How productive are the new arrivals though?
Update: there are of course also other arrivals, but the Syrians make the bulk of them.
Edit: Knowing HN, I'll be the one called racist as opposed to the comment right next to me that's saying terrible things about Muslims.
The problem with this approach is that, the compensation becomes high for no good reason and since less people are working the output declines. Everything becomes more expensive because the consumption stays the same or higher but the production don't follow. Maybe you make more money by not letting a Syrian immigrant to cook food and compete with you but you also pay more to have your apartment painted because they didn't let some other Syrian immigrant compete in the painting business.
Immigrants that work create prosperity. If you are having trouble competing with a newcomers who barely speak the language, don't know anything of your culture and they grew up in a much poorer conditions in a country with much less opportunities, then it's on you. You should have taken advantage of living in this rich country that has given you all kind of opportunities, if you can't I don't see moral obligation to pay you well just because you are local.
People who want to participate in the society, create value and be compensated for it should not be stopped from doing it just because it might hurt someone else's prospect. This is basically the same argument against technology where some people would argue that we should limit robots and automation so that the workers can keep their jobs.
People are scared of change and don't want competition but if we artificially limit competition, the whole society will end up uncompetitive and catastrophe can happen. Protectionism is very dangerous, look what's happening to VW.
I swear I encountered the same argument in Britain after EU enlargement in 2004, when they opened for all citizens of new countries. Cunningly DACH countries fiercely negotiated at that time the longest possible transition periods.
If you want to see a higher number in the bank account and pay higher numbers for everything, be my guest but that's not going to solve your problems. Inflation is not a saviour.
It's funny to blame others for being wage dumped on as being their own fault, as long as it's not your job that's threatened form wage dumping.
That's made up word. It's actually competition and everyone has right to compete. If you don't want wages go below some level simply set the minimum wage to that level.
What's next? Are we going to start issuing licenses for using JavaScript because the tech sector slowed and it's easy to learn a JS framework to compete for the available jobs?
Are you literate?
> It's actually competition and everyone has right to compete.
Ah yes, the "free market" argument again.
You see, when you can't afford a house anymore because the central bank and government fucked you over and your wages are stagnating thanks to unfair competition from migrant workers, then there's nothing we can do about it it's just the "free market supply and demand".
But when workers' wages start getting too high for employers' linking as he can only get a platinum trim yacht instead of the diamond one, then it's no longer the hand of the free market working in the workers' favor but it's now called a "labor shortage" so all unions must be defanged and immigration barriers must be removed to ease the so called "labor shortage".
Now that's propaganda.
I recommend everyone to watch the series called "Benefits Britain: Life on the Dole" (mostly available on YT). I don't even blame these people, they are just doing what the system lets them get away with.
Imagine you graduate form university and apply for jobs where your employer receives 1 resume for every position open. What happens with your bargaining power when your employer can now hire from anywhere in the world without any visa barriers and now receives 200 resumes for the same position?
"Negociate"?
> Workers being wage dumped on by cheaper more desperate workforce...
"Wage dump" - that word again. So this is how people pick up policital slogans and start repeating them, without even thinking about how much of it is true. I don't think it is true.
> people choosing to live on the dole because they're fuckups at life
Think about who is paying for their benefits.
> What happens with your bargaining power when your employer can now hire from anywhere in the world without any visa barriers
Right, because that's what's going on in the UK. I don't think anyone suggested anything even remotely like that. In fact, I don't know of any country that does that.
Yes, negociate, bargain, haggle, call it whatever you want. Everyone negociates their wage, or at least tries to. Do you not where you live?
>"Wage dump" - that word again. So this is how people pick up policital slogans and start repeating them, without even thinking about how much of it is true. I don't think it is true.
What's your point? That if your boss would have 10x the number of candidates your wages and negotiation power wouldn't tank?
Not for no good reason - supply and demand. Literally the most important corner stone of any capitalistic system. The rest of your paragraph is based on your forced assumption of "no reason".
> Maybe you make more money by not letting a Syrian immigrant to cook food and compete with you but you also pay more to have your apartment painted because they didn't let some other Syrian immigrant compete in the painting business.
