How one thing leads to another (1) Migration
- titanja1504
- Sep 13
- 18 min read
Updated: Sep 18
Migration – the most abused word of the 2010s and 2020s
(DE) It was 1967 or 1968. As a representative of the ASTA (General Student Committee) of what wa s then the Munich University of Applied Sciences, I attended a conference of the SDS (Socialist German Student Union), to which we both belonged, together with the ASTA chairman. This conference in Frankfurt addressed the challenges of overcoming traditional university structures, the freedom of teaching, and the future problems that capitalism would pose.
A predictable development
In a discussion paper at the time, I referred to the early capitalist structures of global colonialism and the centuries-long exploitation, plundering, humiliation and enslavement of the peoples of the entire so-called Third World.
In a few decades at the latest, these peoples would rise – they were already awakening in Africa, Asia, and South America, indeed everywhere on earth – and demand what was rightfully theirs. And big business and the capitalist states would build walls and use weapons to protect their stolen goods.
I didn't have to be a prophet to make this statement; progressive economists and sociologists had already come to similar conclusions at the time.
Just over 20 years later, in the 1990s, the then-Federal Government, under Helmut Kohl, felt compelled to reconsider the wording of Article 16 of the German Constitution, which states, ‘Politically persecuted persons enjoy the right of asylum.’
This was preceded in 1992 by a doubling of asylum applications to 440,000 compared to the previous year. At that time, most asylum seekers were war refugees from the former Eastern Bloc state of Yugoslavia and people from Romania who wanted to escape the sometimes bloody uprisings and internal conflicts. Only 4.3 per cent of them were granted asylum.
In 1993, a two-thirds majority of the CDU/CSU, SPD and FDP in the Bundestag, accompanied by large street protests, voted in favour of amending the Basic Law. Article 16a severely restricted the right to asylum through the third-country rule.
In order not to completely violate the Geneva Refugee Convention, which Germany had also signed (‘Everyone has the right to seek and enjoy asylum from persecution in other countries.’ Article 14/1), a legal regulation on the right of asylum was passed, known as ‘small asylum’.
During this period, the word ‘migration’ became a buzzword.
Migration – what a hot topic in the 2020s! Once again!
It often seems as if everyone has the only true solution to the supposed global catastrophe of migration in their pocket. Individuals, racists and philanthropists, parties and interest groups, NGOs, even entire states and confederations are arguing about the right way to deal with this modern mass migration, which is actually a human migration.
Today, 50 years after my words as a student in the late 1960s, it is clear that the rich, industrialised nations of Europe and North America have largely ignored this vision of a logical, predictable global refugee movement. Politically and economically, the focus remained on exploitation.
Now they want to combat the phenomenon of human migration, which they themselves have conjured up, by all possible means, including inhumane and illegal ones, and they are prepared to suspend values such as human rights.
Prevention and obstruction of refugee aid
North African countries such as Libya, which are known for human rights violations, are being paid to prevent refugees from reaching Europe. Lebanon, itself a country on the brink of collapse, also received millions in the run-up to the 2024 European elections to protect Europe from migrants.
Thousands of people die crossing the Mediterranean, partly because the Mediterranean coastal states, contrary to international maritime law, obstruct or even prevent sea rescue operations in such cases and even criminalise sea rescuers.
For example, terrible conditions are reported from refugee camps in Greece. Refugees are turned away at Europe's external borders or sent back in so-called illegal push-backs. People froze to death at the border between Poland and Belarus. Human rights, human dignity and humanity, which were once agreed upon, are being ignored and marginalised bit by bit.
Although some politicians have come to the revolutionary realisation that the causes of migration must be combatted in the countries of origin, this has not prevented the German government from reducing development aid.
Instead of helping, physical, psychological and rhetorical barriers are erected.
It is probably largely unknown that over a third of the ‘refugee-related expenditure’ declared in the federal budget is for ‘combating the causes of flight’. These funds are charged to the refugees, rather than being viewed more fairly as compensation for previously neglected, forward-looking investments in their countries of origin.
Human rights
As a reminder, here are two texts that were agreed upon more than 70 years ago after the horrors of World War II to create a more humane world:
UN Declaration of Human Rights 1948:
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood (...)
