced recession in 2020, yet on a per-capita basis, GDP contracted for a third consecutive quarter in the final three months of 2023 — the deepest decline since the early 1990s economic slump.

In absolute terms, Australia’s per-capita GDP is now at a two-year low — a “material under-performance” versus the US and an outcome that could spur higher unemployment, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

Angst about the lack of housing, soaring rents and surging home prices has prompted Anthony Albanese’s ruling Labor government to crack down on student visas.

“It has been proven over many many years that there’s a positive to Australia from a high migration intake,” said Stephen Halmarick, chief economist at the nation’s biggest lender Commonwealth Bank of Australia. “But in the very near term, you can see that it’s putting upward pressure on rents, house prices and clearly that’s a concern for many and the demand for some services is seeing sticky inflation.”

Neighboring New Zealand is grappling with a similar headache.

The government there last month made immediate changes to an employment visa program, introducing an English-language requirement and reducing the maximum continuous stay for a range of lower-skilled roles, citing “unsustainable” net migration. The changes were part of a plan to “create a smarter immigration” that is “self-funding, sustainable and better manages risk,” Immigration Minister Erica Stanford said in the statement at the time.

Calvin Jurnatan, 30, moved to Sydney from Indonesia in December to study construction design as a gateway to becoming a permanent resident. Months later, he still doesn’t have a job. One reason is that migrants face long and expensive processes to get their qualifications recognized.

Jurnatan’s failure to find a part-time role in construction comes despite the sector being high on the skills shortage list, especially after the government set an ambitious goal of building 1.2 million new homes by 2029. That target looks increasingly unachievable, industry players say.

Frustrated, Jurnatan has stopped looking for construction jobs and is instead scouting the retail sector where roles are easier to find. He’s doing some freelance photography to eke out a living and says he wouldn’t recommend Australia to his family and friends back home.

“People are struggling,” he said. “I’m struggling. It’s not cheap and everyone needs to work really, really hard here. So, when people call me and ask, ‘hey, how is living in Sydney right now?’ I tell them the truth.”

Independent think tank the Committee for Economic Development of Australia found in a recent report that the hourly wage gap between recent migrants and Australian-born workers increased between 2011 and 2021. On average, migrants who have been in Australia for 2 to 6 years earn more than 10% less than similar Australian-born workers.

“There are big costs from not making the best use of migrants’ skills,” according to CEDA’s senior economist Andrew Barker.

Over in Europe, its largest economy, Germany, also saw a per-capita recession that comes against a backdrop of rising political tensions over a large number of asylum seekers, housing shortages and a misfiring economy. Bloomberg Economics analysis shows that France, Austria and Sweden are also among those who have suffered per-capita recessions.

In Britain, too, record levels of migration have begun to weigh on the economy. A technical recession in the second half of last year saw headline GDP slip 0.4%, yet the slump was longer and deeper when adjusted for population. Per-capita GDP has contracted 1.7% since the start of 2022, falling in six out of the seven quarters and stagnating in the other.

With Britain close to full employment and over 850,000 dropping out of its workforce since the pandemic, immigration has helped employers fill widespread worker shortages, not least in the health and social care sectors.

“A very good bit of the growth that we saw through the 2010s was down to net migration,” said Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies. “In terms of the overall size of the economy, it’s been really important. What’s really hard to say is what impact the net immigration has had on the per-capita numbers.”

UK GDP has expanded 23% since the start of 2010. On a per-person basis, growth in output has been far less impressive at 12%.

Over the same period, the population has surged, growing an estimated 11%, or almost 7 million, to 69 million. The Office for National Statistics expects it to hit close to 74 million in 2036 in updated population projections that now predict faster growth. Over 90% of the increase in the population expected between 2021 and 2036 will come from migrants, it said in January.

“If we hadn’t had such high immigration, housing would be cheaper than it is at the moment, possibly quite significantly,” Johnson said. “But the converse of that is that the problem has been that we simply haven’t built enough houses, given what we know is happening to the size of the population.”

The UK’s post-Brexit immigration system aimed to stop cheap labor from Europe and prioritize high-skilled workers. However, the government allows some foreign workers easier access if they are in shortage-hit sectors.

“Those shortages really are pretty much always caused by poor paying conditions, although the employers will tell you it’s all skills,” said Alan Manning, labor market economist at the London School of Economics. “Then they start complaining about ‘we can’t afford higher wages and so we have to have migrants so we can keep our existing wages.’”

The growing pressures on housing and stretched public services are prompting a backlash among voters against Rishi Sunak’s ruling Conservative government ahead of a general election expected later this year. It has hemorrhaged support to the right-wing populist Reform UK party, which is promising “net zero immigration,” while the Tories are polling in single digits among 18- to 24-year-olds who put housing as their second-most important issue.

The opposition Labour party has promised a “blitz” of planning reforms to unlock construction, as well as restraint on immigration as it heads toward what’s widely anticipated to be a sweeping election victory.

A shortage of properties for the bigger population has sent house prices to over eight times average earnings in England and Wales, and 12 times in London. In 1997, they were 3.5 times earnings and four times, respectively. A lack of supply has also caused rental costs to rocket at a record pace in the last 12 months, worsening a cost-of-living crisis for young Britons especially.

Official figures show that 234,400 homes were added to the UK housing supply in 2022-23, well below the levels needed to meet huge demand and the 300,000-a-year target the Tories promised to reach by the mid-2020s at the last election.

“If we’re looking to grow GDP by throwing more people at it, then we need more housing,” said Peter Truscott, chief executive of FTSE 250 housebuilder Crest Nicholson.

However, UK housebuilders and the government have struggled to boost construction of new homes to the levels needed. A restrictive planning system has been used by Nimbys — “not in my back yard” — to block local developments and efforts to overhaul the system by the ruling Conservatives were scuppered by concerns of a backlash in their rural southern heartlands.