I'd say you're undervaluing apartment painting. Which is obvious since you're advocating having to fly in people from a destroyed country to do it.
In other words: Low paying jobs wouldn't sit around for long going undone. The market would adjust. Either they're jobs that shouldn't exist in the first place and need to vanish, or they are underpaid and the market would adjust by paying them better.
Try envisioning a world where a person who does a hard shitty job gets paid the same as a highly trained person sitting in front of a PC all day. Cleaning toilets is essential for our society to function and should be a respectable profession. It might not take a lot of education, but it's a hard job none the less The only reason hard jobs like this are not paid what they're worth, is trickery like immigration.
What would increase the output of the society? Employed people or unemployed people? It's employed people, so as long as the newcomers are employed and produce more than they consume everyone will be better off.
Forget the numbers, those are just for bookkeeping. You are not going to be better off if you you are compensated better due to staff shortages and then pay more due to staff shortages.
You're using the word compensation ambiguously. Your sentence is thus nonsense as I cannot parse what you meant. Was that your point?
> You are not going to be better off if you you are compensated better due to staff shortages and then pay more due to staff shortages.
Are you saying that keeping payment low is good for people because it also keeps inflation low? I'm sure everyone will agree and take a pay cut any moment now :)
"Output" is vague and not an agreed upon ultimate goal. Slave colonies have lots of "output".
"Everything becomes more expensive" is vague and unsupported enough to be noise.
"Immigrants create prosperity" is dime store propaganda and noise. It isn't necessarily true nor false. Your presentation of it is negatively persuasive, howerever.
Your statement about "people who want to participate should have the right even if it hurts others" is simply a zero borders argument to permanently bottom out most wages. It isn't a pro technology argument. Couching its opposition as an anti-tech argument is bizarre mental gymnastics that isn't cogent.
"People are scared of change" is a generalized a bullying tactic meant to insult people in case none of your other arguments hit the mark.
Your argument that labor "competition" can't be limited by borders, lest society becomes uncompetitive and catastrophic, isn't born out by the evidence in any productive nation to include Germany. It's also a statement that is embarassed by your thesaurus abuse of alarmist adjectives. Which in turn belie any confidence that your arguments are persuasive.
That’s expected and instead you’ll probably get a lecture on how great capitalism is.
> because their energy usage grew way less than their GDP last year
Their main energy pipeline got blown up by an unknown assailant last year. They sanctioned Russia and thus stopped importing their energy and switched to US liquified gas for industrial use that's being shipped by ships and thus 2x more expensive. The US slapped another 2x on the price, just because they could.
Personnal service and agriculture in particular.
When looking at more common jobs, it's quite hard to find a German when you pass by any construction site. In fact, I can speak to a good amount of the workers in my native language.
That's news to me. Even in London is not that immigrant heavy unless you consider the Europeans immigrants.
If I were to count only people from the Middle East, Africa and Asia as immigrants, probably closer to 35%.
That's not really the case within the EU at least it's not black and white. You have the same rights as the "native" population. What makes you an immigrat? People in the U.S don't say they immigrate when they move from one state to another...they just move and I think that's the case with the EU as well.
* I didn't speak the language when I moved here. I do now, but I still have a heavy accent that immediately tells everyone I wasn't born here.
* People still casually discriminate against me. I apply with a (fake) German name to apartments. Obviously I use my real name when I meet them and sign the documents, but it has helped me get the foot in the door many times before.
* I did go to school in Germany, and those are the the only Germans I'm friends with. I've made friends with other immigrants, but German society is much harder to break into.
* I can't vote in elections (which is fair, to be clear).
* While I understand German culture now, I don't understand it like a German does. It's kind of hard to quantify the impact of this but while I can understand what's expected of me and why people act in certain ways, it still feels like doing a dance rather than a mutual shared understanding.
All that said.. I feel pretty at place here. Living somewhere for a long time tends to do that. But you still never get over the feeling that you're some guy living in a place, rather than being of that place. It's more of a 50/50.. sometimes you feel as if you've always been there, and sometimes as if you just came that day.