Article 1 of the Basic Law (GG) of the Federal Republic of Germany, 1949:
Human dignity is inviolable. Respecting and protecting them is the obligation of all state power.
The German people, therefore, declare their commitment to inviolable and inalienable human rights as the foundation of every human community, of peace and justice in the world.
Historical background to today's migration
Migration in Europe is a self-inflicted phenomenon caused by the great-grandfathers, grandfathers and fathers of those nations that are now complaining the loudest: the former colonial powers.
(Link 1: http://planet-wissen.de →Colonialism – Europe's colonies)
In the first half of the 20th century, the independence movements in the European colonies ensured that the price-performance ratio was no longer favourable for the colonial rulers. The investments required to maintain power far exceeded the profits that the colonial powers made from exploiting the indigenous population. The colonies were granted supposed political independence without regard for existing historical structures and related ethnic groups. This arbitrariness was one of the causes of later conflicts, expulsions and flight.
Political independence was quickly followed by economic dependence.
Instead of colonial states, international corporations from the former colonial powers and, since the early 20th century, also from the USA, took over the lucrative production facilities through a more sophisticated form of exploitation, modernised them, and continued to exploit the former colonies.
(Link 2: https://www.geo.de/wissen/folgen-des-kolonialismus--wunden--die-nicht-verheilen-30178912.html ).
The trade relations between European global players and their former colonies have always been one-sided. Raw materials are extracted or purchased at a low cost in the former colonies. Parts of production are carried out using cheap labour in the former colonies, or low prices are paid for products! Production equipment is sold to the former colonies at very high European prices! That is the business model! In the process, the companies have also helped shape the political landscape and social climate. Local oligarchs, dictators, corrupt politicians, tribal leaders and violent military leaders, often in dual roles, guaranteed the companies freedom of action and were protected by the companies in return.
In addition to economic hardship, local armed conflicts, including devastating wars in the so-called Third World, caused additional oppression, displacement, hunger and death.
In summary, the proletariat remains impoverished today, while the rich have only become wealthier.
Global wealth gap
The five wealthiest men in the world doubled their wealth between 2020 and 2025, while nearly five billion people fell into poverty during the same period.
Excluding emerging economies such as China, India, Brazil, etc., where a new middle class is slowly emerging but where large sections of the population still live in extreme poverty, around 5 billion people are living in severe economic and social hardship.
This contrasts with just under 1 billion people in the G7 countries, who generate around 45% of the total gross national income (known as gross national product until 1999) worldwide. But poverty is by no means unknown in the G7 countries either.
The 5 billion underprivileged people are not, as is often claimed, less hard-working than those in the G7 countries. These people, if they have work at all, do not go home after an 8-hour working day. They work 12 hours, even up to 16 hours a day, to earn enough not to live, but to survive. This work is done by women, men and children. This is the price that people in the ‘Third World’ pay so that people in rich countries can buy a T-shirt for €2.49!
In a nutshell, this means:
Our wealth is based on the poverty and exploitation of the Third World.
Causes of migration
We are the ones responsible for the poverty of the so-called Third World! Shifting this responsibility away is common practice among industrialised countries with their political bodies (parties, governments) and capital (national and global corporations).
What could be more understandable than searching for something new, something different, when one's homeland no longer offers the possibility of survival because
oppression, persecution (recognised grounds for asylum under Article 16a of the German Constitution),
war (only subsidiary protection!!!),
lack of prospects, shortages and hunger (not recognised grounds for asylum!!!)...
are a daily reality?
Since the modification of Article 16 of the German Constitution in 1993, these reasons are no longer grounds for asylum, even though this contradicts the right to human dignity and physical integrity.
It is desperation that drives these people to flee! Or do European leaders such as Olaf Scholz, Friedrich Merz, Markus Söder, Georgia Meloni or Keir Starmer believe that people in Tunisia or France would board a dilapidated boat because of the financial support they can expect to receive? Germany currently provides €460 per month in maintenance, Italy gives €40 via a payment card, and the United Kingdom pays £210 to recognised asylum seekers. And for that, all these people are supposed to set off across the Mediterranean or the English Channel in rickety boats, with a high chance of drowning in the sea?!
