One fifth of foreigners who leave Germany cite integration problems as the reason
The guest workers in Germany are coming back. In just one year, 1.2 million people have left the country that many considered the European paradise. Surveys show that one in four leave for financial reasons, and almost one in five because of dissatisfaction with life in Germany.
“Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” (FAC) came out with a special material on the subject, quoted by the Bulgarian section of “Deutsche Welle”.
Bulgarians, by the way, are in fourth place among foreigners who left Germany in 2022, reports the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, quoted by Agence France-Presse.
In fact, most people who leave Germany are foreigners returning home. In addition, the majority of foreigners who leave Germany have stayed in the country for a relatively short time.
Out of a total of nearly 700,000 emigrants who have spent more than three months in Germany, almost half leave Germany after the first year. 70 percent of them had been in the country for less than four years.
Andreas Ette of the Institute for Demographic Studies told FAC that less than a third of those leaving Germany were German citizens.
Often, it is also about people who only temporarily go abroad – for example, students who spend a semester in foreign universities, or professionals who get an employment contract in another country. According to Ette, most Germans who travel the world have decided in advance that they will one day return home.
So there can be no question of a “brain drain” – this is the usual state of the mobile international labor market, Ete believes.
In certain sectors, however, the outflow of qualified specialists is palpably felt. This is especially true for doctors, many of whom left in the years of the pandemic: in 2022, nearly 2,300 doctors, both German and foreign, left the country.
The situation in the field of scientific research is similar – German universities simply cannot pay top scientists the salaries that they would receive in the US, for example. In the case of academic staff, rigid structures for career development and pay also play a role – again in contrast to the more flexible system in the USA.
Permanent leavers will definitely be missed by Germany, regardless of the passport in their pocket. FAC reminds that the country needs 400,000 new migrants each year to solve the problems of the labor market. In this case, it is about the so-called net migration.
That is, if 1.2 million people leave the country, 1.6 million must arrive to get that plus of 400,000 people.
In this regard, the FAC writes that in 2022 a record number of migrants arrived in Germany due to Russia’s war against Ukraine (more than 40% of migrants arrived precisely from Ukraine), but otherwise the number of 400,000 new settlers per year is not achievable: for the next years the Federal Statistical Office expects no more than 290,000 people net migration per year.
The migration report shows that not so many retirees who want to live warmer and cheaper in their old age are leaving Germany as people of active working age. And it is definitely a problem for the German labor market that so many qualified personnel are leaving.
Julia Kosiakova from the Institute for Research on Professions and the Labor Market expressed the opinion that many of these people had good chances in Germany, but something prevented them from staying in the country.
One fifth of the foreigners who leave Germany cite integration problems as the reason, 8% were dissatisfied with the working conditions, the rest were unable to cope with the German language or found a better-paid job elsewhere.
The latter applies, for example, to lorry drivers, who have recently been paid better in Britain.
Germans who leave the country permanently or for a long time are usually retirees, professionals who get better offers in other countries, or people moving for family reasons.
The DPA agency reports that the largest number of German immigrants are in Switzerland – over 311,000 in 2022. 216,000 Germans moved to Austria, and 142,000 to Spain. The reasons are understandable: Spain is warm and attractive to retirees, and German is spoken in neighboring Austria and Switzerland.
And something else. The FAC quoted Germans who moved to Switzerland with a simple message: “We moved to Switzerland to earn more money.”
2024-01-21 19:30:17
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