As a work immigrant myself I can't complain, but it's hard to ignore the cold calculation behind it. We're meant to be cheap labour that shows up pre-trained, and leaves before they get old.
Also the housing Ponzi scheme. Germany says they're desperate for workers but actually is lacking the housing for them and puts no real effort in building more because it has Co2 caps in places (lol).
You got a new job in Berlin? Great, now good luck finding an apartment. Germany housing prices are completely out of whack. Munich land prices are similar to SF but wages are 1/3 those in the Bay.
So yeah, you're just cannon fodder for the German economy. Great time to be an employer or landlord in Germany though.
I know that it's not personal - the system is broken for Germans too - but it diminishes my feeling of belonging. I accept this relationship as transactional.
That's because it really doesn't. Businesses and parts of the government probably do, but public opinion is definitely divided on the issue. Germany as a country was founded less than 200 years ago as a nation-state, that is a to say, a country bound by common ancestry and language. The idea that a country like this (or any European country founded the Westphalian system) was just going to turn into a "melting pot" pro immigration state in just a few decades has always struck me as foolish.
The problem is that modern life destroys fertility rates, everywhere from the USA to South Korea the pattern is the same. But the economic systems, particularly pensions and retirement systems, are built around the fundamental assumption that, at the very least, there is a large enough working-age population to support retirees.
So to keep the system going you either need to increase birth rates (which is quite hard, Germany pays you £200 per month per kid and still has abysmal TFR) or increase immigration.
Using immigration to try to solve this issue is either a band-aid solution or a form of population planning "technical debt".
Because if you effectively integrate immigrants, they behave almost exactly like your existing population, including not having enough kids to sustain a workforce and then you're back at square one, needing to either solve the fertility rate issue or increase immigration.
On the other hand, if you fail to effectively integrate immigrants, you run the risk of them forming parallel societies, where even second and third generation individuals from these groups don't feel any attachment or loyalty to the host country, don't properly learn the local language, reject the local culture in favor of their heritage culture, and so on. The problems associated with this become their own issues that the country needs to deal with in addition to the population problems.
So yeah, the entire system is sick, beyond Germany as well. So your take of: > I accept this relationship as transactional. Is probably the right one to have.
Germany doesn't want immigrants, the business owners do, because they need labor.
The whole "we need even more immigrants" is wage suppression propaganda. German business have had record profits.
No, it's required to keep the pension scheme solvent.
Do you think German manufacturing can compete with Chinese one once salaries grow?
It's always a PITA with no straightforward way, but if you paid for 20 years you'll probably be motivated to go through the hoops to see that money back in some form.
Literally every "shortage" regarding any good in the world follows the same pattern you described which is "well it is a just a shortage at this low of a price. If price increases then there wouldn't be a shortage!"
So you describing literally every shortage ever for any good, but doing it in this weird moralizing way isnt particularly useful.
If you redefine shortage to mean literally anything that people wish was cheaper, then it becomes entirely detached from reality and economics. But if you think it's the appropriate definition, then let's make sure everyone is on the same page. We don't want half the population thinking that shortage means something acute, negative, and resolvable.
PhDs get paid nothing and yet there's been a "shortage" for half a century.