Germany went all in accepting refugees from the Middle East and other war-torn regions of the world. The nation took in nearly 900,000 in 2015 alone, The Washington Post reported. In just two years, some 1.2 million poured in.
Now a new report shows very few of the newcomers bothered to get a job — or were hired by German businesses. Just 34,000 refugees — or 2.8% — who streamed into Germany in the last two years have managed to get a job, the U.K.’s Express reports.
The numbers apply to refugees mostly from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Eritrea.
“If we manage to get 50 percent of them into work which pays for their lives in five years, that’d certainly be a success,” said Joachim Möller, director of the government’s Institute for Labour Research told the Express.
“But it would be an illusion to believe that we will manage to find jobs for a decent proportion of refugees in well-paid industry jobs like car manufacturing.”
This means the burden of feeding, housing and caring for them will continue to soar into the billions and fall upon the German taxpayer.
One bright side is that the crisis has created an estimated 60,000 jobs for Germans in social work, teaching and in security for the numerous asylum centres around the country.
Meanwhile, the Gatestone Institute reported that “authorities in Hamburg, the second-largest city in Germany, have begun confiscating private dwellings to ease a housing shortage — one that has been acutely exacerbated by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to allow more than two million migrants into the country in recent years.”
City officials have been seizing commercial properties and converting them into migrant shelters since late 2015, when Merkel opened German borders to hundreds of thousands of migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Now, however, the city is expropriating residential property units owned by private citizens.
In an unprecedented move, Hamburg authorities recently confiscated six residential units in the Hamm district near the city center. The units, which are owned by a private landlord, are in need of repair and have been vacant since 2012. A trustee appointed by the city is now renovating the properties and will rent them — against the will of the owner — to tenants chosen by the city. District spokeswoman Sorina Weiland said that all renovation costs will be billed to the owner of the properties.
Over the weekend, Merkel was re-elected as chancellor, which means Germans must be OK with the influx.