Originally posted by Captain Falcon
Aldra
I emailed my professor friend. Here was his response:
Regarding your question, first it depends on the cases. For example Germany needs immigration for its workforce since its population is getting old. The situation is very different in Spain or Portugal, for instance, where the economy is not as good as the German one (to say the least), and where the national population is younger. Second, I don't buy the argument according to which Eastern Europe immigrants would integrate better than those from the Middle East would do. Integration depends on socioeconomic backgrounds, on skills, on language knowledge more than on "ethnic", religious or cultural origins. The history of immigration in western Europe shows it very well. For instance, in late 19th century France, Italian immigrants were regarded as impossible to integrate. Still, they were European and Catholics! Most people have forgotten it. Last, we should not only think in terms of the needs or interest of the incoming countries. Migration is just a normal process in the history of humanity. We should think of it as such, rather than asking if its desirable or not.
1. The way he talks about Germany's aging population, it seems that he's not only concerned with the workforce but also population sustainability - implying that he sees supplanting the historically European population with MENA immigrants as a solution. In terms of the workforce, Germany needs skilled workers and last I heard, something like 0.3% of the recent immigrants had sought employment at all; a large portion of them could not communicate effectively in the language of the host country and virtually none had any level of recognised education.
2. "Integration depends on socioeconomic backgrounds, on skills, on language knowledge more than on "ethnic", religious or cultural origins."
Even if that were true, the majority of the recent immigrants from MENA have virtually no marketable skills (except maybe rape) and the majority have poor skills in the host language, if they're able to speak it at all. The fact that he has to go back to 19th century France as an example of similar populations failing to integrate/assimilate is telling - I'm not familiar with the situation but I'd hazard a guess that there was a very definite reason for that.
3. The host country is the one providing for the immigrants - it needs to ensure the safety and prosperity of it's own people before 'helping' others, and it must be mindful that if it overextends itself trying to be a 'good samaritan' it won't have the resources to support immigrants OR citizens.
