Your comment reminds me of a statistic I read somewhere in the Substack labyrinth. It stated that the population of Turks in Germany is 4x higher today than in the FRG days, but the employed number has stayed the same, so the gain is entirely composed of dependents and welfare recipients.
Your comment reminds me of a statistic I read somewhere in the Substack labyrinth. It stated that the population of Turks in Germany is 4x higher today than in the FRG days, but the employed number has stayed the same, so the gain is entirely composed of dependents and welfare recipients.
Thanks for the comment. The Gastarbeiter (guest worker) scheme which I observed as an exchange student in Frankfurt am Main in the 1980s was by definition not for permanent settlement. British construction workers also used the scheme.
I would not be surprised if converting these earlier economic migrants to full citizens has significantly increased the number of children, wives and grandparents of Turkish and Yugoslavian origin in Germany. Nevertheless, they are all growing the German economy via consumption. The children are compensating for declining native birth rates and will be the German workers of the future. And the kebab is now a German delicacy.
See also Berlin's Vietnamese community who were welcomed by the GDR as fellow communists. In general, these earlier generations of migrants seem to have integrated in Germany fairly well, while retaining distinct identities.
The post 1997 generation of migrants in the UK appear to be of a different character, as many were admitted on asylum grounds rather than as workers. I don't know how that played out in Germany during Merkel's era, but I have heard the emphasis changed there also. The Blair/Bush 'War on Terror' and subsequent regime changes seem to have displaced a lot of people.
Different waves of migrants do indeed show quite different patterns. тАЬContributing by consumptionтАЭ is not as impressive if they are drawing on payments from the German state and the anti-aging impact of migration is very easily exaggeratedтАФmigrants age too.
Family dependents aren't necessarily state dependents. Migrants are filling the demographic hole which coincided with over fifty years of abortion liberalisation. It's a short-term fix.
A very worthwhile article as it exposes an often overlooked matter - that the industries the guest workers/immigrants were recruited for were declining.
I almost ended up becoming West German sometime in the early 80s! Luckily I was later transported to the antipodes instead.
Thanks for the link. I think the general thrust of that article is correct, but I have some nitpicks.
The 1948 Act was introduced in the context of the Commonwealth, which had already sent many soldiers to fight for Britain. It isn't true that this law wasn't meant to attract non-white migrants, even if that's what people believed at the time.
I am sceptical that there would have been a net positive balance in white immigrants versus British colonists going to Africa or the Antipodes in the era of the Ten Pound Pom. Active recruitment was taking place in the Caribbean at least. Then we had the chaos of the partition of India in response to Muslim demands for their own state, which displaced millions of people and killed many others.
Also, in post-war Britain, the goal of immigration was not so much economic growth as having a functional socialist society, with bus drivers and nurses available for example. Repaying the huge debt incurred to the USA was the priority, with making cars for export a particular focus. Not just factory workers but highly skilled professional migrants were sought. Alec Issigonis, who designed the iconically British Morris Minor and the Mini, was Greek.
The linked article points out the shortage of doctors in origin countries but then claims that migrants are a net drain, which is inconsistent. As for the number of years of net contribution, that may be skewed by the age of arrival in the country, and the type of work being done. There aren't so many building site labourers in their 60's because the work is physically demanding.
As usual for articles on immigration, the role of abortion liberalisation in white demographic decline is skipped over. If immigrant communities don't support abortion for religious reasons, they will inevitably overtake the native population over time. This was also a factor among Unionist anxieties in Northern Ireland, of course.
In the current debate about tariffs, we could reflect on the fact that it wasn't always possible to have frictionless trade, and it was more feasible to bring Turkish workers to Germany than it was to build German cars in Turkey.
I visited the Opel factory on a school trip in the 1980's, and by then the skilled metalwork had already been automated. The Turkish workers simply fed sheet steel into the presses and collected the finished parts at the other end of these huge machines. The work was very boring, and so the workers were rotated onto a different machine every 15 minutes to prevent them losing their minds. If we are to re-shore industrial production in a new era of protectionism, it will be unskilled migrants doing those jobs, because low-skilled whites simply refuse to.
