[Update] Immigrants to Germany: more than half leave within a year

Germany has been proud of its immigration numbers: over 1 million newcomers, including some expats, have arrived each year in the past several years.

A great economy, low crime (anybody using guns around here?), friendly no form filling out immigration at the airport (if you are from a visa free country), a clean environment (unless you live too close to a BK or McDo or next to a nitrate generating farm), great numbers of English speaking folks for easy navigation, perfect Italian ice cream shops and pizzerias (you only need the two German words Bier and Pizza to survive), and so much more goodness.

And yet.

Yet around 60% of newcomers are gone within a year.

Why?

Nobody knows.

We at the K-Landnews have long advocated Exit Interviews for people moving to foreign climes, but we remain unheard.

Not that we complain about remaining unheard. With great popularity come great ad revenues but also questions like 'so, how the f*** do you know about that swastika flag incident at Stalag XIII'. Easy to answer, we just don't feel like being asked.

Why would people stay less than a year in a country as nice and welcoming as Germany?

Some may not like soccer. That would be a valid point with "public" broadcasters flooding the airwaves with the sport. But you can ignore soccer - though not the TV license fee requests.

Learning German is hard. True, but if you arrive early enough in the year, they give you a free voucher for a six week class. Well, if you are from a third world country, they won't let you in without a basic German certificate.

Most big music festivals are techno, metal, and whatever that weird Kraftwerk stuff is. Yeas, this one does hurt a bit, first in the ears, then in the head. But there is other music, you just need to find it, like in the East German city of Rudolstadt with a great mix of music that has actual lyrics and does not require ear plugs. German rap does exist.

Life in Germany is expensive. In the big cities and their surrounding "lard belts", money rules, and not keeping up with the Muellers can be hard, especially on kids. That's not country specific, though.

There are no German road movies. because there are no wide open roads or wide open spaces. Get used to it, travel in the Eastern EU countries, they still have both, including some almost empty stretches of EU funded freeways.

Righteousness is German. Germans still have this brand of hyper righteousness which makes it a bit more difficult than, say, British righteousness. Drivers are less inclined to let you get onto the freeway at the on ramp because your in ramp has a yield sign. If you asked me what the most typical German sign is, I'd say the yield sign.

It looks nice (not a stop sign) but is enforced in an uncompromising manner by the vast majority of fellow drivers. Like a flight attendant saying thank you for not smoking.

A premium on information. Premium as in price, not as in emphasis, gents. Good, no cost information is hard to find around here. Even on the web, where pretty much any German "ask me a question" type site goes to great lengths to tell you they are not giving legal advice. Any apparent violation of this is likely to get you an expensive cease & desist letter, which is really hard to fight.

Seriously expensive driver's license. Next to aspirin, a German driver's license will cost you a lot. Right now, 1800 Euros for mandatory classes is considered a bargain. That's just a passenger car. Need to have a small trailer: another grand.

What are you doing in my street? At least out in the country, strangers get scrutinized. But that is not directed against foreigners, it applies to Germans, too.
Don't get cocky and say ""oh, your street, eh, doesn't say private anywhere", be nice, say sorry and move on. They may not have as many guns, but if you cannot outrun a German shepherd or a Rottweiler, be super apologetic.

Weekly cleaning of common areas in apartment buildings. We all understand that hallways, stairwells, and common outside areas need to be clean, and who would balk at a once a month rotation? It's not that simple. You will be judged, with prejudice as the legal term goes, by when, for how long, and how thoroughly you perform this vital social task. The further south in the country you live, the worse it is. It's as if all the German neat freaks through history had been moving south, only to be blocked from reaching Italy by the five to seven thousand feet high mountain chain of the Alps.

Fines on everything. The bad news is, you can be fined for the smallest of transgression. Not that you invariably will, but the possibility exists and will have you nervous after the first time you get hit. The good news, at least for now, is that fines are so much lower than what you'd face in the US. A 50 dollar parking fine or a 300 dollar speeding ticket are hard to get around here, let that be a consolation.

Too much religion or not enough. Germany is fairly secular country, Scientology doesn't qualify as a religion here in the American sense. But in some German states, there is no public music and dancing on Good Friday, and the biggest political party calls itself Christian.

These are only a few possible reasons for not staying in Germany after the first few months of "new country smell" wear off.

As we said, get that exit interview going, so we can all learn to overcome our stereotypes.

[Update 3/10/2015] This article in Die Welt has some figures and a few of the standard reasons why people leave Germany. It's a start.

[Update 7/17/2016] The 2015 migration stats are out. The blogster uses this news article as a source because the Federal Statistics Office website is a bummer (and they don't have a number for "returning German expats" for 2015. I checked.
The Zeitonline article also happens to be one of the few that provides percentages, while pretty much everybody focuses on the record number of immigrants: 2.1 million.
That was an increase of 46%, mostly due, as we all know, to the refugee crisis.
But the number of emigrants also rose, to around 1 million - an increase of 107%.

And the trend of more German citizens leaving than returning will remain unbroken since it started in 2005.

The friendly conservatives of Germany continue to be unhappy about the figures because they don't get just premium immigrants, the kind who show up with at least one PhD,  perfect knowledge of the language and singing the national anthem upon arrival.