“We have a completely utterly dysfunctional planning system in the UK,” said Truscott. “Forty years in house building, it’s never been so bad, and the rate of decline in planning has been quite incredible over the last couple of years.”

While encouraged by Labour plans, he cautions that it will take two parliamentary terms to make a difference as supply chain constraints will prevent an instant “flood” of new homes.

The longer voters in the UK, Australia, Canada and similar economies see their living standards go backwards, the more their opposition to rapid immigration programs will harden. A lasting fix requires government policies, especially in housing, that convince both would-be migrants and the existing populations of the benefits of immigration-led economic growth.

Source: Global Housing Shortages Are Crushing Immigration-Fueled Growth

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I always thought immigrant Germans would vote against the far right. I was wrong

2024/05/03 Leave a comment

A bit naive as all immigrant groups have a range of views. That being said, AfD, like other overtly anti-immigrant and/or xenophobic politicians, are a concern:

….It pains me, but I understand where this drawbridge mentality comes from. Immigrants who have “made it” often seek to melt into the middle class by moving away from ethnic neighbourhoods, putting a distance between themselves and those who aren’t affluent or don’t speak the language. In the hierarchy of society they look up, not down. Rivalries might also play a role: I have met Russians who distrust Turks, Vietnamese who don’t like Chinese, Iranians who feel superior to Egyptians.

On X, I come across a post by one of Lambrou’s colleagues, Anna Nguyen, a second-generation Vietnamese like me, and a new member of the AfD’s parliamentary group in Hesse. Another Vietnamese-German wrote to her: “As a Vietnamese with the same last name, I feel ashamed for you. You’re blind! You’re hoping for a steep career in an inhuman party. But according to them, you and I will never be German. Wake up!” To which Nguyen replied: “I’m terribly sorry, but I didn’t realise that I wasn’t allowed to have a different political opinion.”

According to the migration researcher Naika Foroutan, social media has become a powerful tool for the AfD to target immigrant voters. She noticed that on TikTok, AfD members have begun posting videos aimed at the conservative German-Turkish community – and some influencers have picked up their message, ranting about there being “too many refugees”.

Just as not all women are feminists, not all people with immigrant heritage are fans of an open-door policy. Think of Suella Braverman, former British home secretary, Vivek Ramaswamy, a former candidate for the Republican nomination in the US and Jordan Bardella, president of the National Rally in France. Do they, subconsciously, think that by slamming others into the category of “bad immigrants” they will be seen as “the good ones”? Are they trying to be overzealous nationalists because they want to demonstrate how British, American or French they really are?

….Rightwing parties have always exploited the narrative of “good” versus “bad” immigrants. Now the AfD seems to have discovered a new group of voters among immigrant Germans, some of whom seem all too willing to embrace its message and support the party. This doesn’t mean the AfD is any more tolerant, but it has become smarter, and therefore even more threatening.

  • Khuê Phạm is a German journalist and writer. Her debut novel, Brothers and Ghosts, which is inspired by her Vietnamese family, has just been released

Source: I always thought immigrant Germans would vote against the far right. I was wrong

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Germany set to add citizenship test questions about Jews and Israel

2024/03/28 Leave a comment

Of note (similar in a sense to ensuring new Canadians know about Indigenous peoples and the various harmful actions of Canadian governments):

Those seeking German citizenship could soon have to answer test questions about antisemitism, Germany’s commitment to Israel and Jewish life in Germany.

The catalogue of more than 300 questions from which citizenship test questions can be selected is to be amended shortly, the interior ministry said in a statement, pending final approval. New questions, German magazine Der Spiegel reported, are to include: What is a Jewish house of prayer called? When was the State of Israel founded? What is the reason for Germany’s special responsibility for Israel? How is Holocaust denial punished in Germany? And, somewhat mysteriously: Who can become a member of the approximately 40 Jewish Maccabi sports clubs in Germany? (Anyone, according to the organization’s FAQ.)

The move comes months after the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt made a written commitment for the “right of the State of Israel to exist” a requirement for naturalization.

Germany has cracked down on pro-Palestinian voices and on antisemitism amid Israel’s war in Gaza in response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel. Germany and German institutions have come under criticism in recent months for enforcing strict speech policies affecting pro-Palestinian protests. Museum shows, book talks and other art events have been canceled.

“One thing is particularly important to me,” Interior Minister Nancy Faeser told Der Spiegel. “As a result of the German crime against humanity of the Holocaust comes our special responsibility for the protection of Jews and for the protection of the State of Israel. This responsibility is part of our identity today.”

“Anyone who doesn’t share our values can’t get a German passport. We have drawn a crystal clear red line here,” Faeser said. “Antisemitism, racism and other forms of contempt for humanity rule out naturalization.”

The 33-question citizenship test is one of several prerequisites to becoming a German citizen. To pass, applicants must correctly answer at least 17 multiple-choice questions within an hour.

A wave of more than 2,000 antisemitic incidents logged by authorities since Oct. 7 has prompted German leaders to call for better enforcement of the country’s antisemitism laws in recent months.

“Antisemitism has no place in Germany,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in an address to German parliament in late October. “We will do everything to oppose it. We will do this as citizens, and as bearers of political responsibility.”

This includes enforcing existing laws, Scholz said.

While antisemitism itself is not a crime in Germany, antisemitic motivation for a crime can be considered in sentencing. In April 2023, the government announced that it would increase annual payments to the Central Council of Jews in Germany to almost $24 million, in part “to further strengthen the safety and security of Jewish communities.”

Holocaust denial is illegal in Germany, and punishable by prison time.

Source: Germany set to add citizenship test questions about Jews and Israel

Filed under Antisemitism, Citizenship Tagged with , ,

Germany: Would-be migrant workers worried by growing racism

2024/01/29 Leave a comment

Of note:

When German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Labor Minister Hubertus Heil turned up at the Vietnamese-German University (VGU) in Ho Chi Minh City, they were caught by surprise: Screaming students greeted them like rock stars.