The reason they are putting their lives at risk is:
- Slave labour (textile production partly through child labour, e.g. Bangladesh, Cambodia; workers held like prisoners in cobalt and copper mining, e.g. DR Congo, etc.) and oppression by corporations with the help of corrupt politicians
- Wars, from which arms manufacturers profit (e.g. shares in the arms manufacturer Rheinmetall have risen by over 670% in the last three years as a result of global warfare, the dividend for shareholders rose from €2.00 in 2021 to €5.70 in 2024 and is forecast to reach €8.10 in 2025)
- Poverty caused by exploitation and unfair trade agreements dictated by rich countries due to their capital power.
- Destruction of livelihoods through overexploitation of nature (deforestation of the Amazon rainforest, Central Africa, Borneo; overfishing in all the world's oceans) and climate change, mainly caused by the industrialised nations of the global North.
Billions of people are deprived of even the most basic means of subsistence to which they are entitled under universal human rights.
This contrasts with a few million privileged individuals. 0.9% of the world's population owns 43.9% of the world's wealth.
These privileged individuals, the capitalists, elites, and the wealthy, as well as their allies in government, are, of course, well aware of this imbalance and are not without concern about it.
To avoid any misunderstanding: they are not concerned about the injustice; they are concerned that the billions of underprivileged people will become aware of the imbalance and realise that they are actually in the majority.
There are now two strategies in our time to protect and save the capitalist economic system.
Isolation and propaganda as the means of choice
To protect against refugees from underprivileged countries, the countries of the Third World, isolation (e.g. illegal border controls and rejections by the German Home Office) is being used.
This is, of course, a policy of burying one's head in the sand. Or what are we to think of a resident whose house is surrounded by a burning forest and who believes that closing the shutters will solve the problem? But any other solution could disrupt the system.
To save themselves from their own underprivileged citizens in industrialised nations, such as workers, the unemployed, pensioners, etc., they resort to propaganda against refugees. The underprivileged are manipulated and used to declare isolationism as the will of the people. To achieve this, it is necessary to have opinion leaders in the media and, with their help, to beat the propaganda drum loudly.
The real causes of grievances are obscured, attention is diverted from solvable economic and political problems, and migrants are made scapegoats.
At this point, I would like to address some typical propaganda statements and their questionable truthfulness, and in particular, expose five populist claims that are falling on fertile ground among conservative and right-wing party members and sympathisers, right up to confirmed right-wing extremist nationalist fascists.
Propaganda lies 1 to 5:
1. ‘Migration is the mother of all problems,’ Horst Seehofer once said at an internal CSU conference, for example. That is a lie!
The truth is:
Super-wealth is the father of all problems! The super-rich benefit from numerous tax advantages, resulting in a lower tax burden compared to that of normal earners. Taxation on billionaire fortunes has been significantly reduced since 1996. Tax avoidance through ‘aggressive tax planning’, such as shifting profits to tax havens, is widespread. The top tax rate in Germany for earned income is 42%, while capital gains are generally taxed at a rate of only 25%. The super-rich benefit from low corporate taxes, flat-rate taxation of capital gains, tax exemptions on real estate purchases and other assets, and no social security contributions on high incomes. In Germany, this particularly affects the 249 billionaires counted in 2024.
2. ‘Germany must know who is in the country and be able to decide for itself who is allowed to be here,’ demanded Christian Lindner (FDP) as a member of the traffic light coalition government (2021 to 2024), according to the Stuttgarter Zeitung. He should have been aware that this simple and comprehensible statement violates applicable law. That is why we must disagree: No, Mr Lindner!
The truth is:
European and international law have long established that persecuted, disenfranchised and threatened people must be granted protection and all human rights.
This populist demand by former Finance Minister Lindner, which is superficially appealing, is explosive, as it calls into question the fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution, and thus also democracy and European unity. He is lighting the fuse with which nationalists and fascists in Germany and Europe want to weaken further and ultimately destroy the fragile unity of Europe.
