It's surprising how immigration is almost never mentioned as an alternative to these "population-drop-fighting" measures.
You'd think one of the things they'd do was make it easier for immigrants with some level of skill to get permanent residency.
This will yield down votes, but I'm an immigrant from the subcontinent and I understand what I'm talking about when I say this: it is vital to preserve western culture. Immigration done right can strengthen it and keep it vital, but done wrong it can dilute and corrupt the culture.
Germany is better than India or China or the Middle East or the other countries immigrants would come from. Full stop. Westerners don't appreciate the extent to which a lot of the bad things we perceive to characterize those countries is baked into their culture. Sexism, racism, corruption at the basest level. That will follow immigrants into Germany and take root there unless immigration is slow enough to acculturate the immigrants.
I've read that the pressure of xenophobia was a big contributor to the assimilation of past waves of American immigrants. Three of my four grandparents were working-class immigrants or the offspring thereof. There was never any doubt they wanted to be, and indeed became or grew up as, "real Americans" --- in no small part because they were (at a minimum) looked down on by the "real Americans."
Certainly xenophobia is not especially admirable. But these days there's a danger of going too far in the other direction: There seems to be a species of political correctness that insists (sometimes loudly) that every other culture is at least as virtuous as American/Western culture and should be allowed to take root and spread in whatever fertile Western environment its human carriers decide they want to live in.
German politicians, in the past (60s,70s,80s), have brought in many worker-immigrants mainly from turkey. They were badly needed to fill the many vacant spots in the booming economy.
They left no thought to integrating / assimilating them into the german society. Up until the 1990s the political parties in germany could not even come to grips with the fact that germany was in fact an "immmigration country". They were in denial.
Today germany has 12-14% foreigners, mostly from turkey, and many of them have not been integrated well into the german society. Also, unemployment is high among this group. Education chances are depressed, etc - you get the picture.
Now, we are in a bind. On the one hand the birth rate has been dropping for decades. This has to do with societal trends (more women working, etc) - but is a complicated issue in itself.
Only group with a healthy birth rate, ironically, are the turkish immigrants.
Politicians do not have any idea what to do about the birthrate. That has to with a cultural memory of nazi-era family policies, which rewarded having many children. It's a taboo today in german politics to try to directly induce families to have more children in any way.
The german economy is already suffering. The term "fachkräftemangel" has been coined for this- which means the industry is already finding it difficult to fill all the vacant spots with qualified personell.
The abortion rate in the US is about three times that of Germany; the majority of women who have an abortion cite that they cannot afford to have a child as a primary reason.
There is no statutory maternity leave in the US (let alone parental leave).
Depending on what health insurance you have, even having a baby can be pretty pricey; a friend of mine who recently had a baby ended up paying over $2,500 in coinsurance for the delivery alone.
Daycare is generally much more expensive than in Germany, where daycare is heavily subsidized (daycare subsidies for low-income families vary by state).
Having a positive attitude towards families with children is great (and it's arguable whether there's actually a difference), but it doesn't put food on a table or a roof over their head.
The biggest practical problem that German parents face, in my experience, is that schools or daycare centers that are out at noon are difficult to square away with having both a job and children (though the problem of latchkey kids is hardly unknown in the US, either; google "Kim Brathwaite", for example).
US fertility : 2.06 German fertility : 1.42 (this is WITH 10%-15% turkish immigrants having a birthrate of > 2.4)
So what is it ?
People are now afraid of immigrants in general. Most people don't realize that there is a VERY big difference to the economy from an Indian IT worker - who learns German - assimilates himself culturally (maybe even studied a masters or something in Germany - picking up the finer bits of your complicated culture) & the Turkish family in the shady part of the city thats living on Hartz 4. This is a huge issue for a country thats trying hard to attract foreigners (www.make-it-in-germany.com).
Most other immigrants I know here - eventually get tired of this feeling of constantly have to justify that they arent here to mooch of the system - and are probably providing for some family in Brandenburg with their monthly tax and social security payments (most educated immigrants earn atleast 40-50k€ - its a natural lower limit set by the fact that you cant get a permit otherwise). This means easily 15-20k € in tax and Social security (and lovely SOLI of course) - with which they are supporting a society that looks at them as leeches.
Dont get me wrong - Germans are tolerant - but that's different from inclusive. The tendency is to assume "oh these poor 3rd world people need to come here to have a good living." That simply isnt true - a well qualified person can live an equally good life in the developing world as he would in Germany. (sure maybe not everything is always on time but so what). Many people move to Germany for other reasons - be it hte love for beer (no kidding) , german cars, the green, or they wanted to be with a German person they got to know somewhere. but instead of considering any other possibilities - the average German tends to assume "ah he wants our awesome healthcare & social security).
This needs to change. Especially if you want to tackle the fachkraftemängel. Those qualified people will get employed anywhere. The government gets this and has made small moves to make it "easier" - you can easily get a permit and work here now - this is good. Even the beauraucracy is less of a pain in the ass than a few years ago.
What's missing though is the public education. Merkel herself at some point said "Multiculti has failed in Germany". Foreigners will take an integrationtest, learn the language and even figure out the complicated regulation system. In turn though - you need to offer them more than juts a decent salary and standard of living - you need to offer them acceptance. This is missing. People need to be given reverse integrations training or atleast provided some information - let them understand that these people aren't here to mooch of the system or steal jobs - they're here because to a large extent the country needs them.
Second, even if you are top 1% in India living like a top 25% in Indiana, your life is one of walls and enclaves. My family was rich in the developing world. We would go from our house with its high wall and iron gate into our foreign car with driver and tinted windows. We would do anything we could to avoid having to interact with the people on the street, our supposed countrymen.
