(Bloomberg) -- Ricardo Soares da Silva has no regrets about swapping his native Brazil for hilly southern Germany and a higher-paying job as an electrical technician.
But the 36-year-old from Porto Alegre is also aware of an increasingly tense atmosphere for foreigners after a jump in asylum seekers in Europe’s largest economy propelled an anti-migrant surge led by the far-right Alternative for Germany.
“It’s easy to work here,” said Soares da Silva, who found employment at a family-owned firm in Hohenstein-Oberstetten that builds prefabricated homes. As for politics, “Germany’s history shows how dangerous this can be,” he said. “If necessary, we’ll go back home.”
His move is part of Germany’s biggest push in more than half a century to lure skilled foreigners into the workforce. But Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government faces a balancing act as those efforts run into rising hostility toward some migrants — particularly those arriving illegally — that’s also prompted him to toughen controls at the country’s land borders.
With just a year until the next general election, the stakes are high for Scholz. Migration has emerged as a decisive issue in a series of state ballots that have been humbling for the deeply unpopular ruling coalition he leads. The AfD won the vote in Thuringia, the first triumph for a far-right party in a German state since World War II, and came a close second in Saxony and Brandenburg.
This also reflects wider political pressure in the European Union, with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni pushing for stricter rules to reduce arrivals to the bloc on the sidelines of a leaders’ summit in Brussels this week. France’s new government is mulling another immigration bill, a key demand of far-right leader Marine Le Pen, who has become the de facto kingmaker in a highly divided parliament.
“Reducing irregular migration is the prerequisite for the openness we need, including for the immigration of skilled workers,” Scholz said at the summit on Thursday. He said there were “over 300,000 people who came to Germany irregularly last year.”
The Social Democrat chancellor’s initiatives aim to set the country on a path to sustainably deliver a 400,000 net increase in migrants that the Institute for Employment Research, or IAB, estimates Germany needs each year to sustain an economy already reeling from a painful re-balancing. This is as his chances of re-election next fall are fading, and parties on both the right and left are enjoying increasing ballot-box popularity with extremist rhetoric toward foreigners.
“Rejecting migration is a defensible position in a democracy, which you can overcome if you show that it works,” said Enzo Weber, a labor-market economist at the IAB. “That won’t convince the hard core of the right, but probably many of those who feel disadvantaged.”
The portion of foreigners in the labor market has more than doubled since 2010, but it’s the refugee crisis in 2015 when former conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel welcomed more than 1 million people from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq that fueled frustration in areas where the economy underperforms most. The number of asylum seekers has since tripled to a record 3.2 million.
Merkel’s fellow Christian Democrat and longtime rival, Friedrich Merz, has pledged to bury her open-door migration legacy as he tries to boost his chances of unseating Scholz in 2025.
Yet with Germany losing 7 million workers due to demographics over the next decade, arrivals from aging EU neighbors dwindling, and drives to bring women and older people into the workforce sputtering, Germany needs to overcome a shortage of skilled workers that’s swelled above half a million and is expected to cost the economy almost €50 billion ($55.6 billion) this year.
Scholz is betting on negotiating migration deals directly with foreign governments to secure skilled workers in understaffed industries. This is in addition to extending past efforts to simplify processes like visa applications and recognizing overseas qualifications.
Export Nation
Earlier this month, he flew to Samarkand to sign a pact easing arrivals of Uzbeks to Germany, particularly to fill health-care vacancies. He heads to India next week after his cabinet passed a series of measures on Wednesday aimed at attracting surplus workers from the booming labor market in the world’s most populous country. Training, as well as cooperation in security or trade, can be offered in return.
“Openness to the world is extremely important for us as an export country, not only with regard to skilled labor, but also with regard to new markets,” Scholz said on Wednesday in a speech to mark the 150th anniversary of specialty chemicals distributor Brenntag AG in Essen, western Germany.
His plan echoes the 1950s and 60s, when millions of so-called guest workers arrived from nations like Turkey and Italy, according to Steffen Angenendt, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Political Science and Politics who’s advised German governments on migration for more than two decades.
“It was widely accepted then that we needed workers because otherwise it was obvious that coal wouldn’t be mined and cars wouldn’t be assembled,” he said. “And for the majority of the population that’s the case again today.”
Smaller businesses, many of which are family-owned, need the strategy to work.
It’s through a program that helps firms to recruit workers from Brazil, India and Vietnam who are trained for roles in areas such as electrical engineering and IT that Soares da Silva came to Germany. He’s the second Brazilian at SchwörerHaus KG, which was founded in 1950 has about 1,850 employees spread over seven sites.
Hiring manager Klaus Kornberger said bringing in staff from abroad is an investment but that it’s paying off in this case, adding that he’s constantly trying to fill positions.
Still, one challenge is how to encourage people to stay in a country that gets terrible marks from expats. Germany is among the world’s worst-performing destinations when it comes to settling in, according to an InterNations survey. Two-fifths of respondents found it hard to get used to the local culture and almost one-third felt unwelcome, though the score was high for job security.
Taís Orestes, who has a degree in engineering physics and a doctorate in microelectronics but doesn’t speak fluent German, got a job as a physicist at a company in Wiesbaden. The 34-year-old from Rio Grande do Sul, in Brazil, says she’s struggled to make German friends.
The locals “aren’t very open to welcoming foreigners in the general context,” she said. “If I had the same job in Brazil, I’d return.”
For now, the atmosphere in Germany isn’t deterring another of Soares da Silva’s countrymen, Davi Gonzaga da Silva, who’s waiting in Sao Paulo for a chance to move.
He quit his job after being accepted into a program last November that helps mechatronics and mechanics professionals find work in Germany and recently cleared a major hurdle by passing an intermediate language test.
“I want to develop professionally,” said Gonzaga da Silva, who’s worked at German firms including BASF SE in Brazil and spent a brief time in Italy. “Even if I have to come back to Brazil at some point in the future, I’d come back as a more qualified professional.”
--With assistance from Arne Delfs and Beatriz Amat.
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