There are not enough Germans to do the jobs Germany needs
The government is mulling making it easier to hire immigrants
Perhaps Friederich Merz thought he was being clever. The head of Germany’s main opposition party recently claimed on television that many of the 1m Ukrainians who flooded into Germany this year came not as refugees but as what he called “social tourists”, to take advantage of government benefits. He should have known better. Even his own Christian Democrats (CDU) said their leader had overstepped the mark. He was forced to apologise.
This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline “Willkommen”
From the October 8th 2022 edition
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