10 years after Merkel’s “We can do this”

Posted by Thomas Klikauer

Turbo-charged by far right tabloids, right-wing populists, and the neo-fascist AfD, Germany continues to be an anti-migrant country even though of the 83 million, 24 million have a migrant background. 

Yet, Germany desperately needs skilled workers. Worse, Germany is putting migrants off from coming to Germany. 

Not much seem to have changed on the 10^th anniversary of Merkel’s “wir schaffen das” – we can do this. This is the moment two contradictory forces meet. 

One the one hand, there is the much discussed – literally at an almost daily level – issue of a skill-shortage and a labour market that does not deliver. 

On the other hand, there is an xenophobic mass-hysteria against migrants sparked by the hallucination of keeping Germany a pure Volksgemeinschaft – a racially uncontaminated Aryan community of inbred morons, simpletons, and bozos.

Ten years ago – in the summer of 2015 – the then German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, uttered the famous phrase, “We can do this!” – Wir schaffen das! And Germany did. 

Ten years later, 70% of the new arrivals were in employment – roughly the same proportion as the German population. Today, many of them are employed in sectors in which Germany has a severe shortage of skilled labour.

The trumped up “chaos” did not eventuate. Germany was not overrun by “floods” of migrants. The term “flood” is designed to conjure up fear with images of flash flooding and tsunamis. 

Despite the, perhaps pretended, openness to the many refugees arriving in Germany at that time, Merkel’s conservative CDU government still deported 25,375 people the following year. 

There hasn’t been such a high number of deportations of migrants from Germany ever since. However, this could change under chancellor Friedrich Merz of the conservative CDU. 

Today, a new height in migrant deportations is to be expected for 2025. Alone in the first quarter of 2025, 6,151 people – including 1,118 innocent minors – have already been deported. 

Extrapolated to the rest of the year, there could be well over 24,000 deportations. Even if the numbers of 2016 would not be reached, these deportations are pretty significant. 

Interestingly, in March 2025, for example, only around 23,000 more people immigrated “to” Germany than emigrated “from” Germany – a net gain of 0.027%. For that year, the net gain “declined to 430,000” people or 0.51%.

Given Germany’s birth rate of 1.35 (2024), these 430,000 (0.51%) are utterly insufficient. If Germany were in an ideal demographic with a birth rate of 2,1, net 0.51% migration would, at least in terms of simple mathematics, justifiable.

Yet, Germany is not in ideal shape. Germany’s age structure has the shape of an up-side-down vase: a large number of old people at the top and a fewer and fewer young people are at the bottom. 

Worse, the number of people over the age of 67 will have increased by 22% – from 16 million to an expected 20 million – by 2035. 

In other words, Germany is aging rapidly. But populations isn’t wine or parmesan cheese. The opposite is the case. It does not get better with age. 

According to a recent survey (August 2024), there were slightly fewer skilled workers missing. Only! 34% of companies complained of a shortage of skilled workers compared to 43.1% a year earlier. But this was mainly because of a weakening of Germany’s economy: -0.2% of economic decline. 

Accordingly, the demand for labour will only increase. Aligned to this is the fact that about 1.4 million jobs remained unfilled – quarter 4 of 2024. 

Germany is losing economic performance as a result. In other words, Germany needs immigration – urgently. 

Still more worryingly is the fact that by 2050, the number of people of working age in Germany will have decrease by 16 million – if nobody immigrates to Germany. This is a devastating blow to any economy. 

Trapped in the xenophobic anti-migrant hysteria, Germany’s government therefore seeks to involve both women and retirees in the labour market. Imagine a 67 year old steal maker, aged care nurse lifting a patient, or roofer.

Rather than adhering to the xenophobic nightmare that is unsettling the economy, immigration of skilled and “to-be-trained” workers should be promoted. 

In other words, Merz’s government should bring in, at least, 1.6 million migrants into Germany’s labour market during his first term in office. 

As so many other issues in an economy, this cannot simply be left to the whim of the neoliberal free market. Unfortunately, Merz’s own ideology of neoliberalism gets into the way. In short Merz’s faces his very own double whammy: 

• Firstly, he jumped on the xenophobic bandwagon with his “little pashas”, “Ukrainians engage in welfare tourism”, “migrants only want expensive dental treatment” (“Die sitzen beim Arzt und lassen sich die Zähne neu machen”) statements.
• Secondly, he is the victim of his own neoliberal ideology that argues that markets, including the labour market, should remain untouched by the state running under the simply but equally false dogma: “bureaucracy is bad, the free market is good”.

This ideological double trap will, most likely, prevent Merz from doing what Germany’s economy bitterly needs, namely, the migration of an additional 400,000 people per year. 

To make matters worse, his conservative government wants to pick-and-choose and sort out “its” foreigners into good foreigners in and bad foreigners out. This is not a reminiscence of a “selection”, once conducted in the darkest hours of Germany. 

But even Merz’s conservative stooges who agree with him on the “selection” principle, will have to accept this is exactly what doesn’t been working in the past. 