Some of those students will go on to work for German companies.

Further acclaim awaited the German political VIPs at the Goethe Institute in Hanoi, where about 6,000 young Vietnamese people per year learn the German language. Seven times that number register for language tests that qualify them for professional training or study in Germany.

At the end of 2023, Germany began implementing its new Skilled Immigration Act, using a point system to lower the obstacles facing skilled workers who want to move to the country.

Since then, high-ranking German politicians have stepped up efforts to woo skilled workers in other countries: Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock was recently in the Philippines, for instance, and Development Aid Minister Svenja Schulze is in Morocco. In Vietnam, Steinmeier and Heil signed a memorandum of understanding that improves the regulation of labor immigration to Germany.

Vietnam steps in to help

In communist Vietnam, there is significant interest in working in Germany — where the Vietnamese diaspora has grown to more than 200,000 people. Vietnam is a young country demographically speaking and is thus less threatened by the kind of “brain drain” that affects many other nations. Vietnam’s leadership was also very interested in finding a joint agreement on improving control of labor migration to Germany by its nationals.

The Goethe Institute is important in this regard. For example, it is there that Phuong Phan, 22, is receiving the language training she needs to later work in the hotel and gastronomy industry in Thuringia. The eastern German state is among the first to have signed bilateral contracts with Vietnam.

Phuong Phan said she hopes her training in Thuringia will give her a “practical apprenticeship” while aiding her personal development. Her parents support her in the endeavor, and she combs the internet daily for information on “lovely Germany.”

Recently, however, she came upon something that was not so lovely: reports detailing the xenophobia that is sometimes encountered in Germany, particularly in the east. She does not want to talk about it in her conversation with DW but says the topic has also been dealt with in her language courses.

“Yes, we are watching developments. And gradually, we are starting to have reservations as we take on responsibility for these young people, with regard to their parents as well,” says Nguyen Thi Thanh Tam, a placement officer for Thuringia.

She is currently training another group of young Vietnamese in Hanoi and confirms that the topic of “racism in Germany” has been clearly discussed in recent lessons.

“We want the students to be prepared for unpleasant situations in this regard in Germany,” she says.

400,000 skilled workers needed annually

According to Germany’s Federal Employment Agency (BA), the country has 1.73 million vacant jobs.

Unlike Germany’s campaign to find workers 60 years ago, today’s efforts are not focused on industrial laborers but on highly qualified professionals and people with service-sector experience.

Back then, just under 300,000 people came each year. Today, studies say Germany needs around 400,000 a year.

Recently, Labor Minister Heil traveled to Brazil, India and Kenya to promote Germany as a work destination, and now he’s in Vietnam. “We have improved the conditions with the Skilled Immigration Act; now it’s down to putting things into practice,” he told DW in Hanoi.

Poor coordination

Officially, the Interior Ministry oversees the immigration of skilled foreign workers. But in practice, the responsibilities in this area overlap. One example is the some 350,000 asylum-seekers in Germany, who, if they are rejected, are not integrated into the labor market and many of whom have to leave the country.

More than 17% of people who applied for German asylum in 2023 are now Turks — mostly young, well-educated, liberal-thinking people who wanted to escape from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s regime. But only one in 10 Turkish asylum-seeks receives protection in Germany. And, at the moment, instead of permitting the rest an opportunity to look for work, Germany orders them to leave the country.

The Foreign Office, on the other hand, is known for its lengthy procedures to obtain a visa — something that also deters skilled workers. The Economy and Labor ministries and the Employment Agency also bear responsibilities, in addition to organizations such as the GIZ development agency and various foundations.

Many companies have their own recruitment and training programs because the bureaucracy prevalent in the public sector is too slow to meet their hiring needs.  Toan Nguyen, the managing director of the TY Academy, which acts as an agency for caregivers who want to go to Germany, complains that there are “too many people to go through and still a lot of obstacles to having qualifications recognized.”

Human trafficking another problem

This makes things difficult for interested skilled workers — and easy for dubious agencies and human traffickers. In Southeast Asia, women are the main prey of the latter, being smuggled into Germany and ending up in low-wage employment or even brothels.

“We must use legal immigration to suppress this practice,” Steinmeier said in Vietnam. The bilateral agreement that has just been signed is meant to provide trustworthy advice about fair working conditions and reputable employment agencies, as well as regular roundtables on work migration involving specialists from both countries.

Germany’s new citizenship law, however, makes the country more attractive to potential immigrants. “In comparison with Japan, where many Vietnamese also migrate but are allowed to work only temporarily, Germany now offers a longer-term perspective,” says Viet Huong Nguyen from the TY Academy.

Xenophobia a deterrent

In light of these positive developments for labor migration, current reports about racist groups in Germany are all the more disturbing.

Labor Minister Heil told DW that no one had spoken to him directly about the issue but that action needed to be taken before it was too late.

“We have to make it clear in Germany that we cannot maintain our prosperity without labor from abroad,” he said.

Vietnamese already living in Germany are also worried. One of them is Huong Trute, whom President Steinmeier invited to accompany him on his Vietnam trip. She has lived in Germany for 40 years and works in the gastronomy sector.

She says she has recently had to answer more and more questions from worried compatriots in Vietnam. After seeing how another group was being prepared for jobs in Thuringian hotels and restaurants at the Goethe Institute, she said: “Honestly? If I had the chance to take these young peopole somewhere else, I would do it.”

She says the developments in Thuringia are coming to a head, and that frightens her.

Source: Germany: Would-be migrant workers worried by growing racism

Filed under Immigration, Racism Tagged with ,

The Economist: Germany strikes a brave new deal on immigration

2024/01/24 Leave a comment

Significant change:

Germany’s debate over migration sometimes seems divorced from reality. The country’s low birth rate and shrinking workforce imply a pressing need to import manpower. Much political talk, however, is concerned with how to keep immigrants away. The anti-immigration right is surging in opinion polls, and even otherwise liberal folk are increasingly prone to saying that “certain kinds” of immigrants are alien to the national Leitkultur, a fuzzy concept of Germanness.

