Immigrants? What Immigrants?
It’s no secret that the Germans are concerned about immigration. Integration courses and citizenship tests were recently big news items that made a lot of noise in the national media. An “integration summit” is being planned at the highest government levels in the coming weeks. Leading Muslim representatives will be invited to a German Islam Conference in Bonn later in the fall. All of this mirrors the common perception that Germany seems to be standing before an ever-increasing and overwhelming wave of immigrants demanding entry into the country.
Recent figures released by the Federal Immigration Office in Nürnberg (BAMF) paint a completely different picture, however. In 2005, for instance, 450,000 immigrants came to Germany. That may seem like a lot at first glance, but of these 450,000, 330,000 were seasonal workers who returned to their home countries once their work was done. A further 20,000 received temporary work contracts but did not remain after these contracts ended.
That still leaves 100,000 immigrants to account for. Of these, 80,000 fell under special status or other exceptional categories like family members following naturalized citizens, Jewish immigrants from the Russian Commonwealth of Independent States or the so-called Spätaussiedler (ethnic Germans from Russia, for instance).
Asylum seekers don’t seem to have had much of an effect in the overall numbers, either. Of the 29,000 seeking asylum in Germany that year, only 2,900 were allowed to stay. The total number of those even tying has been dropping for years, as well; from 50,000 in 2003 and 35,000 in 2004.
In other words, all in all, of the 450,000 trying to immigrate to Germany in 2005 (in the classical sense of the word), barely 20,000 were allowed to stay. And experts figure that this number is not a tenth of what it needs to be to compensate for the dramatic demographic changes that are now beginning to take place in Germany.
So it seems that “the boat” is anything but full. Could all the Aufregung (excitement) associated with this topic be stemming from somewhere else? Perhaps it’s not enough to just recognize the fact that immigrants actually exist in this country and try and integrate the few who are here. Maybe it’s time to start welcoming them with open arms instead.
Source: Wir waren ein Einwanderungsland from Jörg Lau.