We came here, but where do Germans emigrate to?

Immigration to Germany is booming, the latest numbers say about 1 million immigrants arrived last year.

But people are also leaving, so how many do go, and where are they heading?

Between 1991 and 2010, according to statistics, every year some 100 000 to 175 000 Germans said "auf wiedersehen" to their home country.

For the most recent year:
Number one is Switzerland with just under 25 000
Number two is the U.S. with around 14 000.
Next in line, all under the 10 000 mark, are Poland, Britain, Spain, and France.

Counting moving to Switzerland as "emigration" really works only from a European perspective. From an American perspective, you would not be remiss if you quipped this was only like moving from California to Arizona.

You don't believe this comparison is justified?

Granted, there are fewer cuckoo clock makers in Arizona, and Switzerland has fewer hispanics.

Other, much more crucial things are very similar.

If you go from California to Arizona, you will find:
1) They speak "the same language" - just like German and Swiss German.
2) They are not very welcoming to migrants -- especially those from just across the border.
3) The white folks who came there first are still in power after hundreds of years.
5) The climate is very similar to your home state and yet eerily different.

The low numbers for Spain can be a bit of a surprise if you follow German media coverage and have heard about the Germans pretty much owning the Spanish island of Majorca. They have a German online newspaper, German doctors, a real colony.

Another interesting factoid about emigration of Germans is that almost 80 percent of those who move to another European country eventually return home, most after about two years.

If you had to guess the number of people who immigrated from the USA to Germany in 2011, you'd probably be as wrong as I was when I tried.

Dwell on this a bit:
In 2011, the number of new residents who moved from the US to Germany was just over 32 000, twice as many as moved in the other direction.

What's more, the number of migrants from the US exceeded the number of migrants from Turkey by about one thousand.

The total of US Census respondents who self-identified as of German origins in the 2000s was just under 43 million, excluding all the mutts like us (at least Welsh, Swedish, German) and those who made themselves Swedish, Norwegian, or something else because of two German sponsored world wars.

The whole of Germany right now has about 82 million inhabitants, including all migrants.
Projections now forecast a fall to a population of 74 million by 2050.