Yet the past week has seen a turn. Earlier this month German media exposed the proceedings of a private conclave of hard-right politicians at a posh hotel near Berlin in November, where the participants discussed expelling millions of aliens. That scandal woke up the dormant left, which has organised a series of big “anti-fascist” demonstrations in cities across the country. On January 20th some 250,000 Germans took to the streets in one of their biggest mass protests this century.

Meanwhile, the governing centre-left coalition, made up of the Social Democrats, the Greens and the liberal Free Democrats, has injected some good sense into the immigration debate. On January 18th and 19th it passed two immigration bills in the Bundestag. The first, pleasing to conservatives, will make it easier to expel asylum-seekers with dubious cases, whose numbers have soared since the end of the pandemic. The second, more significant law will make it easier for legitimate immigrants to gain German nationality.

The reasons for the latter law are obvious, though German media has devoted strangely little space to discussing them. An extraordinary 13.4m of Germany’s 84m residents do not hold citizenship. More than 5m of these have lived in the country longer than ten years. In some cities the proportion is far higher: 45% of the population of Offenbach, a big satellite of Frankfurt, are foreigners, as well as a third of Munich’s and a quarter of Berlin’s. This number has swollen rapidly in the past decade, partly because more immigrants have arrived, but also because Germany has failed to naturalise those already here.

Germany’s “naturalisation rate”—the percentage of resident foreigners granted nationality every year—was just 1.2% in 2021, well behind the European average of 2.2%. Sweden did far better at 10%. The number Germany naturalised rose from 130,000 in 2021 to 168,000 in 2022, the highest in two decades. But the backlog still grew, because of a range of obstacles: restrictions on dual nationality, long residency requirements, tough tests to prove language skills and gainful employment, and a clogged bureaucracy.

On average, Turkish immigrants who acquire German citizenship have already been in the country for 24 years. Small wonder that nearly half of Germany’s 3m immigrants of Turkish background—the largest immigrant group—remain non-citizens. Their case is special. Among the hundreds of thousands of Turkish Gastarbeiter (guest workers) who arrived in the 1960s and 1970s, many assumed they would return to Turkey and so did not apply to become German. Yet with hard-right pundits wagging fingers at the alleged failure of Turkish immigrants to integrate, Germany’s failure to welcome them deserved scrutiny too.

The new law should help address the citizenship backlog. It shortens the residency requirement for most applicants from eight to five years, which is in line with other countries that compete with Germany to attract talent, such as France and America. In special cases the wait can now be as short as three years. Children who are born in Germany with at least one parent who has lived in Germany for five years will automatically become citizens. Dual citizenship is now generally allowed. New citizens will have to promise to uphold democratic freedoms and to accept Germany’s “special historical responsibility” for Nazism and the need to protect Jewish life.

Some 5m resident non-Germans are eu citizens who already enjoy nearly all the rights of natives, and so may not see the need to add another nationality. Of the remaining 8m foreigners, including around 1m Ukrainian refugees, it is unclear how many will now rush to acquire a German passport. It is also unclear how capably the understaffed and underfunded bureaucracy that handles naturalisation, much of it managed by local governments, will adapt to the new rules.

Some estimates suggest that 2m or more Germans could be added to electoral rolls in the next few years. There will probably not be enough of them to strongly affect the next national election in autumn 2025. Nevertheless, the far-right Alternative for Germany party attacked the new law as a “coup d’état through a forced restructuring of voter demographics”. Whomever newly minted Germans vote for, it is hard to argue with two points. Without immigration, Germany’s population would already be in steep decline and its economy in jeopardy. And if Germans fail to make immigrants welcome, they risk creating precisely what the hard right fears: a huge pool of disenfranchised, disgruntled aliens in their midst. ■

Source: Germany strikes a brave new deal on immigration

And in related German news, consideration being given to allowing foreign citizens to serve in the army:

A proposal to allow foreign citizens to serve in the German army, known as the Bundeswehr, could be extended to Europeans in countries outside of the EU.

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius had initially put forward the idea of welcoming non-Germans to enlist in order to combat a drastic shortage of personnel.

In addition to Pistorius from the Social Democrats, the idea has also received support from lawmakers belonging to one of its two coalition partners, the FDP, plus the opposition Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

However, questions remain about how such a plan would be implemented.

Free Democratic Party (FDP) member Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, who chairs the German parliament’s defense committee, told DW that she can envision opening up the German army to candidates from across the continent.

She said candidates could initially come from the EU as well as countries like the United Kingdom, a former EU member, as well as neutral Switzerland. But there is also scope beyond these countries.

“I think that Europe also needs to be considered further, namely those who may live in European states but which do not yet belong to the European Union, but which may well be in accession negotiations,” Strack-Zimmermann said in an interview with DW’s Nina Haase.

“I don’t want to tie it down like that, because it has to be legally scrutinized,” she added.

Source: Germany weighs allowing foreign citizens into the army – DW – 01/22/2024 – DW (English)

Filed under Citizenship, Immigration Tagged with , ,

What’s changing in German immigration policy in 2024 – DW (English)

2024/01/03 Leave a comment

Useful overview:

When it comes to immigration policy, Chancellor Olaf Scholz has already set the tone for the new year. In an interview with the news magazine Der Spiegel in December, he came out in favor of “large-scale” deportations for rejected asylum applicants.

In the first half of 2023, government figures show that 7,861 people were deported. A reform, dubbed the Repatriation Improvement Act, hopes to increase that number. Changes include an end to announcing deportations in advance and extending asylum detention to 28 days. Police will also have extended powers to search for those ordered to leave, and access their property, such as phones.

Smugglers and other kinds of criminals, including those without convictions but suspected of criminal associations, could face faster deportations, as part of efforts to “more consistently and more quickly” act against “dangerous individuals,” said Interior Minister Nancy Faeser.