The fact is that Germany is groaning-and-moaning under self-created shortage of skilled workers and is – to make it worse – still deporting people who work in many of Germany’s “bottleneck industries” such as manufacturing, nursing, childcare, health, etc. 

In short, Germany is deporting migrants despite their performance and assistance to the economy. One of those against whom deportation had already been carried out is Ahmad. 

Ahmad fled from war torn and civil-war fighting Iraq – attacked by Bush coalition of the (k-w)illing for no weapons of mass destruction – to Germany and worked in a bakery in the Esslingen region as a cleaner. 

Because Ahmad was hardworking and dedicated, his boss offered him to start an apprenticeship in her company. But before Ahmad could start, the police were standing in the bakery to deport Ahmad. 

Yet, because of his boss’ staunch resistance, Ahmad’s case is now with the so-called “hardship commission” – hardship of Ahmad and his boss and her bakery. 

Being a member of the Yazidi community, however, does not give Ahmad hope for “special protective measures” even though Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag, has recognised the mass murders of the Yazidis by the fanatical ISIS as genocide, in January 2023. 

Today, Ahmad fears facing the same dehumanising mistreatment by Germany administration as two previous refugees at the same bakery. Both were deported – to the detriment of both and Ms Schimanski’s bakery.

Meanwhile, in the city of Offenbach, the young educator Inaya was deported in mid-June 2025. Inaya had studied education and pedagogy in Afghanistan and worked as an educator. 

In Germany, Inaya was on her way to have her degrees officially recognised. Her second year of work experience has just started. It marked the final step towards becoming an early childhood educational specialist. 

The managing director of her day-care provider had already Inaya as an employee. She was scheduled on. Surprisingly, Inaya is now based in Lithuania. 

This is the country that registered Inaya as a refugee for the first time. Although Inaya could theoretically return to Germany on a work visa. 

Yet, anyone who has been expelled from Germany or deported is subject to an entry ban. It comes under section eleven of Germany’s Aufenthaltsgesetzes – officially labelled “Act on the Residence, Economic Activity and Integration of Foreigners in the Federal Territory”. 

The term “integration” of the act may allude to the Orwellian Newspeak as it prevents integration. Worse, the length of Inaya’s ban is determined through the discretion of an administrator. 

Yet, the ban can be extended to up to five years. It seems like another valuable and highly skilled employee is excluded from Germany’s labour market that is – rather frantically – looking for child-care workers. 

The final example on how Germany shoots itself in the back comes from Marburg where an 18-year-old recently passed the vocational training as one of the best in his class. 

The young man already had a place for further specialised training at the prestigious university hospital in Marburg as a medical-radiology technician. UKGM’s website has pages of pages of job offers.

But because Amir and his family fled Iraq and were first registered in Romania, Germany rejected Amir’s asylum application. Germany only “tolerated him”. 

When his teachers, trainers and mentors learned about the threat of deportation, they wrote a note of objection to: 

• The interior minister of Amir’s home state – the conservative Roman Poseck. 
• The “hardship commission”. 
• The federal minister – the conservative Alexander Dobrindt. And 
• They started a petition. 

Despite mass support for Amir, the outcome is still uncertain. Cunningly, the conservative CDU’s own party’s website states that “diligence and performance must be worthwhile” and “we are bringing Germany forward”. 

To add insult to injury, the CDU website continues with “we are providing more workers and skilled workers to our country”. 

And just when one thinks that it cannot get any worse, it does. The CDU’s website closes with “we make it easier for foreign specialists to start working” in Germany. 

Yet, if one asks CDU politicians about this all too obvious contradiction between their very own party programme and their practice, they shrug their shoulders. Or worse, answer with “so be it” and the final lame duck excuse, “that’s the law”. 

Meanwhile, what is known as the EU’s “Dublin Regulation” specifies that any EU state into which an asylum seeker first enters is responsible for examining his or her asylum application. 

Germany’s office for migration and refugees (BAMF) has been instructed to check whether a person is at risk when returning to their country of origin – nothing else seems to matter to German administrators. 

Key issues like a candidate’s technical expertise, existing employment contract, knowledge of the German language, and social-cultural integration have been – deliberately – eliminated. 

Germany’s responsibility is buried between politician driven on by right-wing populists and state bureaucrats. In order to understand the absurdity of Germany’s eagerness to deport high-performing, willing, capable, skilled workers and specialists with employment contracts, a deeper look into Germany’s vast bureaucratic apparatus is necessary.

On the one hand, ministerial administrations primarily carry out what the government tells them to do. On the other hand, administrative processes are largely regulated by so-called administrative rules or Verwaltungsvorschriften.

These describe an administrative process of a specific organisational operation in extremely precise details in order to achieve the administrative goals set out by the apparatus. 

This is Prussian administration – as explained by German sociologist Max Weber – in overdrive. Oiling the state apparatus are people called “Beamte” or civil servants – often with life time employment.

They work in an employment regime that is still more akin to the Prussian army – Befehl und Gehorsam (command and strict obedience) – than a modern bureaucracy.

These Beamte of an administrative office must (and do) adhere to these administrative rules – to the letter. Worse, they do this even if the outcome makes no sense. 

