Greek Immigrants Like Germany Best

With Greece’s crushing economic crisis creating an exodus, especially the young, to other countries, the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD,) said that Germany remains the destination of choice for them.

Germany ranks fifth in the list for the most popular destinations for immigration over, behind the USA, United Kingdom, Spain and Italy.

In 2011, around 300,000 people immigrated to Germany, by 30 percent more than in 2010, according to OECD’s annual migration outlook that was released on June 13. In 2011,  four million people in total immigrated towards OECD countries. After three years of stagnation, due to the economic crisis, immigration rates started to rise again.

“Governments have to do their best in order to improve immigrants’ opportunities to find a job,” said Ángel Gurría, Secretary-General of OECD, during the presentation of the report in Brussels. “Combat the high and long-term unemployment of immigrants is of major importance,” he added.

According to the report, the wave of new immigration from the countries in crisis continued in 2012. Between 2007 and 2011, the number of immigrants from Greece rose by 73 percent while from Spain by 50 percent. The statistics show though that a large part of these new immigrants tend to abandon Germany soon. In the last years, only one in two Greeks and one in three Spaniards stayed in Germany for more than a year.

“The problem is not the interest in Germany; the problem is the language,” said Thomas Liebig, senior administrator of OECD. “Most employers ask for good knowledge of German,” he added.