3. Migrants are worsening the employment situation for Germans, claimed Sahra Wagenknecht, founder of the ‘Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht’ (BSW). This claim is based on the assumption that immigrants increase competitive pressure in the labour market, which would lower wage levels. She thus perpetuates a narrative similar to that of politicians from the AfD, FDP, CDU and CSU, who rant about immigration into the German social welfare system, namely that migrants are taking something away from German citizens.
The truth is:
Most economists view increased immigration as a positive development.
The vast majority of refugees are not allowed to work for six months due to a completely incomprehensible law and are therefore dependent on state transfer payments. (Link 8: https://www.bmas.de/DE/Arbeit/Migration-und-Arbeit/Flucht-und-Aysl/Arbeitsmarktzugang-fuer-Gefluechtete/arbeitsmarktzugang-fuer-gefluechtete-art.html )
When they do find work, they are mainly employed in sectors with particularly poor pay and have no control over their wage level (fixed minimum wage).
It will not work to recruit skilled workers if Germany shows its ugly side in its refugee policy. Racism is a locational disadvantage.
Migrants are much younger than the average population – and those who are young today will generally receive less in old age than they have paid in over their lifetime,’ as labour market researcher Herbert Brüchner explains. This generates additional profit for the community.
4. Migration intensifies competition for affordable housing, much to the detriment of those affected by poverty, claimed presenter Markus Lanz. Rising rents are the result, as Lanz emphasises.
The truth is that:
Rents do not rise as if by magic. Rather, it is landlords – whether housing cooperatives, private real estate companies or private landlords – who are profiting from the high demand.
A particularly glaring example of exploiting the housing shortage to generate profits was seen during the ‘refugee crisis’ of 2015/16: In view of the housing shortage, wealthy individuals bought dilapidated properties (disused barracks, old hotels) and rented them out to the federal government, states and municipalities as initial reception facilities and asylum accommodation at exorbitant prices. Refugees account for only a small part of these accommodation costs – it is the rent sharks who are making a killing at the expense of taxpayers.
In 2022, more than 40,000 flats in Berlin and 1.9 million flats throughout Germany were vacant. Nothing is being done about this.
That the federal government is lagging far behind in social housing construction, which is also causing shortages. In 2023, it subsidised 49,430 social housing units, compared to a target of 100,000. According to the Social Housing Alliance, there is a shortfall of 910,000 units.
5. Human rights must be subordinated to or even sacrificed for the sake of the strategy of isolation towards refugees, according to arguments put forward by academics in the debate.
Constance law professor Daniel Thym is undermining our constitutional state and democracy under the guise of scientific rigour. With his inhumane theories, he also relativises the principles of the constitutional state from a legal perspective, and thus also undermines the inviolability of human rights.
Here are some of his statements:
In asylum policy, ‘we must also talk about human rights.’ (FAZ)
‘For a change in the system (meaning the treatment of asylum seekers, namely the denial of fundamental rights), we have only one option left: we must apply human rights less strictly.’ (Der Spiegel)
Then, revealing his true colours, he says elsewhere: ‘We must be honest with ourselves: we are thoroughly selfish. On a global scale, we are all rich. ... And we don't want to share this wealth with everyone.’ (RND)
And he agrees with Hans-Eckard Sommer, President of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, who, according to Thym, stands ‘in the “democratic centre” in the sense of the free democratic basic order’ with his demand for the abolition of the fundamental right to asylum. (FAZ)
The truth is:
Daniel Thym's statements contradict all established legal and moral principles, as do those of Hans-Eckard Sommer. It seems that the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees has put the fox in charge of the henhouse.
In Thym's case, his increasingly sharp criticism of prevailing legal practice is of particular interest, as he serves as the local spokesperson for the Research Institute for Social Cohesion (FGZ), which is based at eleven universities and devotes specific attention to its research on the criteria of ‘democratic cohesion’.
