“Year after year, the flow of emigrants leaving the fatherland grows, which cannot be stopped either by bureaucratic regulation or by government decrees. The reason is largely that many Germans cannot find their place – due to difficulties in the labor market or dissatisfaction with the political course...” A verbatim quote from the newspaper Leipziger Illustrierte Zeitung of January 11, 1851, would look perfectly at home on the front pages of today’s German publications.
According to statistics kept since 1871 by the association Raphaels-Werk, founded at the time to help Catholic German emigrants in California, only 9% of “leavers” set off at the end of their lives to “warmer climes” to spend their old age in dignity. There are not many people in Germany who have saved enough by retirement to invest in Tax Havens or buy a modest house on Mallorca. 15% leave their homeland for family reasons – to reunite with a foreign spouse. The lion’s share of participants in the next great migration of peoples – 44% – are former unemployed people who have despaired of finding use for their abilities in their native regions. A classic example known throughout Germany is the stepbrother of the former federal chancellor, engineer Lothar Vosseler, who lost his job at a construction company and was at the time employed thanks not to a high-ranking relative but to the much-maligned job center – as a tour guide on the same Mallorca.
The United States, a traditional immigration country, is not as popular with Germans today – due to the complicated procedure for obtaining a long-term visa. “The coveted Green Card is not so easy to get,” says Raphaels-Werk employee Christina Busch. “And it’s not just about the strictest scrutiny by the security services. People suffering from serious illnesses, such as tuberculosis, have no chance at all of obtaining a residence permit in the United States.”
The Benelux countries, Great Britain, Switzerland, Spain, France, and the Scandinavian states are currently in demand. The interest is mutual: these countries have such a great need for German labor that special international organizations are created to recruit specialists, operating in partnership with the German Central Employment Commission (ZAV).
Thousands of Germans of various professions appear in Berlin every year for the “outbound sessions” of the Norwegian labor exchange to offer their services to foreign employers. And not by chance: the northern neighbor, with its 3.6% unemployment, is catastrophically short of construction workers, car mechanics, and junior medical staff. In the Netherlands (3.1% unemployment), German electricians, painters, locksmiths, butchers, and bakers will be welcomed with open arms. In Ireland (4.4%) – salespeople and telephone operators. Denmark (4.2%), Sweden (4.9%), Switzerland (3.3%), Great Britain (5%) and other neighboring countries are ready to accept mid-level technical staff without detailed specification of specialties, with one condition – knowledge of the language (courses, by the way, are paid for by the same German ZAV).
The German capital alone lost 6,500 residents in the past year – they were caught up in a wave of labor migration that has the cheerful-sounding name Brain-Drain. Five years earlier, there were 2,400 such movers. According to today’s forecasts, the figure for Berlin, as for the whole country, will grow by 15% annually. This is only official statistics – experts have no doubt that the real number is four times higher: many migrants keep their German “registration,” which allows them to use the insurance and social benefit systems and also hope to receive a pension in the future. The last few months have seen a new trend – the movement of Germans eastward, to neighboring Poland. True, there are no reliable data yet on emigration there, as to other countries recently admitted to the EU; according to rough estimates, about 5,200 people moved across the Oder in 2005.
The situation of modern German guest workers is similar to that of the migrants from Turkey and Italy who poured in half a century ago to create the German economic miracle. In Germany, hired hands from afar traditionally received less money for work similar to that done by local natives – as is still the case today, for example, in the Netherlands, where the salary of a qualified construction worker from Germany is 20% lower than that of his Dutch colleague. At the same time, however, the absolute amount of earnings is immeasurably higher than it would be at home, which allows not only to comfortably maintain a second apartment, but also to support the family left behind in some cases. The net income of a bricklayer in Norway is, for example, €2,400, and that of a cleaning woman – €1,370. An operating surgeon in the United Kingdom is paid for the fact of a surgical intervention, rather than by the amount of time spent, which on average triples the salary. (By the way, thousands of residents of Foggy Albion are waiting for German doctors who are able to operate on patients with “night blindness” – a note for the unemployed doctor!)
It is believed that labor migration to Australia is successful in 100% of cases. However, even neighboring countries are sometimes more attractive to Germans than the fatherland with its 10.2% (according to other calculations – 18.8%) unemployment, benefits named after Hartz, changing governments, tax and medical reforms. Although, perhaps, the point is the “national character... founded on the historical mission of the German people to develop the economy of the rest of the world thanks to their talent, strength, and work ethic,” as described in the same Leipziger Illustrierte Zeitung of 1851.