Without a lot of fanfare.....there's a new refugee program going on in Germany. The name? "Welcome to Germany". Yeah.....the name is lacking but let me explain the rest of this.
What some folks sat down and figured out after a while is that when a refugee family arrives in Germany, and settle in for months and months of temp housing with no hope in stabilizing their life.....people get negative and frustrated. So, a revitalized view came up.....quicker access to German language training....vocational training being provided.....better living standards for the temp housing....etc.
So, there's some private organizations doing a handshake deal with government agencies and trying to get volunteers into the system to help speed up integration and make it actually occur (rather the fake integration efforts of the past decade).
Over the past two years, I've sat and watched German news media efforts to cover the stories (they've quietly quit the stories over the past year because of public negativity of immigrants and refugees). The general perception is that Germany has the five-star deal for immigrants....if they can get here. That's not the perception of Italy or Greece. So Germany is like a magnet for people to make their way here.
The German placement compounds have been a haphazard effort. In some ways, it's a roof over your head and heat, with food and some government organization. No one really wanted to put serious money into it or think long-term. There's a split on attitude between the federal strategy and the state/local strategy.....with money/funding as a major issue.
I noted last week in Wiesbaden.....near the Kur Park....a volunteer organization doing a cake/coffee deal.....to get donations, which funnel back into a education tutor/mentor deal with retirees working with refugee kids. Ten years ago.....such a thing was non-existent.
Where this all leads onto? The national government won't talk much about it.....but population rates for Germany are declining. At some point within three to five years, unless something happens.....Germany will slip from eighty million in population to around seventy-eight million. It's a milestone in some ways, and a warning sign. The smart folks already project a population of around sixty-six million by 2050 (35 years away), unless things change.
Trying to convince Germans this is a positive thing? The public isn't really buying into it. If the immigrants and refugees became more integrated into society.....things would be different. So, maybe this "Welcome to Germany" strategy might help to solve the various issues that exist.
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