Your comment reminds me of a statistic I read somewhere in the Substack labyrinth. It stated that the population of Turks in Germany is 4x higher today than in the FRG days, but the employed number has stayed the same, so the gain is entirely composed of dependents and welfare recipients.
Thanks for the comment. The Gastarbeiter (guest worker) scheme which I observed as an exchange student in Frankfurt am Main in the 1980s was by definition not for permanent settlement. British construction workers also used the scheme.
I would not be surprised if converting these earlier economic migrants to full citizens has significantly increased the number of children, wives and grandparents of Turkish and Yugoslavian origin in Germany. Nevertheless, they are all growing the German economy via consumption. The children are compensating for declining native birth rates and will be the German workers of the future. And the kebab is now a German delicacy.
See also Berlin's Vietnamese community who were welcomed by the GDR as fellow communists. In general, these earlier generations of migrants seem to have integrated in Germany fairly well, while retaining distinct identities.
The post 1997 generation of migrants in the UK appear to be of a different character, as many were admitted on asylum grounds rather than as workers. I don't know how that played out in Germany during Merkel's era, but I have heard the emphasis changed there also. The Blair/Bush 'War on Terror' and subsequent regime changes seem to have displaced a lot of people.
Different waves of migrants do indeed show quite different patterns. тАЬContributing by consumptionтАЭ is not as impressive if they are drawing on payments from the German state and the anti-aging impact of migration is very easily exaggeratedтАФmigrants age too.
Family dependents aren't necessarily state dependents. Migrants are filling the demographic hole which coincided with over fifty years of abortion liberalisation. It's a short-term fix.
Here's the link: https://www.edwest.co.uk/p/europes-absent-minded-revolution
A very worthwhile article as it exposes an often overlooked matter - that the industries the guest workers/immigrants were recruited for were declining.
I almost ended up becoming West German sometime in the early 80s! Luckily I was later transported to the antipodes instead.
Thanks for the link. I think the general thrust of that article is correct, but I have some nitpicks.
The 1948 Act was introduced in the context of the Commonwealth, which had already sent many soldiers to fight for Britain. It isn't true that this law wasn't meant to attract non-white migrants, even if that's what people believed at the time.
I am sceptical that there would have been a net positive balance in white immigrants versus British colonists going to Africa or the Antipodes in the era of the Ten Pound Pom. Active recruitment was taking place in the Caribbean at least. Then we had the chaos of the partition of India in response to Muslim demands for their own state, which displaced millions of people and killed many others.
Also, in post-war Britain, the goal of immigration was not so much economic growth as having a functional socialist society, with bus drivers and nurses available for example. Repaying the huge debt incurred to the USA was the priority, with making cars for export a particular focus. Not just factory workers but highly skilled professional migrants were sought. Alec Issigonis, who designed the iconically British Morris Minor and the Mini, was Greek.
The linked article points out the shortage of doctors in origin countries but then claims that migrants are a net drain, which is inconsistent. As for the number of years of net contribution, that may be skewed by the age of arrival in the country, and the type of work being done. There aren't so many building site labourers in their 60's because the work is physically demanding.
As usual for articles on immigration, the role of abortion liberalisation in white demographic decline is skipped over. If immigrant communities don't support abortion for religious reasons, they will inevitably overtake the native population over time. This was also a factor among Unionist anxieties in Northern Ireland, of course.
In the current debate about tariffs, we could reflect on the fact that it wasn't always possible to have frictionless trade, and it was more feasible to bring Turkish workers to Germany than it was to build German cars in Turkey.
I visited the Opel factory on a school trip in the 1980's, and by then the skilled metalwork had already been automated. The Turkish workers simply fed sheet steel into the presses and collected the finished parts at the other end of these huge machines. The work was very boring, and so the workers were rotated onto a different machine every 15 minutes to prevent them losing their minds. If we are to re-shore industrial production in a new era of protectionism, it will be unskilled migrants doing those jobs, because low-skilled whites simply refuse to.