Does Germany need less migration? - A plea for an objective debate
After the attacks in Magdeburg and Aschaffenburg, a heated debate about migration is raging in Germany in the middle of the election campaign, which is currently being driven forward by the CDU under Friedrich Merz. The CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the Bundestag submitted a motion to pass its influx limitation law, which was intended to reduce the number of asylum seekers arriving in Germany and to make it more difficult for families to join them.
By Konstantin Schink
By Konstantin Schink
Given the fact that some of the perpetrators of the attacks that have taken place in recent years - be it the attack in Aschaffenburg or the assassination attempt on Michael Stürzenberger, in which a police officer was killed - were foreigners who were required to leave the country, an emotional and heated debate is currently raging about migration policy in general. But such debates should not be conducted on the basis of individual events or one's prejudices, but rather based on facts and without emotion.
So, aside from sensational, drastic events, let's first stick to the general crime figures, taken from the police crime statistics for 2023. Foreigners make up around 15% of the population in Germany, but commit 41% of crimes. They are also significantly overrepresented in individual crime groups. They commit 28% of crimes against sexual self-determination, 37% of rapes, 43% of murders and 54% of robberies.
Of course, the reasons for this can be debated for a long time, but this would go beyond the scope of this short article. It should only be mentioned briefly that many immigrant groups have a high proportion of young men, a group that is significantly more criminal than the average population in almost all societies, and that many immigrants come from countries that are often politically unstable, even civil war, and which are also much poorer than Germany. So both demographic and socioeconomic factors will play a role, but that is not really important for this plea. If you have a problem with crime caused by rising immigration, then it is not a good idea to bring more people into the country who will exacerbate this problem.
Integration into the labor market is also looking anything but good. We already have a major problem with underemployment in Germany. We have almost 3 million unemployed people who cannot find work because there are too few vacancies. The number of unemployed is almost four times higher than the number of vacancies. People who immigrate here and have to learn the German language first have a difficult time of it. 47% of those receiving citizen's allowance are foreigners, which sooner or later undermines the acceptance of the welfare state in society.
And while there is underemployment in the German labor market and the recession continues, Germany is forced by the European internal market, in which workers enjoy freedom of movement, to pursue a liberal immigration policy at least towards most European countries. No party, not even the AfD, wants to change anything about this. In addition, there is a rampant housing shortage, which is leading to ever-increasing rents.
And it was precisely in this situation that the governments under Angela Merkel and Olaf Scholz decided to bring millions of migrants from other cultures to Germany since 2015. It was already foreseeable back then that this would further exacerbate social conflicts and further divide society. While the traffic light coalition halved housing construction, it continued to force hundreds of thousands of immigrants from completely different cultural areas who are even more difficult to integrate than immigrant groups from other European countries.
But it is not only Germany, but also the countries of origin that are suffering from the consequences of this mass migration. In Afghanistan, for example, there has been peace since the end of the Western occupation in 2021, but Germany and the rest of the West do not recognize the Afghan government and have been waging a brutal economic war against the small, poor country since then, which has prevented many refugees from returning. Afghanistan not only needs an end to economic sanctions, but also the return of millions of young, well-qualified emigrants who left the country during more than 40 years of civil war.
A strict migration policy must therefore be combined with a new, sovereign foreign policy that ends the economic wars against small countries like Afghanistan and Syria so that the refugees who can and want to can finally return to their homeland.
In addition, a change in economic policy is needed. Massive investments are finally needed in public infrastructure, especially in the education system and in housing. To anticipate a counter-argument that many leftists put forward: we should not complain about migrants, but rather concentrate on investing in our infrastructure and a better welfare state.
The answer to such people is: a stricter migration policy and a better economic policyare not mutually exclusive, but complementary. If the mass migration of hundreds of thousands of people from distant regions of the world who come to us every year were to end, then newly built state-run housing would have a much stronger price-reducing effect than if they first had to absorb the incoming migrants before they could lead to lower rents on the market. If more were invested in schools, then the positive effect would be much greater if the majority of school classes spoke German as their mother tongue and the school classes were not overwhelmed with the integration of new arrivals.
The migration that Germany has experienced in the last 10 years has damaged our country and massively exacerbated social conflicts. It is therefore not only time for a change in foreign and economic policy, but also for a much more restrictive migration policy. The only party that I trust to solve these three challenges is the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance. The CDU, SPD, FDP and Greens have governed alternately in recent years and are responsible for the chaos and decline our country is currently in, and the AfD, above all, does not want to reverse the catastrophic neoliberal economic policies of the past decades, but rather to exacerbate them even further.
