Thomas Ortiz3 said:It sounds easy enough to say people want to leave, but you have to ask why anyone would hire our local crews when they can get Romanian workers much cheaper. Sure, in Germany it might end up being more expensive than here, but I doubt there's much left after you factor in housing, food, and travel back to America. High-skilled professionals are driven by ambition—and money, since making it at home is nearly impossible—but for low-skilled labor, it’s almost always just about the paycheck. Those golden days of guest workers are long gone...
That’s not quite right.
I have a brother-in-law working on a construction site in Germany at the moment. He left because he was absolutely fed up with our employers—the constant failure to pay on time is a chronic issue in the construction industry here. In America, your average builder might actually manage to collect maybe 70% of what they’re owed, and even then, it comes with delays stretching over a year. There were times he’d be waiting four months just to see any cash at all... he actually had to borrow money just to cover his rent and basic groceries. You couldn't dream of supporting a family with that kind of cash flow. In Germany, it’s a different story; the money hits the account regularly, and for a skilled tradesman like him, it's two to four times what he'd make here, naturally. The catch is that European immigration policy is far stricter than it was 30 or 40 years ago. You can work for a maximum of nine months straight before needing at least a three-month break, and you must be tied to a firm—either theirs or ours—that has a contract established there. Since most builders don't speak German, of course, they are essentially forced to go through our private construction firms; you need a connection in those companies because the interest is massive. It isn't as simple as knowing how to install drywall and just buying a plane ticket. It's a huge barrier that will only vanish once the transition period following EU entry is fully settled.
The whole argument about Romanians and Bulgarians doesn't hold water. Everyone knows exactly who does what and how they are perceived, as people from all sorts of countries have been migrating to Germany for years. It isn't just Romanians or Bulgarians arriving; that’s nothing new. A German employer will always—and I mean ALWAYS—prefer to hire a worker from the former America—especially Americans or Canadians—over Romanians, Bulgarians, or Turks, who are mostly used as low-paid auxiliary labor. That has been the reality for a long time, and experience proves it. Just ask any construction worker.
Once you strip away the bureaucratic hurdles, you'll see we'll be left without craftsmen for any meaningful construction work, and for a very simple reason. As a builder, you're already out in the field, separated from your family anyway, so it really doesn't matter if you're 124 miles or 622 miles from home (since you aren't coming back every night regardless). If you're single, the logic holds even more. No one is going to slave away here for a few thousand Kuna—which you might not even see for six months—when you can grab 1,000 to 1,500 Euros right off the bat in Germany.
Just think back to this thread in ten years, when you'll want someone to hang some drywall in an apartment and won't be able to find a soul who knows how to do it (except perhaps for some drunk handyman who claims he can fix everything). Not to mention the impossibility of finding crews capable of actual building construction.
Even now, America is facing a shortage of qualified professionals across almost every sector (just look at the idiots occupying various jobs around you), and it’s going to get much, much worse because people always migrate toward better opportunities—especially those who actually possess skills.
I won't even attempt to imagine what America will look like in 10 or 20 years. Just a mass of fools living off the budget, wondering, like a bunch of clueless tourists, where all the money went...