More migration agreements

Germany is also negotiating agreements with Georgia, Moldova, Kenya, Colombia, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, though these would not affect the majority of asylum-seekers who come from Syria, Afghanistan and Turkey. But the move is part of a larger effort to designate more countries as “safe countries of origin,” which would permit Germany to return people to those places. Georgia and Moldova received this status in November.

If the European Union revives its deal with Turkey, a move Germany supports, that could facilitate sending people there, as well.

Germany also wants to process asylum applications faster. Right now, it can take more than two years to handle an asylum claim, according to government data. Proposed changes to the law hope to get that down to between three to six months.

People going through the asylum procedure are also set to receive fewer benefits. Welfare payments, currently accessible after 18 months, will become available only after three years. Those living in state housing will also have the cost of their food deducted.

Cards instead of cash for benefits

More German cities and states want to move to a card-based system for benefits, rather than bank payments, to prevent asylum-seekers from transferring the money to others, such as relatives in the country of origin.

Hannover, in central Germany, started its “social card” in December, which works like a normal bank debit card. Areas of the eastern state of Thuringia have also issued around 160 such cards for asylum-seekers. The cardholder must go to the district asylum office every month to top up the card.

Hamburg and Bavaria are set to follow suit with similar programs in 2024.

More skilled labor immigration

While conditions look to be getting harder for asylum-seekers, recent reforms hope to make life in Germany more attractive for skilled labor.

A points system, based on language proficiency and professional experience, would grant eligible immigrants a one-year visa, during which time they can search for a job. The income requirement has also been lowered, and it will be easier for the applicant to bring along more family members.

The EU Blue Card is also to be expanded to cover sectors suffering from labor shortages, such as health care and education.

Starting in March, foreigners from outside the EU can come directly to Germany and start working while their qualifications are being approved. Workers will be able to stay up to three years, including with dependents, as long as they can prove they are able to support themselves.

The special immigration quota for people from countries in the western Balkans is also to be doubled to 50,000 people in June.

Source: What’s changing in German immigration policy in 2024 – DW (English)

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Articles of interest: Citizenship

2023/12/08 Leave a comment

Starting up my blog again, highlighting some of the articles I found of interest.

Past Imperfect: J. L. Granatstein’s prescient warning

Agree, both the good and the bad:

Also regrettable is that Granatstein did not offer a more pointed rationale for learning hist­ory. He argued that an understanding of the subject was “the prerequisite of political ­intelligence” but without going further. The cost of not knowing history is much deeper, in my view. It creates a real disquiet and robs the community of its ability to find nuance in any dispute. Indeed, one could argue that the incoherence of a vast array of policy areas in this country — from cultural and global affairs to housing and homelessness — can be explained only by a general loss of historical consciousness.

To talk historically about any episode — a court case, a medical issue, a construction problem, even a love dispute — is to inquire about “what really took place last time.” It ­naturally invites subtlety, attention to context, and storytelling that can lay the groundwork for compromise. It calls for clarity in sequencing events and necessarily examines what’s behind the story: “Well, we didn’t have the tools” or “Our thinking was wrong” or “We simply didn’t know.” It can build respect and, not least, modesty. But it can also bridge solitudes and open the road to cooperation, better understanding, and perhaps even reconciliation and forgiveness. No one who studies history seriously can be insensitive to the anxieties and cruelties of humanity or unimpressed by its resilience, ­creativity, and kindness.

But that sort of discipline has been evacuated from popular culture. For over a dozen years now, history departments have seen their student numbers decline. Consequently, new hires are even rarer than before. Governments seldom consider the failures and successes of previous policies; museums dedicated to the past are shrivelling without money for new exhibits and programs. Historians, terrified of being misunderstood, refuse to engage in public debates that could bring nuance to policy issues. Canada is not in a state of post-nationalism but is rather a place of hiber‑nation — a country that has fallen asleep and forgotten its past.

This is dangerous. Historical awareness bolsters democracy and democratic instincts. Take away history and you undermine the ability to discuss, to debate, and to share knowledge on how things evolved. Without such skills and knowledge, democracy as we know it will wither and die

Source: Past Imperfect: J. L. Granatstein’s prescient warning

Local citizenship judge wins Community Impact Award – Thorold News

A reminder of the power of in-person ceremonies:

The ceremonies to which she is referring are citizenship ceremonies. For just over five years Ivri has been a citizenship judge with Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada. In an average week in this role she swears in between 1,200 and 1,500 new Canadians.

In the relatively short time that she’s been one of nine judges in the Niagara and Hamilton offices of the department, she has welcomed more than 100,000 newcomers to Canada. Besides her family – husband Eldean and children Elijah, Zachariah, Ezekiel and Michaiah – she says it’s the most rewarding thing she’s ever done.

Ivri herself comes from an immigrant family. Her mother Valerie came to Canada to visit an uncle in 1967, leaving behind her husband Roosevelt and their son back in Jamaica. On leave from her job as a customs officer there, Valerie went to a Canadian immigration office to extend her visa. An officer there suggested she instead apply for citizenship, so she did.

Source: Local citizenship judge wins Community Impact Award – Thorold News

Shawn Taylor: Are Immigrants Falling out of Love with Canada? (And is it Because We Feel the Same?)

Overly negative but not without merit:

The evident decline in Canada’s citizenship rates may say more about the attitudes and habits of existing Canadians than those of newly-arriving immigrants. The federal bureaucracy’s failure to meet its own published service standards is certainly a self-inflicted wound. As is the proposal to solve this problem by eliminating much-loved citizenship ceremonies. The effect of both situations is to debase the perceived status of Canadian citizenship by emphasizing the transactional over the transformational. Then there’s the Roxham Road debacle, which offers migrants the opportunity to illegally sneak into our country via a dead-end road rather than at a regular border crossing and still be recognized as refugee claimants, with all the official support and standing this entails. If Canadian citizenship is supposed to be so valuable, it seems foolish to further cheapen the reputation of the entire immigration system in this way.

