Germany’s economy and sustained support from civil society are just two of the factors that helped the country manage the arrival of over one million asylum seekers between 2014 and 2016, the largest number the country has seen since the end of the Second World War. Ramping up its capacity to process asylum claims and increasing access to language and integration courses were also important to Germany’s success.
Some Germans had especially high hopes that newcomers would counteract the country’s low birth rate, which, similar to Canada’s, poses the dual-threat of labor shortages and an inability to fund growing social security costs. In 2015, Dieter Zetsche, then-head of Daimler, went as far as to propose that refugees may be “Germany’s next economic miracle.”
But not everyone in Germany was optimistic about mass migration. Many warned that the influx would create a crisis of independence on welfare and long-term poverty as migrants got stuck in precarious jobs.
Germany’s Mass Immigration
The Federal Institute for Employment Research (IAB) examined the claim that migration would “overstrain” the German economy and society’s capacity. “The empirical evidence has—contrary to the expectations—given no indications that the influx of refugees in 2015 led to a ‘refugee crisis’ in Germany,” reads the 2020 study, published in the journal Soziale Welt.
Looking at a detailed survey of a representative group of refugees who arrived between 2013 and 2016, the authors found that the demographic profile—69 per cent were under 35—was “likely to facilitate, rather than hinder, labour market integration.”
A separate report by the IAB based on the same survey of refugees found that half of asylum seekers were employed within five years of arriving. And by the end of 2018, 23 per cent had enrolled in education or training opportunities and 57 per cent were working in skilled professions.
This is remarkable, considering that in 2017, Aydan Özoğuz, Germany’s commissioner for immigration, refugees and integration, predicted up to three-quarters of refugees would still be unemployed in five years. It’s also impressive given the barriers immigrants face and that this was a high-needs population that didn’t plan or prepare for such a move—only one percent of those surveyed who arrived between 2013 and 2016 spoke German.
The perception that “too much” immigration will strain a country’s ability to absorb migrants is certainly not unique to Germany. Canada is seen as managing this concern through its focus on economic migration. Part of why the Canadian system is lauded internationally is that it primarily targets economic migrants, who are hand-picked based on a points system that assesses applicants according to their language abilities, education level and work experience.
The underlying assumption of the points system is that it ease Canada’s transition,d particularly into the labor market. And yet, Canada has an underemployment problem. A 2020 report from Public Policy Forum, for instance, notes that immigrants are overrepresented in lower-paying jobs, such as those in accommodation and food services “where the average pay is $383 per week compared to $976 per week across all industries.” Unrecognized foreign credentials, devalued work experience and individual discrimination all contribute to this.