The US has its enclaves, but I can get in a car and head to the relatively poor coastal town where my wife's parents grew up. I can go eat at the seafood shack by the side of the highway and consider it a treat. I can talk to the people and feel like we all live in the same country. That's living a good life.
[1] See this article, for example: http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/the-.... The couple in the article (one a consultant, another a PR executive) makes 1.8 million rupees per year, equivalent to about $29k USD. Adjusted for purchasing power (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity), that's roughly equivalent to $70-80k USD. That's roughly at the top 1/3 mark of US household income, and probably not that far above median for US households where both people are working. As noted in this article, the couple is well within the top 1% of India, which starts at $1.25 million rupees per year. That level is equivalent to about the 57th percentile in the U.S.
[2] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/indiahome/indianews/article-23271.... $20 PPP-adjusted dollars per day, or $7k/year is around the bottom 5% mark in the U.S. Only 4.6% of Indians have all four of these assets: a TV, a car or scooter, a landline or mobile phone, and a computer or laptop. Even people living in trailer parks in the U.S. will often have all four of these assets.
Everything else you've stated is either untrue (people lived in strange walled societies) or irrelevant (PPP etc - 29k is enough for people to live a good life in India. In any case the people I referred to - the ones who would even have a chance in places like Germany etc - are well above that 1% figure even in India). I leave it to you to figure out how big 1% of 1.2 Billion is.
On the contrary, I think there is more solidarity across economic classes in most of Europe than there is in the U.S.
> Everything else you've stated is either untrue (people lived in strange walled societies)
They certainly do: http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/29/at-bangalores-gate....
> or irrelevant (PPP etc - 29k is enough for people to live a good life in India.
Sure, but your premise was that people didn't come to the West from places like India for the economic opportunities, because "a well qualified person can live an equally good life in the developing world as he would in Germany." A programmer in Germany lives a far better quality of life than his counterpart in India, at nearly any level of qualification.
> I leave it to you to figure out how big 1% of 1.2 Billion is.
It doesn't matter how many people are in the 1%--it still means that 99 out of 100 people live in far less comfortable circumstances. And, from my personal experience, living in communities with high income inequality sucks. I find it barely tolerable in Wilmington, DE, and that's a egalitarian paradise in comparison to anywhere in India. Life in India is not "equally good" outside the enclaves frequented by 1%-ers and Western expatriates, and being forced to stick to these enclaves is itself something that undermines quality of life.
Getting back to the actual point - quality of life is highly subjective and the fact that there's a strong reverse brain drain happening makes it pretty obvious that there's plenty good opportunities in India right now - educated Indians dont need to go abroad for a good life. Sure there maybe differences - but after a certain level it doesn't matter anyways. The truth is - there are more people in india (also proportionally) - who have access to a decent standard of living today - than there were at any point in its history - and for most Indians thats pretty good already.
More importantly - what you misunderstood by focusing on just that one statement is that - the economic difference is just not attractive enough that companies can ignore the softer aspects. Especially for a country like Germany where the language barrier is anyways a huge disadvantage - just being economically attractive isn't going to be enough for them to draw people in. In fact - a recent article from a leading german weekly itself states that even after simplifying the visa process (if you have a degree in STEM - you can essentially just come here for 6 months and look for work no questions asked) - there hasn't been any sort of significant increase in the number of qualified people coming here. Anecdotal and personal experience, as well as the numbers clearly then point out that even for people who would maybe want better economical conditions - there's other things that matter more.
When you lose yourself in the statistics and GDP calculations - you miss the bigger picture. People are fine with living with less money in places where they feel happy compared to places where they dont feel at home, especially if the difference in the money is not percieved to be significant enough.
Not really. You can't get as good in some aspects, but if you have the money (which is not difficult if you're being poached to work in Europe/the US) you can get beyond on some others.
Like big house with a pool and maids.
Very nice hotels/vacations for a price of an average hotel in Europe
"My family was rich in the developing world. We would go from our house with its high wall and iron gate into our foreign car with driver and tinted windows"
Spot on
It's not only about giving the immigrant right to work, live, later vote in Germany. It's about absorbing them, making their life easier, and truly helping them to integrate into society. That's the effort that, right now, an immigrant has to make himself, but there's no much support from the state.
My own example, I came here on Blue Card. That was easy. Then, I had to wait for half a year before my wife and children could join me. Then we had to wait for another half year before my children could start with the kindergarten. Only after that, my wife could actually start going to language / integration course. All in all, a year wasted before we could even start integrating. In addition to that, my son will start school next year, and will have only one year at German kindergarten instead of two. That will severely impact his ability to actually attend school in a yet unlearned language.
What I want to say is that integration of immigrant is not easy, and there's much more that needs to be done. If you want them to integrate into the society, you should treat them much better, even better than citizen. Why? Because Germany needs them?
If it's not done properly, in 50 years there will be no more German way of life. Majority of the people will not know how to use "der", "die" and "das" properly and would not even care about that. Half of the German population will be made of non integrated immigrants, leaving in small communities of people with the same origin.
And if you get a salary above a certain threshold, you even qualify for a "Blue Card" that allows you to work anywhere in the EU !
These initiatives, started years ago, so far have flopped.
After 5 years in the country you can file for permanent residency.
In addition to that, you partner automatically gets work permit without restriction, and you are eligible for all social benefits like health care and Kindergeld from the day one.
Compare that with the H1B / Green Card situation, and the contrast is clear. It was an easy choice for me (yes, I had job offers from both USA and Germany), and will probably attract more people in the future.
Not to mention it doesn't take almost a full year to get like the H1B
Getting B1 level in German should be not so complicated and attainable in, let's say, 18 months.