It's true that you can't vote in national elections but you can vote on local elections[0].
Usually you need just 5 years(on most EU countries)to get the citizenship to able to have this remaining right vote on national elections.
Now my question to you is: are you still an immigrant after you get the citizenship? What's different?
[0] "Every citizen of the Union has the right to vote and to stand as a candidate at municipal elections in the EU country in which he or she resides under the same conditions as nationals of that country."
> are you still an immigrant after you get the citizenship?
Yes. Because I immigrated here rather than being born.
Based on your rationale you can end-up with race discrimination and nazi stuff. (e.g even if you are born in the same country your parents were immigrants so you are still a kind of non-native and so on).
The cultural issue goes both ways. The wave of immigration may make the natives feel discriminated as well. That doesn't make them "immigrants".
Almost the same rights but not quite. You are also confining this issue to a purely legal standpoint -- my ability to travel the EU freely does not mean that I am Italian, for example.
edit: after rereading your comment, perhaps this passage refers to after I hypothetically take my citizenship. To answer that, I would consider myself then both German and an immigrant.
The point is, I do not identify as German, and Germans do not think I am German. I am influenced by German culture of course, having lived here long enough, but I am not strongly enough influenced to call myself German. I have younger siblings who are born here and have no memories of our family's homeland. I think of them as German, since they are in every way so -- they speak German, have German mannerisms and ideas, and do not understand a single bit of the culture of where I was born. They do not have German citizenship, but that doesn't matter at all since it's just who they are.
I hope this clears up my feelings on this topic.
That aside my point is that it's wrong to put an immigrant on a visa to Germany on equal footing with an EU citizen. The former "may be deported" at any time for various reasons while the later has *all the rights german people have.
Discrimination happens even between different regions, the most common being in the U.S(i.e souther accents). There is also race discrimination even for "native" people. That doesn't make all the black, yellow people immigrants from Africa, Asia etc.
For those unaware, this is commonplace for various industries in the US. The H1B Visa program is a grind-house for companies like FAANG, and I imagine the EU and other European nations have taken note to utilize the same policy.
If there is an EU citizen applicant suitable for the job, they get it. If there isn't, anyone can.
This is not a political agenda. These are just facts.
[1]: https://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/arbeitsmarkt-fuer-flu...
[2]: https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2023-10/ukraine-gefl...
[3]: https://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article168661565/Tuerkischsta....
[4]: https://mediendienst-integration.de/integration/arbeitsmarkt...
Less than 50% are employed 5 years after arrival, in a country with 5.7% unemployment.
I imagine adults who don't speak the language, require financial assistance, etc, will be a net drain from a tax perspective on a society, esp. when you factor in the high CoL. Its hard enough for the average naturalized citizen to be a net positive from a tax perspective, let alone someone from an entirely different world. An inconvenient/unpopular, but obvious truth.
What about all the other immigrants from EU or abroad whose higher education was not paid by Germany and they immigrate to Germany? Surely that is a positive. Germany is benefiting from paid-by-somebody-else qualified applicants.
The latter isn't really a requirement, at least when working in tech. I barely speak any German at all in my job, and I'm a German dude working at a German company. All companies I worked for since 2010 had English as "company language", and immigrants were in the majority (mostly from other European countries, but also US and Canada).
I know many engineers etc. working as taxi drivers or dish washers because their (excellent!) degree gets not accepted in DE.
At the same time industry is whining about "fachkräftemangel" - this could be a solved problem tomorrow if politics did not try to block immigrants wherever possible.
I would go so far as to say that the employment rate is effectively always 95%+ for every population and that the only question is whether people are working in the formal economy, in school, informally working, caring, or doing any number of other activities that make up our human society.
Maybe you can't get a mortgage, but you can get a house.
Is that actually worse than getting a mortgage?
I don't know but I think it becomes obvious that you are not employed the moment you want to move out. The house becomes a prison.
According to the chart in the article, the employment rate looks like 56-57% for men and just under 30% for women.
To be as generous to this hypothesis as possible, we'll say 57% for men and 29% for women.
In that case, the relevant population is 71% men.