Forget Sarrazin. Germany needs more immigrants

It is ironic that Thilo Sarrazin's crusade against immigrants in Germany is coming at a time of demographic crisis for Germany.  As I wrote recently, if current birth trends continue, Germany is projected to see a population decline of 17 million in 50 years.  In his new book, Sarrazin raises the spectre of burqua-wearing women crowding the streets of Frankfurt and Munich and "dropping babies" like mad.  The truth is, there is a net movement of Turks and Germans with Turkish background out of Germany - mostly back to Turkey which is experiencing robust growth.  Overall, in fact, considerably more people are leaving Germany than are coming in.  This is unsustainable in the medium-term.  Vast areas of eastern Germany have been depopulated, in spite of enormous transfer payments and subsidies from the west.  Paradoxically, extreme xenophobia is more prevalent in eastern Germany, and this anti-foreigner impulse will only grow stronger thanks to Thilo Sarrazin and his legions of fans in the press and blogosphere.

As Rainer Klingholz, Director of the Institute for Population and Development in Berlin, writes in Der Spiegel, Germany has a choice.  It can follow the path of Japan - an insular and rapidly aging nation in decline which holds onto its homogeneous culture - or the path of Canada - a country which actively recruits foreign immigrants and plans for their integration into a dynamic culture:

Deutschland braucht jetzt, nicht erst in ein paar Jahrzehnten, eine massive Zuwanderung mit ähnlich guten Integrationsbedingungen wie in Kanada. Denn demografisch bedingt wird die hiesige Erwerbsbevölkerung um rund 30 Prozent schrumpfen, weil die kopfstarke Gruppe der Babyboomer in den kommenden Jahren ins Rentenalter wächst. In dieser kritischen Phase gibt es zu wenig junge, produktive Menschen, die den Wohlstand erwirtschaften können, der für die Versorgung der alternden Bevölkerung nötig ist. Die Rente mit 67 kann das Problem abfedern, lösen kann sie es nicht.

(Germany needs today - not in a few decades - a massive influx of immigrants with the same positive integration opportunities such as exist in Canada. For the indigenous productive population will decline by 30% as the Baby Boomers reach retirement age in the coming years. In this critical phase thare are simply too few young, productive people to sustain the level of prosperity required to support the aging population. Raising the retirement age to 67 mitigates the problem in the short term, but is not a solution.) 

Fear-mongers such as Sarrazin and Udo Ulfkotte will cry:  what about our Western cultural values? Won't these immigrants bring their own culture?  My answer: so what?  Only a society that embraces change will survive. 

Comments

[Zyme]

My unscientific bet is that more people would prefer Japan here ;)

Seriously, Sarrazin's book has stormed to No. 1 book selling on its first day (http://www.amazon.de/gp/bestsellers/books/302-7608003-7646454).

That book is going to be the necessary afterburner for this debate for some time. And more immigrants is hardly a likely outcome.

[David]

Yes, the book puts the government on the defensive and makes immigration reform unlikely. That is not good for Germany.

But it could be good news for the US, since maybe we will benefit from the human capital shut out of Germany.

[Jon]

"Won't these immigrants bring their own culture? My answer: so what? Only a society that embraces change will survive."

Sounds kind of like the old Vietnam saying "We had to destroy the village to save it." Thilo Sarrazin is simply trying to save his own country from oblivion.

[stefan]

sarazzin complains about the immigration of poorly educated people. being a descendant of immigrants himself he knows about the importance of immigration.

[Edward Senesac]

I am writing from Japan. It's better to have peace and unity within than the chaos of modern Germany and Canada with spikes in violent crime due to massive immigration of impoverished immigrants from the poorest nations on earth. Why can we not choose on the type of immigration instead of always getting the bottom of the barrel? This is the main reason for the failure of the West: blind acceptance of anyone who wants to settle. Who pays? The taxpayer. Why can we not use our brains and insist on accepting only those who prove worth and can provide for themselves? Why are citizens forced against their will to accept full support of those who have learned to play the system? How come this alternative view is not tolerated with vehement bigotry? Why can there be no discussion in a free economy?