Posted on 07/07/2006 6:32:33 PM PDT by blam
Germans hit road in search for jobs
By Kate Connolly in Berlin
(Filed: 08/07/2006)
More Germans are emigrating than at any time since the war, driven from home by unemployment or the search for better job prospects.
Around 145,000 mainly young people turned their backs on the country last year, more than at any time since 1945, and almost a three-fold increase since the 1980s, according to the Federal Office of Statistics.
The favoured countries were America, followed by Switzerland, Poland, Austria, Britain and France.
Doctors and academics constitute the largest groups of those leaving. Doctors in particular are choosing to move to Switzerland and Britain, where they are better paid and have to do less overtime.
Young scientists and researchers are moving to the United States, where universities are better funded.
The figures reflect Germany's chronically high unemployment rate of about 10.5 per cent.
But the real emigration figure is believed to be even higher, since many émigrés do not tell the authorities that they are leaving. At the same time about 500,000 so-called "gastarbeiter", or foreign guest workers, left the country largely because there was not enough work.
Meanwhile in Austria there are now more German than Turkish "gastarbeiter", most of them working in the hotel and restaurant trade - overturning a decades-old trend.
Germans have reacted positively to advertising campaigns from England, Canada, Australia calling for tradesmen, engineers, teachers and nurses.
Labour experts have been warning for years of the dangers of Germany's growing emigration.
In the 1980s emigration stood at around 50,000. The year after the Berlin Wall fell the rate almost doubled to 99,000.
"This emigration situation is suicidal for us," said the migrations expert Klaus Bade Jungen. "We're bleeding to death."
He said that he expected emigration trend to continue in the coming years.
Of additional concern is that qualified workers from abroad are not choosing to come to Germany.
Economic experts have warned the government that unless it opens its doors to the mobile eastern European workforce, which is currently barred from working in Germany, the country will face a serious skills shortage.
There is much irony in this list...
the solutions: cut taxes and get rid of red tapes.
Do ALL of it in ONE DAY and let it recover within 4 years.
There are a group of German citizens whose ancestors lived in Russia for generations and then recently returned to their homeland, but are being harrassed by the government for some of their religious practices, including homeschooling.
I would he happy to see them emigrate to the United States.
And the Muslim to Germany are staying put and breeding like stoats.
30 years from now, Germany is going to look like some middle-eastern ghetto. Get outside the toursist areas of the big cities and many parts of it already do.
Germany was an economic miracle after WWII when Adenhauer and others rejected American or Western advice to run up the tarriffs, taxes, etc and practiced free trade itself.
I am not an expert about this, but that is what I recall.
Germany was known then for inexpensive high quality goods.
I just finished a good book on the subject of the US economy vs. the German, French and Italian economy. It is called "Cowboy Capitalism" by Olaf Gersemann. It explains how the European Socialist policies retard growth (incl. job growth).
IIRC, the Marshall plan with eswentially interest free loans to build new factories had a lot to do with "The German Miracle", which, BTW, ended in 1978.
Apparently many of them are leaving before the Germans
But the real emigration figure is believed to be even higher, since many émigrés do not tell the authorities that they are leaving. At the same time about 500,000 so-called "gastarbeiter", or foreign guest workers, left the country largely because there was not enough work.
Meanwhile in Austria there are now more German than Turkish "gastarbeiter",
The favoured countries were America...
I don't mind well educated Germans coming to America.
German economic refugees leaving for Poland. LOL LOL ROTFLMAO!
OK. But it worked. Germany today does not.
The German mark was kept low for a long time. Four marks to a dollar when my future wife (and now current wife) was there in the late 1960s.
So where exactly is this road that connects Germany and America?
It's funny that the American "Ghettos" are in the cities while in Continental Europe they are out of town (out of sight and apparently out of mind).
"free trade".
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