Three FGZ scholars – Stephan Lessenich, professor of social theory and social research; Sina Arnold, research assistant at the Centre for Research on Anti-Semitism; and Maren Möhring, professor of comparative cultural and social history of modern Europe – disagree with him as follows:
“However, a society committed to the principle of democracy cannot apply human rights selectively or only when it suits its interests – otherwise, its cohesion becomes an exclusive event that cannot be secured by legal force alone... Clearly, social majorities are receptive to such ideas of a supposed solution to the crisis. However, those who propagate them should at least refrain from selling them as common sense and a conservative act of recalibrating human dignity. The ‘system change’ should be called what it is: the further tightening of a migration policy that walks over dead bodies."
(TAZ, 25 April 2026)
Only a few progressive media outlets are critically commenting on such efforts to tighten asylum law further and pursue migration policies that go beyond humanity and the law. The mainstream press tends to remain discreetly silent on the issue. Behind this lies either secret sympathy for the right-wing scene, approval of the current government's policies, or a lack of civil courage.
The root of all problems is not migration, but capitalism!
As we have seen, all these myths and narratives, lies and half-truths ultimately deliberately obscure the fact that the problems are not caused by refugees and migrants, but by the prevailing capitalist system, i.e. by the beneficiaries and supporters of the system, such as companies and corporations, private profit-oriented landlords, elites such as opinion leaders in the media and in science and academia, and people with political responsibility in the legislative and executive branches.
Not to be forgotten are the super-rich, e.g. the 249 billionaires in Germany. In 2024, there were 23 more than in the previous year. They contribute the least to the social fabric of our state, because they can evade fair participation through tax and business actions alone.
Who can even imagine what 1 billion actually means? To illustrate this gigantic accumulation of money and possessions and to get an idea of what 1 billion is, here is an example: if someone has 1 million euros, we consider them to be ‘rich’, but 1 billion? For people who already consider themselves rich if they have £1,000 or £10,000 in the bank, their imagination is not sufficient to comprehend these dimensions.
Distances are perhaps easier to imagine:
1 million millimetres is 10 km, which is just enough to get you beyond the city limits of Hamburg, for example. 1 billion millimetres is the distance from Hamburg to Vienna, or 1,000 kilometres, or to put it another way: 1,000 kilometres is 1 million metres. 1 billion metres, on the other hand, is 1 million kilometres. That is about 3 times the distance from the Earth to the Moon. Then imagine 1 billion euros! Just to illustrate the dimensions!
Reality versus bias and hate speech!
Right-wing conservative media outlets, such as the newspapers published by Axel Springer Verlag, explicitly incite hatred against migrants, refugees and, last but not least, the poor, the unemployed and welfare recipients (the owner, Mathias Döpfner, is a multiple billionaire) consider it unworthy of reporting when, for example, on the morning of 1 January 2025, thousands of Muslim youths from the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat volunteer to clean up New Year's Eve rubbish in around 300 locations in Germany.
This expression of Muslims' solidarity with Germany was hardly mentioned in the public debate.
The attack by a suspected right-wing extremist in Magdeburg was also quickly deemed uninteresting by many media outlets and political parties, unlike it would have been if the perpetrator had had a migrant background.
These media outlets pander to the confirmed right-wing extremist spectrum – the AfD and its sympathisers – and pave the way for incitement against migrants, the poor and the underprivileged. In contrast, the millions of examples of successful integration are hardly mentioned.
Rejections based on populism?
The latest escalation (2025) in the migration debate was caused by the Federal Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt (CSU) just one week after taking office.
Despite legal concerns in Germany and the EU, the Federal Interior Minister ordered increased border controls and rejections at the borders.
At this point, it is worth talking not only about morality, humanity and the law, or even about possible savings and cuts in the social sector, schools, kindergartens, social welfare and the cultural sector, which are supposed to serve as financing, but also about a cost-benefit analysis!
1,200 new federal police officers were deployed to the borders. Approximately 12,000 to 13,000 officers are now deployed, most of them in salary grades A7 – A8, which means €3,000 gross (?) per month.
This measure therefore costs the state, i.e. the taxpayer, €36 to €39 million per month.
And then let’s take a look at the benefits achieved: In the first week of increased controls, Minister Dobrindt proudly announced a 45 per cent increase in rejections.
A look at the specific figures:
A total of 739 people were rejected in the first week. In the previous week, the figure was 511. With the help of additional staff, 228 more people per week were turned away. Extrapolated over the month, that would be approximately 1,000 people.
