Migrants are thriving in Germany, says OECD

A new study by the 38-member Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD, has found Germany is leading the way in Europe at integrating arrivals from other countries.

The nation, which has the world's second-largest population of immigrants after the United States, has recently seen the rise of far-right anti-immigrant political parties, in what experts say is a backlash against its new arrivals.

But OECD migration expert Thomas Liebig said in his report released this week that, despite resistance among some residents, the nation has welcomed migrants, and migrants have integrated well.

"There are now more than 14 million immigrants in Germany," he said at a news briefing where he unveiled his study. "And when we add those who were born here to immigrant parents, that means one-in-five people here were either born abroad or born in Germany to immigrant parents."

Liebig said the vast majority of immigrants — one arrival in every five during the past 10 years — was from elsewhere in the European Union.

Germany's integration commissioner, Reem Alabali-Radovan, who ordered the study, added: "We were always a country of immigrants and that has made us strong. Germany's immigration history is very diverse. It consists of refugees from the Second World War, guest and temporary workers, resettled ethnic Germans, and refugees from the former Yugoslavia and later from Syria and Afghanistan."

Germany currently has around 14 million immigrants, with its total including 1 million Ukrainians who started arriving in 2022 after the start of the Russia-Ukraine conflict and around 600,000 asylum seekers fleeing war and persecution elsewhere.

The OECD study found 70 percent of the country's new arrivals have found employment, a total that is higher than almost all of its EU neighbors. And almost two-thirds of its new residents are able to speak fluent German within five years of arriving.

Alabali-Radovan said she commissioned the study in the hope of bringing more objectivity to what she called the "emotional debate" around immigration.

"Integration is going far better than is generally thought, when we look at it internationally," she told the German broadcaster DW.

The study was released against the backdrop of Germany's Alternative for Germany, or AfD, party vowing on Sunday to introduce internal border checks if it wins elections in two German states in September.

The party's co-leader, Tino Chrupalla, said during an interview with national public broadcaster ARD that his party would immediately suspend a mechanism in Thuringia and Saxony used to distribute migrants around Germany's 16 states.

"We have to ensure that migration in its current form finally belongs to the past," he said.

AfD is doing well in pre-election opinion polls in the states and could realistically be part of a coalition government in both.