With this in mind, I hope that I have made some people think with this article and perhaps even spark some debates. Like most of my readers, I am also curious about the outcome of the next federal election. But I would like to venture a prediction at the end: What is unlikely to change after the election and what there will still be many debates about is migration policy.
10.02.25
Konstantin Schink (born November 8, 2001) graduated from high school in Lower Saxony in 2021. He is currently studying economics and politics in a double bachelor's degree and runs the YouTube channels "Agitator of the social market economy" and "The secondary agitation."
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So, aside from sensational, drastic events, let's first stick to the general crime figures, taken from the police crime statistics for 2023. Foreigners make up around 15% of the population in Germany, but commit 41% of crimes. They are also significantly overrepresented in individual crime groups. They commit 28% of crimes against sexual self-determination, 37% of rapes, 43% of murders and 54% of robberies.
Of course, the reasons for this can be debated for a long time, but this would go beyond the scope of this short article. It should only be mentioned briefly that many immigrant groups have a high proportion of young men, a group that is significantly more criminal than the average population in almost all societies, and that many immigrants come from countries that are often politically unstable, even civil war, and which are also much poorer than Germany. So both demographic and socioeconomic factors will play a role, but that is not really important for this plea. If you have a problem with crime caused by rising immigration, then it is not a good idea to bring more people into the country who will exacerbate this problem.
Integration into the labor market is also looking anything but good. We already have a major problem with underemployment in Germany. We have almost 3 million unemployed people who cannot find work because there are too few vacancies. The number of unemployed is almost four times higher than the number of vacancies. People who immigrate here and have to learn the German language first have a difficult time of it. 47% of those receiving citizen's allowance are foreigners, which sooner or later undermines the acceptance of the welfare state in society.
And while there is underemployment in the German labor market and the recession continues, Germany is forced by the European internal market, in which workers enjoy freedom of movement, to pursue a liberal immigration policy at least towards most European countries. No party, not even the AfD, wants to change anything about this. In addition, there is a rampant housing shortage, which is leading to ever-increasing rents.
And it was precisely in this situation that the governments under Angela Merkel and Olaf Scholz decided to bring millions of migrants from other cultures to Germany since 2015. It was already foreseeable back then that this would further exacerbate social conflicts and further divide society. While the traffic light coalition halved housing construction, it continued to force hundreds of thousands of immigrants from completely different cultural areas who are even more difficult to integrate than immigrant groups from other European countries.
But it is not only Germany, but also the countries of origin that are suffering from the consequences of this mass migration. In Afghanistan, for example, there has been peace since the end of the Western occupation in 2021, but Germany and the rest of the West do not recognize the Afghan government and have been waging a brutal economic war against the small, poor country since then, which has prevented many refugees from returning. Afghanistan not only needs an end to economic sanctions, but also the return of millions of young, well-qualified emigrants who left the country during more than 40 years of civil war.
A strict migration policy must therefore be combined with a new, sovereign foreign policy that ends the economic wars against small countries like Afghanistan and Syria so that the refugees who can and want to can finally return to their homeland.
In addition, a change in economic policy is needed. Massive investments are finally needed in public infrastructure, especially in the education system and in housing. To anticipate a counter-argument that many leftists put forward: we should not complain about migrants, but rather concentrate on investing in our infrastructure and a better welfare state.
The answer to such people is: a stricter migration policy and a better economic policyare not mutually exclusive, but complementary. If the mass migration of hundreds of thousands of people from distant regions of the world who come to us every year were to end, then newly built state-run housing would have a much stronger price-reducing effect than if they first had to absorb the incoming migrants before they could lead to lower rents on the market. If more were invested in schools, then the positive effect would be much greater if the majority of school classes spoke German as their mother tongue and the school classes were not overwhelmed with the integration of new arrivals.
The migration that Germany has experienced in the last 10 years has damaged our country and massively exacerbated social conflicts. It is therefore not only time for a change in foreign and economic policy, but also for a much more restrictive migration policy. The only party that I trust to solve these three challenges is the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance. The CDU, SPD, FDP and Greens have governed alternately in recent years and are responsible for the chaos and decline our country is currently in, and the AfD, above all, does not want to reverse the catastrophic neoliberal economic policies of the past decades, but rather to exacerbate them even further.
With this in mind, I hope that I have made some people think with this article and perhaps even spark some debates. Like most of my readers, I am also curious about the outcome of the next federal election. But I would like to venture a prediction at the end: What is unlikely to change after the election and what there will still be many debates about is migration policy.
10.02.25
Konstantin Schink (born November 8, 2001) graduated from high school in Lower Saxony in 2021. He is currently studying economics and politics in a double bachelor's degree and runs the YouTube channels "Agitator of the social market economy" and "The secondary agitation."
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