Beneath these obvious failures of governance and policy, however, lurks an even deeper and more insidious problem. As Bernhard explains, becoming a citizen is akin to joining a team with all other Canadians. A “club,” so to speak, that is exclusive to those who wish to be identified as Canadian and who intend to participate in its promotion and maintenance by voting and performing other civic duties. If we accept such an analogy, then it clearly matters how we advertise and promote this club to new members. So what sort of stories do Canadians tell about their own country these days? And do they amount to an effective marketing strategy?

 “The story of Canada that our major institutions tell has increasingly become one that focuses on only the most negative aspects of our country, such as oppression, racism, discrimination and dispossession,” observes Christopher Dummitt, an historian at Trent University’s School for the Study of Canada in Peterborough, Ontario. Common examples of this new tendency are factually-dubious claims, often from officially sanctioned sources, that Canada has committed and continues to commit genocide against the Indigenous population, is systemically racist towards black people, was once a slave country, and on and on. “It is a deliberate distortion of our actual history,” says Dummitt in an interview.

This sense of national self-loathing has become so encompassing that official multiculturalism, once billed as an unquestionable Canadian value, is now considered evidence of an “unjust society premised on white supremacy,” as two University of Calgary education professors absurdly argued last year. Even professed supporters of Canadian identity, such as ICC co-founder Ralston Saul, now casually declare that “Canada has failed on many fronts.” As for how such a perspective might work as a branding exercise, Dummitt says, “If the story about Canada is that it was an institutionally corrupt nation beset by the original sin of colonialism, then why would anyone want to become a citizen of that?”

Dummitt has been pushing back against the now-pervasive narrative that Canada is, at its core, morally bankrupt. In 2021 he organized a rebuttal signed by many eminent Canadian historians condemning the Canadian Historical Association’s (CHA) unilateral declaration that Canada’s treatment of Indigenous peoples was “genocidal.” In making such a claim, Dummitt’s rebuttal stated, the CHA was “insulting the basic standards of good scholarly conduct.” He has also spoken out against the practice of tearing down statues honouring Canada’s founding fathers, and is currently fighting Toronto’s plans to scrub the name of 18th century British parliamentarian Henry Dundas from its streets and public squares on the (entirely bogus) assertion that he was an ally to the slave trade. “We need to call out these nonsensical claims,” Dummitt states determinedly. “And we need politicians who are willing to celebrate the Canadian nation in diverse ways.”

With this sort of self-hatred being expressed by current citizens, is it any wonder immigrants are having second thoughts about joining Club Canada

Peter Shawn Taylor is senior features editor at C2C Journal. He lives in Waterloo, Ontario. 

Source: Are Immigrants Falling out of Love with Canada? (And is it Because We Feel the Same?)

Is Portugal’s Golden Visa Scheme Worth It?

No:

On Nov. 7, the same day that Portugal’s Prime Minister António Costa resigned amid corruption allegations pertaining to lithium contracts, federal officers in Brazil raided the Portuguese Consulate in Rio de Janeiro.

The Brazil raids were not connected to the Lisbon investigation, a spokesperson said. Instead, according to Brazilian police, they were part of a separate investigation into the falsification of documents in collusion with applicants seeking Portuguese visas and citizenship. Since the 1990s, amid periods of economic downturn and social instability, large numbers of Brazilians have struck out for Portugal. When the country began its “golden visa” program in 2012, wealthy Brazilians became the second largest group to take advantage of it.

Portugal’s golden visa grants European Union access to foreigners in exchange for investment. From its inception in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, it has faced backlash, and the criticism has only grown more vocal in recent years. Chiefly, it is blamed for contributing to a severe housing crisis that has made affordable housing unattainable for most Portuguese.

In early October, Costa’s Socialist government finally passed a law that took aim at the issue, removing the real estate investment pathway from the golden visa program. Previously, people who invested in a qualifying property worth at least 280,000 euros (about $305,000) were eligible. The change, almost a year in the making, has ricocheted around the world of global elites, many of whom had come to regard Portugal as a foothold into Europe. Although more than 30,000 foreigners have benefited from Portugal’s golden visa, its benefits for the Portuguese themselves are less clear.

Source: Is Portugal’s Golden Visa Scheme Worth It?

German State Saxony-Anhalt: No citizenship without supporting Israel’s existence 

Hard to see how this will work in practice:

The decree instructs authorities to pay close attention to whether an applicant exhibits antisemiticattitudes and states that “obtaining German citizenship requires a commitment to Israel’s right to exist.”

In a letter to local authorities, the Saxony-Anhalt state Interior Ministry said naturalization is to be denied to foreigners who engage in activities directed at Germany’s liberal democratic order as outlined in the country’s Basic Law. The denial of Israel‘s right to exist and antisemitism are included among such activities.

Local authorities have been instructed to deny an applicant’s naturalization request if they refuse to sign the declaration. A refusal is also to be documented in the individual’s application filing for future reference.

Source: German state: Citizenship applicants must support Israel

Filed under Citizenship, citizenship-by-investment Tagged with , , , , , ,

In Germany, the anti-immigrant left is on the rise. Will it hold back the far right – or help it? 

2023/11/02 Leave a comment

Of note:

Sahra Wagenknecht is a 54-year-old politician who, until recently, was a member of the struggling leftwing party Die Linke. She is also a household name in Germany. A figure with undeniable charisma, she’s a stalwart on television talkshows, where her ability to present sometimes radical opinions as though they were common sense makes for lively discussions and entertaining viewing. Now, with the launch of her own party – named after herself – Germans may soon get the chance to vote for her too. Does she stand a chance – and what does the fanfare about the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) tell us about the direction of German politics?

