Refugees to ‘change country’
Europe watched with a mixture of fear and admiration as Germany opened its doors to millions of migrants, but it was left to the head of Mercedes, the embodiment of the country’s industrial might, to explain the simple motive behind the gesture.
‘‘Most refugees are young, welleducated and highly motivated – they are exactly the people we need,’’ said Dieter Zetsche, chairman of the automotive giant.
‘‘They could, like the guest workers from decades ago, help us preserve and improve our prosperity. For Germany cannot any more fill the jobs available only with Germans.’’
Zetsche’s evocation of the millions of Gastarbeiter (guest workers) who helped to fuel the country’s postwar boom reflected the almost united response of Germany’s government, industry and media to Europe’s largest refugee crisis since World War II.
Siemens has joined Daimler, the maker of Mercedes cars, in pledging to offer jobs and training for refugees; Bayern Munich, the football club, is investing more than 1m in a training camp for new players from the young people coming from the Middle East and Africa.
Germany expects to absorb at least 500,000 refugees and an equal number of other migrants every year, meaning an annual one million newcomers.
Some 50,000 were set to reach the country this weekend – more than double the number warmly welcomed in an outpouring of emotion a week earlier. A record 10,000 were expected to arrive in Munich yesterday.
About 4000 troops were put on standby, a measure more often used to preserve order in the aftermath of natural disasters.
Angela Merkel, the chancellor, has warned her compatriots to brace themselves for years of migration that will alter the face of German society. ‘‘What we are experiencing now is something that we will be dealing with for years and which will change our country,’’ she said.
Such statements would provoke a backlash in most western countries, where migration has become a highly divisive issue. But in Germany the media and commentators rallied behind Merkel, who presides over a ‘‘grand coalition’’ that does not face any parliamentary challenge from the right.
Even the mass circulation tabloid Bild, accused in the past of xenophobia, is running a proasylum campaign entitled We Are Helping. Last week it published a front page in Arabic to welcome the new arrivals.
Such policy is driven in part by a sense of responsibility stemming from the horrors of the Nazi times and also memories of the mass inflows of ethnic Germans from the east in the aftermath of World War II.
Germany’s demographics play a part as well. The population was set to shrink from 80m to 70m by 2050 – by which time Britain was expected to have overtaken it as the most populous nation in western Europe.
This would leave fewer than two people of working age in Germany to support one pensioner – an unsustainable burden on the country’s generous welfare state.
That trend could now be reversed. ‘‘Germany’s population was shrinking, but now it is growing and it will grow in the next years – thanks to the migration influx,’’ said Stephan Sievert, a demographer with the Berlin Institute for Population and Development.
The last time Germany experienced a similar boost was between 1955 and 1973, when millions of workers from southern Europe and Turkey were hired to fill gaps in the booming job market.
More than 16 million Germans have what, in today’s language, is described as ‘‘a migration background’’. In cities such as Stuttgart most people aged below 40 are migrants or the children of migrants.