Immigration in Germany and Sweden?

Immigration Debate: Germany Needs More Foreigners - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International: "We don't know if Thilo Sarrazin [a board member of Germany's central bank] intended to stall the debate on immigration to Germany, but it is clear that his polemical book has had just that effect. His work has split the debaters into two camps: an outraged faction that includes politicians from all the major parties and that can hardly be avoided by anyone in public life, and a semi-public forum and blogger scene, which generally applauds Sarrazin. Neither camp is actually helping to address the issues at hand."

I read a while ago an article that surprised me because it stated that Great Britain will pass Germany as the most populous state in Europe by 2050. Germany is due to its climate on immigration matters loosing people. This is the issue at hand. Actually the Turks are now emigrating from Germany and Bulgarians and Romanians are moving in. There is now a net emigration of Muslims from Germany and there is actually a net total emigration from Germany.

Germany ought to be a competitor to Sweden for qualified immigrants due to the similarity of the two societies. In Sweden there does not seem to be a consensus from where these immigrants should come that will save us from becoming a state of just old people like Germany is projected to become. It is interesting that such a strong polarization is taking place between those who favor immigration and those who want things to remain as they were.

Unfortunately there is a way to overcome the polarization and that is to move away from equality and build a hierarchical society in which the immigrants are positioned under the control of permanents in order to alleviate the worries of permanents of new cutural attributes. It is probably going to be easy to think in this fashion since the article points out that the Berlin political circles don't want to even discuss the problem of having a country of octogenarians, the average age in Germany is projected to be 60 years in 2050, juxtapositioned with an Africa of 2bn. The US, on the other hand, is increasing its population even without immigration although they probably also continue to count on skilled immigration.

During 2007 Sweden recieved almost 100,000 immigrants, with 15,200 from Iraq and 10,400 from our Nordic neighbors as the largest groups. Most parties advocate a generous immigration politics. Thus we differ in this respect to Germany even if the "outsideship" is increasing and many voices are raised to moderation in immigration.

The article points at another very important difference as to the "Western" in the development of the trans-Atlantic relation. Europe is becoming significantly "Eastern and Southern" with immigration to from Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. The US on the other hand is facing a bilinguality problem with Spanish which would be considered a small problem in Europe. I firmly believe that one of the greatest mistakes of the EU was that they did not formally introduce English as a second official language to promote mobility, skilled immigration, and firmer interaction with the US.