February 8, 2007--Goodbye Deutschland, Hello Poland

Up to this point most of the talk in Europe has been about the Turkish Problem and the Polish Plumber.

Since Poland joined the European Union Poles have had carte blanche to travel to and relocate in the countries of any other EU members. If you travel to London, for example, you are immediately struck by how many Polish waitresses you encounter; and if you need your plumbing fixed, more often than not the person who shows up to fix your leaky tap is from Krakow.

And then, of course, if you live in France or Spain or Germany, your dirty restaurant dishes are more than likely going to be washed by someone who came initially as a Guest Worker from Turkey or Morocco but remained, overstaying his welcome. The next thing you knew these workers applied for and gained citizenship, even though it may be felt that they are making no effort to blend in, learn the language, or send their daughters to school without head scarves.

All of this is very disruptive and not easy to deal with. Every western European country is tied up in knots about these issues, wanting to retain their commitment to liberal democracy and their post-war tradition of offering social services at little or no cost to all who require them, insisting on assimilation while historically, and even to this day, they send out ambiguous messages about how welcoming to “the “other” they in fact are.

So what is one to make of another, quite different, trend in border crossing? In this case German nationals leaving German to seek opportunity in places as disparate as Canada, England, the U.S. (in spite of anti-American feelings), Austria, and even Poland.

The NY Times reports that the net flow out of well-educated professionals and middle-level corporate types is now exceeding the in-migration of German citizens who left some years ago seeking other kinds of opportunities. This is troubling to a country with a negative-birth rate among native Germans and has huge implications for the demographic shift that will require more young workers to support the social benefits of a rapidly-aging population. Turkish workers are not going to get that job done—many still work off the books and do not earn enough to pay the taxes required to fund early-retirement pension entitlements much less pay for the swelling health services needs of the post-war generation. (Article linked below.)

This brain drain is in large part the result of bloated German bureaucracies that impede entrepreneurship, inflexible labor laws and contracts that make it very difficult to control the size and quality of the workforce in many industries, and clotted ways of doing business in hospitals and universities where there are rigid hierarchies based solely on seniority. All of this thwarts opportunities for talented and ambitious young people and leads them to think about emigrating.

So the English may be seeing more Polish Plumbers, but they are also likely going to see more German Gynecologists.