In part, at least, people pay attention to Wagenknecht because she’s long had a penchant for radical positions. When she first came of political age, even Die Linke was concerned that she was a Stalin apologist. But Wagenknecht’s politics have changed with age. Her communism has been tempered by some expressions of admiration for the free market. She’s also become increasingly critical of immigration, Germany’s Covid-19 policies, sanctions on Russia, climate protesters and “lifestyle leftists”, as Wagenknecht dubs many advocates for racial and gender equality. Unsurprisingly, Die Linke hardly seems sorry to see her go: “It’s like with the grandmother who has cancer,” Dietmar Bartsch, co-chair of the party’s parliamentary committee, told Der Tagesspiegel. “You know she’s going to die, but you’re still sad when the time comes.”

There aren’t many new ideas in Wagenknecht’s political platform, though the way they are combined could be novel. Her economic plans are sprinkled with conspiratorial references to foreign monopolies, and she calls for a substantial increase in the minimum wage, but at their core her proposals are broadly similar to other centre-left policies. Her rhetoric about immigration, however, comes straight from the far-right AfD’s playbook. “There shouldn’t be any neighbourhoods,” she said in a 2021 interview, “where natives are in the minority.”

Wagenknecht’s politics clearly resonate with the German public. A recent survey of German voters found that 14% would vote for a Wagenknecht party, putting it just one point behind the governing Social Democrats (SPD) and two points ahead of the Green party. It speaks to the breadth of Wagenknecht’s coalition that, if initial polls are to be believed, she would take votes not only from her own former political home, but also from the centre-right CDU, the left-leaning Greens and the pro-business FDP. Most of all, though, Wagenknecht is trying to appeal to a section of AfD voters. Much of the party’s success in recent elections, she claims, comes from Germans who “don’t vote for the AfD because they’re rightwing. They vote for the AfD because they’re angry.” Wagenknecht’s attempts to siphon off the AfD’s protest voters currently seems like the only viable plan to mitigate the far-right party’s electoral success.

The reaction of the AfD has been surprisingly muted. There must be some disappointment: Björn Höcke, the party’s chair in the eastern state of Thuringia, has been practically begging her to join for months. But even if initial estimates are correct, the AfD would still be left with a compelling 17% electoral share, putting it second only to the CDU. Moreover, Wagenknecht’s populist, anti-immigrant rhetoric goes a long way towards legitimising the AfD’s own favourite electoral strategy. More troubling yet, if her party is as successful as early polls indicate, there will be fewer paths left to form majority governments without either the AfD or Wagenknecht, at a state or federal level. “A truly alternative left,” Höcke said in a recent statement, “could have an important function in the reconfiguration of the German party system.” Wagenknecht may take votes away from the AfD, but she may also make it possible for it to take political power if coalition partners find themselves forced to choose between two populist parties.

Germany’s main political parties are weak. The electorate is divided and governing coalitions, which have so far worked to keep the AfD out, have been increasingly divisive and ineffectual as a result. Infighting and incompetence have prevented the government from fulfilling many of its electoral promises. It is hardly the first to struggle: Germany’s politicians have been promising to streamline its often cumbersome bureaucracy, improve the country’s technological infrastructure and foster a more robust tech sector for decades. But political squabbles and a lack of imagination have prevented any meaningful change. Now, with a recession looming, resentment about the ineptitude of the political class is likely to grow even more pronounced.

Wagenknecht’s platform is still developing, but it isn’t likely to be all that different from the other parties’. The core governmental promises of better social services, a stronger economy and less bureaucratic hassle are shared across the political spectrum. The AfD and the Greens both campaign on increasing funding for education. Wagenknecht will, too. It won’t be surprising if she issues invectives against immigrants and climate activists.

But she’s hardly the only one who has figured out that you don’t necessarily need sound policy solutions or real leadership if you play on people’s resentments. Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, recently announced his plans to “deport on a grand scale”, while the leader of the CDU, Friedrich Merz, has gone on a veritable tirade, accusing Berlin neighbourhoods of not being adequately German and demanding that new immigrants to Germany declare their allegiance to Israel. With the world increasingly unsettled by violence in Ukraine and the Middle East, as well as by the ongoing series of climate crises, German politics is making a sharp turn in a nationalist-populist direction. And Sahra Wagenknecht could soon be accelerating that journey.

Source: In Germany, the anti-immigrant left is on the rise. Will it hold back the far right – or help it?

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , ,

Stateless in Germany have hardly any rights – DW (English)

2023/10/30 Leave a comment

Of note:

For people like Christiana Bukalo, 29, born in Germany but stateless, everyday life can become a challenge at any time: Opening a bank account, booking a hotel, getting married, pursuing a career as a civil servant — you need an ID for everything. But which state will issue you a passport if you don’t have any nationality at all?

“You don’t have freedom to travel because a travel document is required. You have difficulties when it comes to getting a job,” Bukalo told DW. “I know people who couldn’t finish their studies because they would have had to show a birth certificate to take the exam at the end. Also, stateless people don’t have the right to vote, even if they’ve always lived here.”

Bukalo is the daughter of West African parents whose nationality could not be verified by German authorities. She is one of a growing number of stateless people living in Germany — currently some 126,000 people. Many of them are Palestinians, Kurds, or former citizens of the Soviet Union or Yugoslavia — states that no longer exist.

Bukalo learned from an early age what it means to have no nationality. “Even as a child, you get the message that you don’t belong,” she said. “That you’re not supposed to stay here, but at the same time you can’t leave either. It’s very banal things that turn into a problem: Student exchanges, skiing trips abroad, none of that is possible. And of course, you have a great sense of shame, because you’re asked to explain something that has never been explained to you.”

‘Statefree’: A voice for stateless people

Two years ago, Bukalo decided to give stateless people a voice and founded the human rights organization “Statefree” in Munich. The goal was not only to inform the wider public, and to bring together those affected, but also to make demands on politicians.

“In Germany, we have an extreme reproduction of statelessness, as no way has been found to deal with stateless children who are born here,” she said. “We demand that stateless children born in Germany have a right to German citizenship.”

