So much for Germany’s government-sponsored push to employ the million or so refugees who flooded the nation in the last year or so.
The program is an utter failure.
And now, as PJ Media puts it: “The results of this effort should be a lesson – and a warning – to other nations that employ an open-door policy on refugees.”
Germany’s program, in brief, basically called on businesses to look at the refugee shelters first, when it came time to hiring. So the businesses did – and this, is what befell.
From the Wall Street Journal:
“The number of regularly employed immigrants from the countries responsible for the bulk of the latest migrant wave was a mere 25,000 higher in June than a year earlier. During the same period, 736,591 people had arrived from these countries.
“The government is hardly faring better: Federal agencies have hired five refugees as employees and 12 as trainees since the beginning of last year, the interior ministry told lawmakers last month.
“This is despite the fact that there are few native Germans available to fill the highest number of job vacancies in a decade, and shortages of skilled workers are putting upward pressure on wages.”
So Chancellor Angela Merkel called an emergency meeting of sorts, a gathering of the 121 “Us together” companies that tried to accommodate both the government and refugees, and offer employment.
And Merkel’s goal? Well, it wasn’t to abandon the failed effort.
Rather, she wants to dig in deeper.
“It is our common target to integrate more and more refugees into the labor market,” she said, Wall Street Journal reported. “It we succeed, it will be a benefit for all.”
Her statements come against a backdrop of rising angst in the country over the refugee situation, which some see as tearing at the fabric of Germany’s culture and economy.
As the Wall Street Journal went on:
“Failure to integrate the newcomers into Germany’s economy, the largest in Europe, could seal Ms. Merkel’s political fate. The chancellor’s popularity has waned, and her party lost badly in recent regional elections as more Germans began to doubt the wisdom of opening the country’s doors, which has brought well over a million migrants into the country in the past 18 months. Ms. Merkel has until the general election next year to change their minds.
“Companies blame the difficulty in placing migrants in jobs on shortcomings in speaking German and lack of relevant skills. They also say administrative and legal bottlenecks have forced many eager migrants to wait for their asylum requests to be processed. …
“Deutsche Post AG offered internships for 1,000 refugees last year but so far filled only 235 positions. A spokeswoman said the postal services company relies on employment agencies for help in finding interns. It employs 102 refugees, it said, many of them former interns.”
“These refugees are not the cream of the societies they are fleeing. As far as skills that would be useful in a 21st-century economy, they are non- existent,” the news outlet opined.