
With the fall of Syria’s Assad regime on Sunday 8 December 2024, a decades-long period of repression came to an end.
For the 14 million Syrians who fled their country since 2011, this was bittersweet news. While they celebrated the fall of a hated and brutal dictator, what comes next is unclear. Much of their country lies in ruins and the United Nations estimates that 90 per cent of the current Syrian population is living below the poverty line.
Should they return to their country, now conditions are at least more peaceful?
In my new book Where the World Moves, which details how migration can benefit us all, I looked at the mass migration of Syrians into Germany in the mid-2010s. What this tells us is how, from many points of view, this movement was a great success.
On the other hand, far right parties such as Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) have stirred up resentment against migrants, and Syrians in particular, to win votes. AfD is now lobbying for Syrians to be forcibly returned to their home country.
But what were the real effects of Syrians coming to Germany. Here is an excerpt from my book:
The German experiment
In late August 2015, German Chancellor Angela Merkel addressed the nation at a press conference in Berlin. “I put it simply. Germany is a strong country,” she began, alerting her audience to the magnitude of what she was about to announce.
Four years after the start of the Syrian conflict, with a fully-blown civil war driving millions of people out of the country, many of them landed in Germany, together with thousands of Iraqis and Afghans escaping violence and poverty in their own lands.
After visiting a migration centre in Germany, Chancellor Merkel came to a decision. “The motive with which we approach these matters must be: we have already managed so much, we’ll manage this.” Her actual final words in German were “Wir schaffen das”, a phrase that would be repeated many times, both in support of Merkel and in opposition.
The practical effect of Merkel’s announcement was an open border policy, with tens of thousands of migrants arriving in Germany within days. Overall, between 2015 and 2019, more than 1.7 million people applied for asylum in Germany, making it the country with the fifth highest refugee population in the world.
It was a brave and dramatic step for the country which itself had caused one of the most abrupt and horrific migrations in history, as the holocaust rolled through Germany, Poland and occupied territories during World War II. Yet even in 1978, Germany signalled its willingness to accept migrants when the government appointed a commissioner for integration, as an increasing number of ‘guest workers’ (‘Gastarbeiter’), many of them from Turkey, ended up staying permanently in the country. In 2005, when Angela Merkel took office as Chancellor, she initiated the first major reform of the immigration system, including a systematic integration policy. Her National Integration Plan of 2007 focused on education, training, employment and cultural integration, while the National Action Plan on Integration of 2012 helped German authorities to figure out whether integration was working. It also proposed ways to optimise support for young migrants, helped migrants get their overseas qualifications recognised, provided better access to healthcare and increased the share of migrants employed by the civil service.
Germany reaps the benefits of migration
In the years since Angela Merkel’s dramatic decision to open Germany’s doors to migrants, the state has taken care to measure the effects of this policy in fine detail. Here are some of the most important findings:
In the first two years following the 2015 decision, Germany’s GDP rose by 2.2 per cent, higher than anticipated. This growth has been sustained. The German Institute for Economic Research found that immigration has increased Germany’s GDP by more than 1 per cent each year, expanded the country’s consumer pool and demand for products, supplemented its workforce and increased productivity. Prices for goods have fallen, along with interest rates and unemployment, while overseas demand for German products has risen.
German birthrates declined from 2.37 children per woman in 1970 to 1.25 in 1995, before rising to around 1.5 children per woman today – partly thanks to the flow of immigrants, who have more children than native Germans. The figure is still far below replacement rate of 2.2 children per woman, meaning that Germany would face a shortage of 400,000 workers per year if it ceased accepting migrants. The Middle East and North African regions, where birthrates remain high, has proved a fertile source of new labour for Germany. An ageing population means that Germany (like many other EU states) needs more young workers to fund social care through the tax system.
Despite initial challenges, including language barriers, unrecognised qualifications, some social unrest and attacks from the right wing Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) party, which opposes immigration, the integration of Germany’s flow of 1.7 million migrants since 2015 has been largely successful. More than 50 per cent have found employment and integrated into society. “The more refugees who find jobs, and the better paid these jobs are, the greater the positive impact on labour supply, the public coffers and economic growth,” said economist Oliver Reynolds.
Migrants to Germany are more productive than native German workers, according to Dr Marius Clemens, author of a report on immigration at the German Institute for Economic Research. He attributes this to migrants’ express determination to work, compared with the native population’s reluctance. “Firms can either increase wages in order to attract people not already in the labour force, which reduces productive efficiency and drives a cost to the consumer, or increase the hours of part-time workers,” wrote Frey Lindsay in a report for Forbes.
On the other hand, workers can come in to fill the gaps left by the domestic workforce, “without the need to artificially drive costs up but also, and crucially, without depressing the wages of the current employees,” added Lindsay. This contradicts the fears of anti-immigrant groups, who argue that native employees suffer from falling income when migrants enter the workforce.
Migrants have boosted German innovation and enterprise culture. A study of all 16 German states found that those with a high proportion of migrant workers had lower unemployment and higher levels of risk capital investment. Data from the OECD and the German statistics office demonstrated that cultural diversity contributed to this outcome. Migrants with specialist skills, working in Germany’s key technological industries, were of high importance to the figures. “The impressive number of companies with risk capital and the number of patent applications in multi-cultural regions like Berlin, Bavaria and Baden-Württemburg show that immigration positively impacts innovation and growth,” said Finn Age Hänsel at infrastructure company Movinga.
The German native population has benefited in multiple ways. There are now an estimated 2.3 million employees at companies in Germany founded by migrants, who make up one in four start-up founders in the country. Many of the most successful new companies of recent years have migrant founders, including Auto1, Delivery Hero, ResearchGate, Gorillas, Omio and BioNTech, which delivered a COVID-19 vaccine in 2020. Almost 90 per cent per cent of these founders have an academic background, most of them having studied in Germany. They are more internationally-minded than native German entrepreneurs and actively seek global opportunities.
Tens of millions of native Germans participated in the integration process, volunteering to help in refugee shelters, helping migrants gain language skills and access to education, employment and healthcare. An estimated 55 per cent of the population has contributed to integration efforts since 2015, whether financially or through supportive actions. This engagement has proved helpful in making sure that integration succeeded and, to a large degree, maintained public support for the 2015 decision.
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The fall of the Assad regime – and AfD’s rising popularity – will pose new challenges to the Syrian population in Germany. It is vitally important that the benefits that the country has reaped are borne in mind, to counter the spread of hostility to immigrants.
The UK – and the rest of the developed world – needs to heed the same lessons.
Dinesh Dhamija’s new book Where the World Moves is available from www.romillypress.com for £14.99. It is also available on Amazon.