Immigration may be in most EU countries a topic of high salience but it is toxic and almost taboo for the left. Those who dare to address it, such as the Leftish new movement, Aufstehen, in Germany, or some social democratic local mayors who warn of immigrant ghettos in their towns are often attacked. Colin Crouch warned in a recent piece here of “anti-immigrant sentiment”.[...]
There is comprehensive research on the effect migration on wages by labour economists and there is ground to believe that migration affects the wages of those with similar skills negatively and those with higher skills positively. This should not come as a surprise.[...]
As long as migration is a messy business it remains an easy scapegoat for the far right. Unlike the UK government, which has an immigration target it fails to achieve year in year out, the German government has no explicit migration policy. Net migration into Germany has exceeded 500,000 annually since 2014. Immigration currently stands at more than 1m per year. At the same time, rents in cities such as Berlin have been rising by 10% per year and it is estimated that there is a lack of 2m affordable flats in Germany. While the housing crisis is not caused by migration but by government decisions to end social housing a decade earlier, it shows how little the country is prepared for high levels of immigration.[...]
The left has to find a policy on migration which is strong on anti-racism but does not ignore reality. If Germany wants to avoid the nationalist and anti-migrant turn of British and US politics it has to fight for the values of the open society by making sure that the lower middle class will not suffer from migration. The initial ‘refugees are welcome’ attitude of 2015 is being replaced by a creeping suspicion of economic migration to escape poverty not least because the current mess caused by mixing asylum with labour migration is deeply irritating for many people.
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