In Germany, it is the parentage that counts, not the place of birth. If the parents are stateless, so is their child. As a result, a third of all stateless people in Germany are children, though Bukalo also knows 65-year-olds who were born in Germany and are still stateless.

Statefree had high hopes for the new citizenship law proposed by the current center-left government of Social Democrats (SPD), Greens and neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP), but the issue of statelessness has not appeared in any draft law so far.

A spokesperson for the German Interior Ministry said in response to a DW question: “The concerns of stateless people are already sufficiently taken into account in the citizenship law. In addition, the general regulations for acquiring German citizenship apply to stateless people, since stateless people are also foreigners in the sense of citizenship law.”

Europe mulls deportations, not integration

The reform of the new citizenship law, which includes rapid naturalizations and incentives for skilled immigrants, comes at a time when the debate on migration is also at the top of Germany’s political agenda.

Bukalo is not surprised that her campaign is not making much progress at present. “I explain this to myself on the one hand with the politicians’ lack of knowledge about statelessness and on the other hand with the general political situation: The shift to the right in Europe,” she said. “Germany’s more progressive parties are having a hard time standing up for supposedly ‘progressive’ issues that have long been part of the status quo in countries like Spain or Portugal.”

No uniform legal procedures

Judith Beyer, professor of ethnology at Konstanz University, has been researching statelessness since she came across the topic seven years ago on a research trip to Myanmar, where 700,000 members of the Rohingya Muslim minority were fleeing persecution. They now live in Bangladesh but are considered stateless under international law.

Beyer works as an expert witness in a UK court when stateless people are in asylum proceedings. “Statelessness is a problem that is really not yet in the public eye in Germany,” she told DW.

Take the judiciary, for example: While in the UK experts like Beyer examine the life stories of stateless persons, and their expertise is incorporated into the final verdict on their status, in Germany the decision often rests solely with the judges.

There are also no standardized procedures in Germany for determining statelessness — it is up to municipal authorities, which means people in Munich sometimes get different decisions than they would in Hamburg or Cologne.

“The bottom line is that it depends on the individual who makes the decision,” Beyer said. “That’s what many stateless people keep complaining about: there is no legal certainty. Quite often it’s not malicious intent at all, but simply a lack of knowledge about how to deal with stateless people.”

Around 30,000 people in Germany like Bukalo have been officially recognized as stateless, which means they can apply for naturalization after six years of residency. But almost 100,000 individuals are categorized as persons with unclear nationality: Refugees who have no documents to prove their identity, such as the Rohingya who were expatriated from Bangladesh.

Being stateless is a violation of human rights, says SPD politician Sawsan Chebli. She was born in Berlin to stateless Palestinian parents and was not naturalized until she was 15. The ethnologist Beyer agrees: Stateless people are effectively denied the right to have any rights.

Source: Stateless in Germany have hardly any rights – DW (English)

Filed under Citizenship Tagged with ,

Germany: illegal immigration set to exceed record high

2023/10/23 Leave a comment

Helps explain the rise of the AfD:

Data released by the German Federal Police on Saturday showed that 21,366 individuals illegally entered Germany in September.

The number  — the single highest monthly tabulation of “unauthorized entries” into the country since February 2016, when 25,650 came after the peak of the so-called “refugee crisis” — follows a seven-month trend of increasingly high entry numbers.

Police data shows that 92,119 individuals illegally entered Germany between January and September of 2023, putting the country on track to exceed the 112,000 people that illegally entered in 2016.

Illegal migration, long a topic of hot debate across Europe and within Germany, has continued to put pressure on politicians to come up with an effective migration policy, something they have so far failed to do.

Scholz says Germany needs to conduct mass deportation of illegals

On Friday, leaders from the country’s three governing coalition parties met in Berlin to further discuss the issue.

Speaking to reporters from the German weekly publication Der Spiegel, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said, “We must finally deport on a grand scale those who have no right to stay in Germany.”

At the same time, Scholz underscored the need for Germany to take in individuals truly entitled to asylum, as well as attracting more skilled immigrants into the country’s aging workforce.

Scholz was reported as saying “a whole bundle of measures” were needed to address the issue of illegal migration into the EU — among them, hardening the bloc’s external borders and increasing Germany’s control of its own borders with EU neighbors.

Despite the principle of freedom of movement within the Schengen Area, Germany recently began conducting stops at its borders with the Czech Republic, Poland and Switzerland in an effort to confront the problem of illegal entries. Such controls already exist at Germany’s border with Austria.

The Federal Police statistics also come at a time when the opposition CDU/CSU has pitched the creation of a small working group between themselves and the government as a possible vehicle for finally getting a grip on the socially divisive issue.

Opposition pitches ‘German migration pact’

Friedrich Merz, who leads the conservative opposition, recently met with Scholz to discuss the issue, presenting him with a 26-point list of demands, including an annual cap on the number of people allowed to enter the country [200,000].

On Friday, Merz followed up with a letter to the chancellor pitching the idea of a balanced bi-partisan group.

Speaking to party members on Saturday, Merz said, “If we want to maintain social cohesion in this country, we must resolve this problem now.”

Lars Klingbeil, the leader of Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) greeted the opportunity to work with the opposition, calling it, “a good signal to citizens that we in the democratic middle can work with one another.”

“I expect to quickly find a common solution,” he added.

Still, Klingbeil confessed he did not believe in the concept of migration caps, saying he could not imagine the state would be so heartless as to turn away those facing true political persecution if such a cap had already been reached.

Merz’s idea is to create what he called a “German migration pact,” with measures designed to decisively curb illegal entries as a way to take pressure off overburdened municipalities and restore public trust in government.

The issue of immigration has become increasingly central to German politics, giving rise, among others, to the growing popularity of the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD), which is currently polling around 22% nationwide — far ahead of all three ruling coalition parties.

Source: Germany: illegal immigration set to exceed record high – DW (English)

Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

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