This required the deployment of an additional 1,200 civil servants for this purpose. Labour costs alone amounted to approximately €3.6 million, not including administrative costs and technical expenses, which can be estimated at least the same amount again.
What a great success! Each additional rejection costs the taxpayer at least €3,600 per month, probably even more than double that amount.
This money is not an investment that would lead to any solution to problems such as the shortage of skilled workers. There is no constructive approach whatsoever!
Now, one might come up with the idea and ask: Yes, but what would these 1,000 people cost us per month if they stayed in the country?
The following applies here:
No one can make such a cost-benefit calculation because no one knows what potential people have if they are treated constructively, and ways of integrating them are created. Quite apart from ethics and morals.
The costs roughly estimated above are primarily an administrative expense imposed by the state. The value of a human being, of humanity, cannot be assessed in monetary terms on an ethical level. It is not permissible to compare or offset any costs. Seeing only a monetary value in human beings is capitalism at its worst.
According to the latest final court ruling, rejections may be unlawful and may give rise to a claim for damages (Administrative Court of Berlin 6 L 191/25 of 02.06.2023).
Germany needs migration!
All those with a phobia of migrants should take note of a comment by Professor Monika Schnitzer, LMU Munich, Chair of the German Council of Economic Experts:
As a measure against the shortage of skilled workers, economist Schnitzer proposes more immigration. The new Skilled Workers Act (of 23 June 2023) is already a step in the right direction, but the Federal Republic as a whole is not making as much progress ‘as we could and should’...
‘Germany needs 1.5 million immigrants a year if we want to maintain the number of workers, taking into account the considerable emigration of 400,000 new citizens each year,’ said the economist on 2 July 2023 in the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper.
Germany urgently needs a culture of welcome, adds Schnitzer, who has headed the German Council of Economic Experts since October 2022.
The Skilled Immigration Act passed by the Bundestag needs to be expanded: ‘For example, immigration offices should not deter immigrants, but offer them services,’ she suggests. ‘We should not require foreign skilled workers to be able to speak German for every job. Instead, we should ensure that the employees of the immigration office can speak English.’
She points to the truly urgent issues of our time and implies that the migration debate serves as a distraction for politicians who are responsible to avoid and obscure precisely these unresolved real problems!
To address the shortage of skilled workers, Germany needs to invest more in children, for example, Schnitzer continues. ‘It's a sad reflection on our society that one in four fourth-graders cannot read properly,’ she criticises.
In addition, companies need to keep older employees happy so that they don't retire early, the economist explains.
Schnitzer criticises the lack of investment in infrastructure, the country's lagging behind in digitalisation and its late start on climate protection, among other things.
This list of failures could go on and on, including pension and care financing, health insurance reform, etc. – all areas that could be addressed through positive management of migration (language support, early career support, social integration, human recognition, and so much more).
Political strategy: right-wing slogans to prevent a shift to the right!
While economists, industry, social scientists and the service sector agree that without massive immigration, nothing will really work in our country soon, the majority of German politicians know nothing better than to parrot the extreme right like a broken record: Restrict migration! Restrict migration!
What is their motive?
They hope to win back voters for the conservative parties who have drifted to the far right. Instead of encouraging Germans to think by confronting them with reality, they are mimicking the xenophobic attitudes of right-wing parties, thereby bringing this ideology into the political mainstream.
Finally, here is an example of how irrational the whole debate has become:
The state of Lower Saxony sent a delegation of business and political leaders to Colombia from 1 to 5 July 2025 to recruit workers in the fields of nursing, life sciences, electronics, skilled trades, gardening and landscaping. At the same time, the Federal Republic of Germany is planning to deport around 1,600 Colombians who fled the Colombian civil war, most of whom are qualified in the areas described above and learned German here in a very short time. (TAZ vom 24.06.2023)
To paraphrase a famous slogan from the migration debate of the 1990s, one feels compelled to exclaim once again:
Dear migrants, don't leave us alone with the Germans!
Conclusion: The reality is that Germany does not have a migration problem, but rather a humanity problem, and appears incapable of identifying the necessities and addressing their solution. (HeiN)
