One Country Will Replace America as the 'Land of Opportunity' by Doing What the U.S. Refuses To

Impact

Germany.

Yes, Germany is now considered a blossoming land of opportunity for immigrants. It is the top immigrant destination in Europe and only second to the U.S. in number of immigrants welcomed in 2012.

The country has radically simplified the immigration process for educated E.U. citizens and foreigners and has developed special programs to encourage unemployed Europeans to migrate, with Germany footing the bill.

Jordi Colombi, a 36-year-old Spaniard profiled by the Washington Post, exemplifies this migratory pattern. Colombi's journey from unemployment in Spain to flourishing architect in Germany is symbolic of a functional immigration system.

Germany, who the Economist calls "a bastion of strength in the fragile euro zone," is experiencing a surge in jobs and an employment peak for the first time in 2014 since 1990. And it is growing and thriving in part because the country has laid out welcome mats for people wanting the "German dream." Meanwhile, America's stale immigration system that is indefinitely locked in limbo could learn a thing or two from Germany's success.

Image Credit: AP

Germany Immigration Policy 101: In 2013, a record high of 437,000 immigrants flooded onto Germany's border, Deutsche Bank reported. That influx has aided a shrinking pool of German workers, where the country "has Europe's oldest population and second-lowest birthrate after Monaco," according to Bloomberg Businessweek.

Specific policies are tempting foreign individuals to seek out Germany's employment opportunities and transition programs. E.U. nationals can easily migrate between the 28 nations. But Germany went beyond that measure by instituting a "Blue Card" system in 2013 where anyone "with a university degree and a job offer with a minimum salary of $50,000 to $64,000 a year, depending on the field" can immigrate, the Washington Post reported.

Additionally, Germany invested $609 million in a program targeting unemployed European 18- to 35-year-olds. The country pays for almost all of their assimilation including travel, language classes and accommodations during job training (though the program had to stop taking new applicants in April).

Other than occasional xenophobic incidents, the country has seen nothing but positive results of these policies. Deutsche Bank estimated that in recent years, 10% of Germany's economic growth "can be attributed to an increase in employment of citizens from [Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain] and Eastern European partners."

Meanwhile in America: On the other side of the spectrum, the U.S. continues to display an aggressive and degrading approach to the immigration issue. Particularly as the country faces what President Barack Obama has declared "an urgent humanitarian situation," with more than 47,000 unaccompanied children that have been detained crossing the U.S.-Mexico border since October 2013.

This is how Governor Rick Perry (R-Texas) decided to respond to the flood of children fleeing their poverty-ridden and violence-laden countries in Central and South America.

And Perry, holding an automatic weapon to "protect our borders," isn't even the half of it. In early July, misinformed protesters — demonstrating against so-called illegals who threaten their jobs and apparently spread diseases — blocked three busloads of the detained children from going to detention centers in Murrieta, Calif.

Image Credit: ABC-10 News

It doesn't have to be this way. In Bloomberg Businessweek, Harold Silkin outlines how a more nuanced approach to immigration reform could end up being a tremendous boon to the U.S. economy:

Filling America’s workplace needs is a huge challenge. On one end, U.S. agriculture and the food and hospitality industries seem to have an insatiable need for unskilled labor—mostly to do jobs Americans don’t want to do. This should not panic anyone. Unskilled laborers with inadequate (or nonexistent) English-language skills are not infiltrating U.S. factories, taking skilled manufacturing jobs away from American workers. Claims to the contrary are a fiction.At the other end of the labor market are the thousands of computer, science, engineering, and other high-skill jobs U.S. employers also are having difficulty filling. This is not a new problem. It’s one of the reasons we have the H-1B visa program, which authorizes the annual hiring of up to 85,000 highly skilled (mostly technology) workers per year from overseas. In a country of 310 million, that does not an invasion make.

In late 2013, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said, "Germany today is a country that is indeed very open to immigration." With so much success under their belts, Germany is the best model right now for immigration. The U.S. better start scheduling those tutoring sessions ... we have a lot to catch up on.