The spirit of the esprit de corps of the Russian apparatchik is still alive. Historically as well as geographically, Russian and Prussia were not that far apart when it comes to an administrative apparatus that follows the rules of an army. 

Like in an army, if these Beamte or apparatchiks fail to follow these administrative rules, they can be sanctioned and held responsible. 

All of this can be explained by an example: If the social worker, working for the state, processes a “cases” (read: real people) according to a set of prescribed administrative rules, it is not the fault of the “case-worker” if a homeless person dies on the street. 

But those in the administration who set up these administrative rules resulting – indirectly and in a secure distance – in the death of homeless person could, of course, not have been prevented such death.

The organisational system make nobody responsible. In the end, it remains next to impossible to hold someone specifically responsible for the fact that a legal-administrative situation “is as it is”. 

The “is as it is” is no more than a rhetorical manipulate that make the perpetrators vanish. Despite all this, one can still blame the Merz government for keeping it that way. 

And before that, the previous government had already changed Germany’s “Skilled Immigration Act” in 2023. 

Since then, asylum seekers with qualifications and a specific job have been able to apply for a residence permit as a specialist – if they withdraw their asylum application. 

Although with good intentions, the scheme does not help those whose asylum application has already been rejected. It gets worse. 

To Germany’s monstrous administrative and legal hurdles, racism – open, hidden, structurally, and institutionally – can be added. This alone deters quite a few from immigrating to Germany. 

The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights found in 2024 that a whopping 68% of Muslims living in Germany experience racism. 

Worse, when it comes to racism towards people of colour, Germany takes first place. Yet, some still claim that Germans have learned from the past when anti-Semitic racism killed millions. 

All this does not fail to have the intended effect as fostered by right-wing populists. In 2024, fewer asylum applications were filed in Germany than, for example, in Spain. This is reason to rejoice for Germany’s right-wing populists. 

Meanwhile, Germany’s economic growth is going south: currently sitting at minus 0.2% – despite, or perhaps because of, Merz. 

By contrast, Spain recorded growth of 3.2% in 2024. Worryingly, around one quarter of those who immigrated to Germany are considering emigrating from Germany. This comes because of 

• Social and political dissatisfactions.
• Personal reasons – live in Germany, work, neighbourhoods, etc.
• Tax burdens.
• Germany’s overbearing bureaucracy. 

One might reasonably ask “what does Germany offer new migrants” – apart from racism: 

• The German language is still one of the most complicated languages in Europe.
• A disastrous housing market – that was left to the so-called free market as prescribed by the neoliberal ideology and carried out for decades by the Kohl government: 1982-1998 = 16 year) and the Merkel government (2005-2021 = another 16 years) = 32 years).
• A slow, incomprehensive, overpowering, arrogant, and dehumanising bureaucracy.
• Very few day-care places for children with next to no flexible opening hours – a classic for the rather inflexible Germans. 

Meanwhile, things are different in Spain. Yet, Spain too needs more affordable housing and an improved infrastructure for childcare. 

But in 2024, Spain decided to grant residence and work permits to hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants. This is to be repeated every year until 2027. 

The aim is to make it easier for people from non-EU countries to access Spain’s labour market – unthinkable for Germans. 

The much needed migrants will help finance Spain’s social security and pension system – they could do exactly the same in Germany. 

Interestingly, Spain remains the only EU country that takes the concept of family and social background into account in its immigration law. Five social, economical, and family reasons are relevant: 

1. Someone is in a training programme or is working. 
2. People should get a second chance. 
3. Those who already have papers, can renew them. 
4. Span’s government is trying to increase tax revenues. 
5. This is to prevent illegal employment. 

Instead of deporting working people who have fled war, famine, and poverty, perhaps the German government should worry that fewer and fewer people will feel like coming to Germany.

Contrary to the far right populist fear mongering that too many foreigners are receiving benefits, it isn’t them who endanger Germany’s prosperity. 

What is endangering Germany’s prosperity is political opportunism and playing into the hands of far right anti-migrant sentiment. 

What needs to change is Germany’s often rather inhospitable culture, politics, and bureaucratic apparatus. It remains imperative how German politicians, the media, local institutions, administrators, ministries and even the prime minister relates newly arrived employees, skilled specialists, locally trained workers with a migration background, foreign people, migrants, and refugees. 

This shift towards sustaining Germany requires fundamental improvements in Germany’s “Skilled Workers Immigration and Residence Act”. And it needs responsible state organisations. 

Germany also needs to realise that – with 24 million people with a migration background – the hallucination of a Germanic Volksgemeinschaft should, finally, confined to the history books. 

It did not work then and it is no receipt for the future, as the neo-fascist AfD wants it. It was Germany’s downfall and it will continue to be its demise. 

One can only hope that the Merz government – which, after just 100 days, is still at the beginning of its legislature – will divert time to boast a future that can only be a future with migrants – not against or without migrants. 

Instead of deporting as many people as possible, Germany’s needs to welcome them just as Merkel, said “we can do this”. Germany can continue to do it.

Photo: (source: German public TV: https://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/arbeitsmarkt/teilzeit-erwerbstaetigkeit-100.html)

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