What Happens to Germany If People With Migration Backgrounds Leave?

Between the shortage of skilled workers, the political shift to the right, and the question of belonging

Germany needs people with migration backgrounds.

Not only as workers. Not only as skilled professionals. But as people who have already become part of German society.

They work in hospitals and nursing homes, in factories and workshops, in transport, restaurants, schools, and countless other areas of everyday life.

At the same time, Germany's political and social climate is changing. The recent electoral success of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) in Saxony-Anhalt has raised new questions for many people with migration backgrounds:

Am I really welcome here? Am I safe here? And can I imagine my children building their future in this country?

These questions are no longer merely theoretical.

Germany is facing a fundamental contradiction. On the one hand, the country urgently needs workers and skilled professionals. On the other, a social climate in which people increasingly experience rejection or insecurity because of their background can make them question whether they still have a future here.

That is why the crucial question is not only:

What happens to people with migration backgrounds if they leave Germany?

The other question is:

What happens to Germany if more and more of them leave?

Germany Needs These People

Germany is aging. More and more people are reaching retirement age, while fewer young people are entering the labor market.

The Federal Employment Agency has repeatedly warned of serious shortages of skilled workers across numerous professions. Healthcare and nursing, construction and skilled trades are among the sectors facing particular pressure. Other areas, including hospitality, transport and education, also depend heavily on a sufficient supply of workers.

At the same time, immigration is becoming increasingly important for Germany's labor market.

The situation is particularly visible in nursing and healthcare. A significant share of people working in nursing professions are foreign nationals. Without them, an already overstretched healthcare and care system would face even greater challenges.

But behind these figures are not abstract labor-market statistics.

Behind every number is a human being.

A nurse sitting beside an elderly patient's bed at night.

A doctor working in an overcrowded hospital.

A cleaner whose work is essential to keeping a hospital running.

A technician, a bus driver, a skilled tradesperson or a professional truck driver.

People who contribute every day to keeping this country functioning.

But People Do Not Stay Only Because of a Job

Germany cannot retain people through employment contracts alone if they increasingly feel that they are not wanted by society.

People do not come to a country only because of a job.

They stay where they are treated with respect.

Where their children can go to school safely.

Where they do not constantly feel the need to justify where they come from.

Where they are not permanently divided into “us” and “them.”

Integration, therefore, is not only about people learning German, working and paying taxes.

Integration is also about society sending a clear message:

You belong here.

This is not a one-way street.

A society can expect people who come to Germany to make an effort to integrate. But society must also create the conditions that make integration possible.

I Do Not Want to Have to Leave Again

I came to Germany to live.

To work.

To raise my children.

To learn German.

To become part of this society.

I do not want to have to tell my children one day:

“We have to leave because we no longer feel that we belong here.”

That thought frightens me.

Because migration is not only about borders, visas and residence permits.

Migration is also about belonging.

When someone has lived in a country for years, worked, paid taxes, sent their children to school and built their life there, that person cannot simply be treated forever as a “foreigner.”

At some point, that person is no longer simply someone who came to Germany.

They have become part of Germany.

What Germany Could Lose

If people with migration backgrounds leave Germany, the country does not lose only workers.

It loses experience.

It loses knowledge and expertise.

It loses taxpayers.

It loses entrepreneurs.

It loses colleagues, neighbors and members of local communities.

And sometimes, it loses entire families.

In an aging society, this can have long-term consequences.

That is why migration is not merely a question of immigration policy. It is also a question about Germany's economic and social future.

A country cannot simultaneously desperately need skilled workers while creating a social environment in which those very people begin to consider leaving.

That would be a dangerous contradiction.

I Am Not Afraid of History Repeating Itself. I Am Afraid of Forgetting.

I am not claiming that the Holocaust will happen again.

Nor am I saying that today's Germany is the same as Germany in 1933.

But precisely because of Germany's history, the country should be particularly alert when people are increasingly portrayed as a problem, a burden or a threat because of where they come from.

The Holocaust was the result of a long process of exclusion, disenfranchisement and dehumanization. The machinery of persecution and extermination did not emerge overnight.

That does not mean that today's political developments should be equated with Nazi Germany.

It means that Germany should draw a particular responsibility from its history:

Racism, exclusion and hatred must not be taken seriously only after a line has already been crossed.

We must respond while hatred is still expressed in words.

When exclusion is dismissed as merely a “political opinion.”

When people begin questioning their future because they no longer feel safe or welcome.

It is not too late.

Germany can demonstrate that it has learned from its history.

Not by being afraid of the past.

But by refusing to allow hatred and dehumanization to become normal again.

Because in the end, the question is not only whether people with migration backgrounds want to remain in Germany.

There is a much bigger question:

What kind of society does Germany want to be?

A society that welcomes people only when it needs them economically?

Or a society that understands that people who live here, work here, raise their children here and build their future here cannot forever be treated as “the others”?

They are part of this country.

And if they leave, Germany will lose more than workers.

It will lose part of its own future.

SHORESH MOHI