Unten ist ein Artikel aus IHT über Migration in Deutschland. Ich habe selber nicht in Deutschland gelebt und als ich kurz dort war, habe ich auch nicht unbedingt den Wunsch gespürt dort zu leben. Aber ich glaube dass Deutschland, Österreich und die Schweiz Aehnlichkeiten haben.
Germans seek greener pastures abroad
By Mark Landler
Monday, February 5, 2007
ESCHBORN, Germany
Benedikt Thoma recalls the moment he began to think seriously about leaving Germany. It was at a New Year's Day reception in 2004 in nearby Frankfurt, and the guest speaker, a prominent politician, was lamenting the fact that every year thousands of educated Germans turn their backs on their homeland.
"That struck me like a bolt of lightning," said Thoma, 44, an engineer who was then running his family's elevator company. "I asked myself, Why should I stay here when the future is brighter someplace else?"
In December, as his work with the company became an intolerable grind, mainly because of labor disputes, Thoma quit and made plans to move to Canada. In its wide-open spaces, he hopes to find the future that he says is dwindling at home. As soon as he lands a job, Thoma, his wife, Petra, and their two teenage sons will join the ranks of Germany's emigrants.
There has been a steady exodus over the years, but it has recently become Topic A in a land already saddled with one of the most rapidly aging and shrinking populations of any Western nation. With evidence that more professionals are leaving than in past years, politicians and business executives are warning about the loss of the best and brightest.
Among the more popular shows on German television is "Goodbye Deutschland! The Emigrants," a 12- part series that chronicles several families who forsake Germany for South Africa or southern Spain.
The trigger for this latest bout of angst was the release in the autumn of new government statistics showing that in 2005, 144,800 Germans emigrated, up from 109,500 in 2001. Also in 2005, only 128,100 Germans returned, a decline of nearly 50,000 from the year before. That made it the first year in nearly four decades that more people left than came home.
Demographic experts say, too, that the nature of the emigrants is changing. These are not just young, unskilled workers, like those who fled the economically blighted eastern part of Germany after the country was reunified in 1990 to work in restaurants in Austria or Switzerland.
They are doctors, engineers, architects and scientists — just the sort of highly educated professionals that Germany needs to compete with economic up-and-comers like China and India.
"It's not a problem of numbers as much as brain drain," said Reiner Klingholz, director of the Berlin Institute for Population and Development. "What we desperately need in the near future are talented and qualified people to replace those who will retire in 15 to 20 years."
Other experts contend that such fears are overblown. Germany has long sent its scientists and engineers to work or study abroad, they say, with the number of returnees historically balancing out those who leave. The latest statistics merely reflect an acceleration of that trend, as academia and industry adjust to an increasingly global economy.
"Whenever the subject of migration comes up, Germans get very nervous," said Claudia Diehl, a sociologist at the University of Göttingen who has studied migration patterns. "First they were nervous about people coming; now they are worried about people leaving."
But the numbers, she said, may overstate the case of brain drain since they do not distinguish between native and naturalized Germans. For example, Turkish guest workers who adopt German citizenship and later go home are classified as German emigrants.
Germany is not the only European country losing people. Nicolas Sarkozy, the conservative candidate for the French presidency, recently held a rally in London, home to 300,000 French émigrés, urging them to return and "make France a great nation."
The number of French citizens living in Britain jumped 8.4 percent in 2005, government statistics indicate. But the total number of French people living outside the country grew only 1.2 percent, or 15,300 people, roughly the same as Germany's net loss of about 16,700 citizens.
Caveats aside, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that Germany has become less attractive for people in fields like medicine, academic research and engineering. Those who leave cite chronic unemployment, a rigid labor market, stifling bureaucracy, high taxes and the plodding economy — which, though better recently, still lags behind that of the United States.
As Friedrich Böttner, an orthopedic surgeon at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York, put it: "I make more money. I've got more opportunity. New York was the chance of my lifetime."
German salaries, he said, are not competitive with those in the United States or Britain and the hierarchical structure of some professions here discourages ambitious young people from staying. The medical field, in which advancement is controlled by powerful chief doctors, has been particularly hard hit, with 2,300 doctors leaving in 2005.
"In Germany, it is nearly impossible to make a medical career unless you go into a pipeline and wait for your time," said Helmut Schwarz, vice president of the German Research Foundation.
"Germans are so complacent," Thoma added. "They don't want to change anything. Everything is discussed endlessly without ever reaching a solution."
As an example, Thoma cited the stalemate between his family's firm and its 89 employees. After the firm became unionized, he said, the two sides began bickering over wages and working conditions. With much of his 80-hour workweeks eaten up by these disputes, Thoma said he developed high blood pressure and other ailments. He told his brothers he was burned out and ready to leave.
With an engineering degree and a nest egg from his stake in the family firm, Thoma should have no problem leaving. While the European Union's expansion has given Germans more options, their two favorite destinations are outside it: Switzerland and the United States.
Surveying the map, Thoma settled on Canada, which his family had visited six years ago and loved. They were drawn to the natural beauty and the sense of possibility. They also viewed it as a compromise between the social model of Europe and the free market of the United States.
Thoma confessed to doubts about how many jobs Canada has for someone with his specialty. He has sent out his résumé and will travel to Toronto this month to scout for work. "My problem is that I'm not a truck driver," he said with a shrug. "Canada has a shortage of truck drivers."
The government of Chancellor Angela Merkel is trying to improve Germany's attractiveness with several initiatives, but while the economy regained traction in 2006, Merkel has made little progress so far in loosening the labor market.
Nina Lenhoff, 31, a doctor from Munster, moved to London to study psychiatry because she thought it would be nice to live in another country. "But once I got here," she said. "I was just amazed." Her salary is nearly double what she earned in Germany and when she had a baby 18 months ago, she was able to work part-time — something she said would not have been possible in Germany.
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