Immigrants – A Solution to West’s Labour Shortage?

What happens when West is no longer favored by immi-grunts from the Indian sub-continent, and Philippines.

The Chinese State was an enthusiastic supporter of the Western policy prescription of Population control - a decsion that they are already regretting. | A Chinese poster promoting single child family. Image source and courtesy - geographylwc.org.uk. | Click for larger source image.

Immigration and Population

Two inter-connected issues, have been a matter of much Western propaganda. The West would not like to admit how much they depend on immi-grunt labour – at the top of the pyramid and at the bottom.

Indian immigrants into the US – more than 20 lakhs (2 million) of them, occupy key positions in corporate, academic, and administrative sectors. This is fully 10% of key positions.

No wonder they have climbed the totem-pole of economic success in the US.

Cleft stick

This is more or less the situation in most of the Developed World. With record levels of unemployment on one side – and labour shortages on the other, the West is caught in a cleft stick. More immi-grunts will mean more unemployment – and fewer immi-grunts will mean labour shortages.

An aging population adds a few more wrinkles of complications to an already difficult scenario.| Cartoon by Adam Zyglis; published July 22, 2007 : Titled - shrinking; source and courtesy - adamzyglis.com | Click for larger image.

One curious aspect of this entire exercize is statistical projections.

By 2050 … kind of scenarios.

It reminds me of child-brides from Hyderabad – that Arab ‘sheikhs’ would ‘marry’ and take to the Middle East for use, usually as domestic help.

This entire ‘market’ has collapsed in the last 15 years. Increasingly, Muslims in cities like Hyderabad, depend less on the Middle East to improve their economic position.

What Statistics hides and reveals – is like a bikini

To extrapolating these trends, add five factors.

English is unlikely to remain as a significant language. Going by past cycles in the decline of Persian, Urdu, Arabic, Spanish, French – 2ndlook estimate is that English will be in decline between 2020-2050 period. The decline of English may be postponed, if large numbers of Indians embrace English – which seems like an unlikely prospect.

The current economic difference between the West, India, China, Philippines, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka may shrink to insignificance. In which case, West may not be able to source immi-grunts from Asia – at all. But intra-EU and intra-West immi-grunt movement may increase. We may see the return to islands of prosperity in the West.

Cannot forget an aging population. With most societies in the West, either shrinking-and-aging or stagnant-and-aging, adds a new wrinkle to the mass of complications.

Western economies dominated by bureaucracies and a huge edifice of Welfare State. While the West had colonies – or neo-colonial structures like Bretton Woods, IMF and World Bank, these gold-plated benefits could be funded.

What after 15-20 years?

Recent talk of ‘reverse’ migration, from the West – back to India, is still a trickle. As action under the USCAP moves from China, it appears that Bangladesh and Sri Lanka may be the beneficiaries of USCAP. This will mean that India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka may attract a ‘reverse’ brain drain. The return of the Native. What happens to countries like the USA then.

Or to Germany.

Immigration is a highly sensitive and politically charged issue in Germany, which with more than 10 million immigrants has quietly become home to the world’s third largest immigrant population after the United States and Russia.

Both East and West Germany took in millions of low-skilled “guest workers” in the 1960s and 1970s, and in the three-million-strong Turkish community — the second largest group of immigrants after ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe and former Soviet states — many have struggled to integrate.

German sentiments on immigration were exposed last year after the publication of a book by former central banker and local Berlin political leader Thilo Sarrazin that asserted that families of Turkish and Arab origin sponge off the state and threaten Germany’s indigenous culture.

Right-wing politicians and the Confederation of German Trade Unions (DGV) want the government to train unemployed Germans to fill labor shortages and oppose changes to the immigration laws.

The unemployment rate, at 7 percent, is the lowest since figures for a unified Germany were first published two decades ago.

“I do not believe that — in a labor market encompassing the entire EU and in which there are after all 20 million people without jobs — we need to seek workers from outside the EU,” Georg Nuesslein, a member of parliament from the conservative Christian Social Union, told Reuters.

But immigration experts say people are wrong to conflate the issue of low-skilled immigration and the easing of entry rules for high-skilled workers.

“We always talk about the immigration problems of the past but the challenge for the future is that we need immigrants,” said Reiner Klingholz, director of the Berlin Institute for Population and Development.

“When people hear this they think, ‘this is more of the old problem.’ But we need those people. We depend on them.”

GOVERNMENT MOVES INADEQUATE, CRITICS SAY

The government is aware of the issue but so far has been unable to find a solution.

Chancellor Angela Merkel has backed changes allowing firms to hire engineers and doctors, where the shortages are especially dire, from non-EU states without having to prove they could not find EU candidates.

She also wants to cut the minimum annual salary that German employers have to pay non-EU workers to 40,000 euros.

Experts say those measures are helpful but are not enough.

Experts like Herbert Bruecker, an economist and immigration specialist with the Federal Labour Office, advocate a points system using such criteria as education, work experience and language skills, as exists in Canada.

“These measures for doctors and engineers will not lead to mass immigration,” he said. “We would be doing well if we could attract even 1,000 workers like this each year.”

A Berlin Institute study projects Germany’s population of 81.8 million will shrink by 12 million by 2050. That’s equivalent to emptying Germany’s 12 largest cities. The German workforce is forecast to fall by over 30 percent by 2050. (via Germany looks to migrants to fight labour shortage | Reuters).

Related articles

• Immi-grunts and Assimilation (behind2ndlook.wordpress.com)
• Jonathan Portes: Labour is wrong to apologise for its record on immigration (independent.co.uk)
• Labour supply worries Woodside, Rinehart (news.theage.com.au)
• Canada to accept fewer relatives of immigrants (news.nationalpost.com)