Greeks and Spanish flee to Germany in job hunt

I am in doubt of those statistics, even because I am not sure how they can accurately control them as there are open borders... anyway it sounds very Merkel propaganda.. My reco: guys go back home, it is just a fake buble..

@smart2012 Everyone that moves to Germany must legally register withing 3 months of their arrival. Not only that, to open up something like a bank account or rent an apartment etc a 'Anmeldebestaetigung' is required so the numbers should be fairly accurate.

clear, but how can they track if they really stay or not?

If your case gets assigned to some overzealous immigration officer, he can go by your registered address and check (if someone tells him you haven't been there in months or he finds out you moved without registering you can be put on a watch list and declared persona non-grata. Other than that its a simple matter of checking post office, bank statements, credit card activity, etc. And don't forget, its against the law to leave your home without identification.

or more easily ..... if a registered foreigner leaves. his or her flat will be rented to someone else and thus the authorities will assume that he/she left..... its not 100% accurate but it should be accurate enough.

remember... it is virtually impossible to not leave a digital or administrative trail nowadays..... and if the government that wants to know something about a group of people it will usually obtain it

Doesn't Germany need immigrants to prevent population decline? I thought Merkel declared Germany to be an immigration country. Is dual citizenship allowed for them to become Greek-Germans?

Here in the United States immigrants are generally accepted and respected. It is our strength. Why is Germany so different?

Who was it that wrote recently that Germany was destroying itself through immigration?

smart 2012: berlin is full of spanish, greek but also italian people. Most of them study German and wanna stay. The influx of Souther Europeans is so extremly visible. I think there are even more of them as the official statistics say because many do not register before they have to for bureaucratic reasons.

@ Nancy Hewett: Why do you think that immigrants are not respected in Germany? Do you think all those people come to Germany because they are treated in a bad way? Especially spanish and Latinos told me that they feel very respected in Germany while in the US they often feel like second class people. Americans make fun of them when they have an accent and bein Latino is often associated with being stupid. When I was in New York with my very Spanish looking friend they always first talked to me as I was white... Thouth he lived in New York and I not, I just look maybe more White American.

All those Anti-Germans, come to Berlin and find the most tolerant and mult-cultural citiy. Kreuzberg, Neukölln... beautiful neighborhoods where you will find US-American next to Turks, Greeks next to Germans, Latinos next to Asians....

And btw, there move also many US-Americans to Berlin, usually those who leave the states for bein to right-wing and conservative.

I think this will end up becoming a multicultural country by force, because we foreigners will end up supporting the old farts of this country.

@Nancy Hewett:

Don't confuse being politically correct with being open and tolerant.

In Germany like everywhere else, not all foreigners are regarded in the same light and I think Latin people (including Southern Europeans) come somewhere in the "acceptable" category.

Immigrants generally accepted and respected? You must not be a "newer" immigrant, but one of those Anglos who lives in a place where everything is nice, bright and pretty on the surface because that is what is wanted.

As an American Indian from a 1st Nation, because I don't look Anglo or either someone knows I am an Indian, when I lived in the US, having worked in a number of states, there was not a day that passed when someone made some kind of negative or joking slight towards my ethnicity. Some people weren't serious, some didn't realize it could be offense, and no, for the most part I didn't let it bother me but the subtle, yet insidious racism and poorer treatment of immigrants or "immigrant-looking" people is reality. Now in states like Arizona, it has been declared we can't even learn about our own people in school, because they forbid any "ethnic studies" in school. THIS is your U.S. or a new incarnation of the Soviet Union.

Your strength? It seems it is more Your Illusion. Discrimination, bias and "Anglos first" is alive and well in the US, and immigrants of a certain kind aren't welcome. Hopefully one day you will stop believing the convenient lies someone has been feeding you or that you see in your own little corner. Either you are enormously ignorant or your comment with its clear rebuke of Germany and supposed superiority of the US is just a ploy. I think it's the latter but I still chose to reply.

In the ten years, I've lived several months of each in Germany, in TEN years there has only been one direct incident where someone confronted me racially. I happened to be at an S-Bahn station on the outskirts of Berlin, and I had to say little because the other people on the platform, mostly native Germans, scolded the guy into shame.

I agree with ovalle also, its true foreigners can be regarded in different degrees of acceptability in Germany, especially depending on what area you're in, and how many there are of your group. A sudden, large influx of a less acceptable foreigner may not be taken so well as a small number or family group or individual, but I've experienced and observed that is more about socio-economic issues and not just objection to ethnicity.

"There were 90 percent more immigrants to Germany from Greece last year than in 2010 and 52 percent more from Spain in the same time period"

Giving percentages instead of numbers could be misleading. Around 24,000 Greeks and 21,000 Spaniards moved to Germany, which represents 2.5% and 2.2% of the total immigration. This is rather insignificant considering the huge unemployment on those countries (currently the youth unemployment is more than 50%).

Also the net influx of 279,000 immigrants, corresponds only to the 0.34% of the current population in Germany. This is a minuscule number and if this trend continues, Germany will lose its competitive edge in few decades.

AlexR: But Germany's population increased the first time in 2011 due to the growing netto immigration... so if this trend continues...

And this increase in immigration is quite significant because you have to relate it to the numbers before - and then plus 90 or 52 percent is strongly significant in statistical terms!

Emigrating to a German speaking nation is not so common due to the language barrier!! If there would not be spoken English in Germany than the numbers would look dramatically different.