21/09/2026
Friedrich Merz and the Contradiction at the Heart of Germanyâs Immigration Debate
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has made a striking argument about immigration that exposes one of the deepest contradictions in Europeâs migration debate. Germany, he says, is and will remain a country of immigration. But the immigration he wants is clearly defined: migrants should come to work, fill labour shortages and contribute to the economy, rather than primarily enter Germanyâs social-security system.
On the surface, this is an economic argument. Germany needs workers. Its businesses need employees, its hospitals need staff, its care sector needs workers and many industries depend on people born outside the country. Merz has repeatedly emphasized that immigrants who are already working in Germany are indispensable to the functioning of the economy. In September 2026, while confronting the far-right Alternative fĂŒr Deutschland over its âremigrationâ agenda, he warned that forcing working immigrants to leave would leave skilled trades, care homes, hospitals and restaurants struggling to operate.
There is, therefore, an important reality behind Merzâs argument: immigration is not simply a question of borders or cultural identity. It is also a question of labour supply, demographics and economic capacity.
But the language used to describe this reality deserves much more scrutiny.
When a government says that it wants immigration into the labour market but not immigration into the welfare system, it risks reducing the immigrant from a human being with rights, ambitions, family ties and vulnerabilities to an economic unit whose principal value is measured by employment.
That is where the debate becomes uncomfortable.
Workers first, human beings second?
The most controversial implication of this approach is not that Germany wants skilled workers. Every modern economy has the right to design immigration policies around its economic needs. The problem begins when economic usefulness becomes the dominant measure of human worth.
A migrant who works, pays taxes and fills a labour shortage is economically valuable. But what happens when that person becomes unemployed? What happens when they become ill, injured or elderly? What happens when a migrant worker brings children or elderly parents? And what happens when someone contributes to German society in ways that cannot be measured through a payroll?
These questions expose the limits of a purely economic definition of migration.
A person does not cease to be a person because they are no longer economically productive.
This is why the interpretation that Merz wants âslaves rather than human beingsâ can be understood as a political critique of his formulation, but it should not be presented as a literal description of his stated position. His documented argument is that Germany needs immigrants who participate in the labour market, while he simultaneously maintains that Germany is an immigration country. His government has also pursued tougher measures against irregular migration and tighter border controls.
The contradiction lies not necessarily in wanting workers, but in how narrowly immigration can be defined by economic utility.
Germany cannot simply choose migrants as if it were hiring employees
A labour market is not an immigration system.
Companies can select employees according to skills, qualifications and economic demand. States, however, deal with human beings whose lives extend far beyond employment contracts.
This distinction becomes particularly important in Germany, a country facing demographic pressures and persistent labour shortages. The economic argument for immigration is powerful precisely because Germany needs people. But if the country needs people, it also needs to acknowledge that those people arrive with families, identities, histories, rights and expectations.
The danger of reducing migration to recruitment is that it creates a hierarchy between the âuseful migrantâ and the âundesirable migrantâ.
The first is welcomed because Germany needs their labour. The second becomes a burden because their economic contribution is considered insufficient.
That distinction can quickly become politically and socially corrosive.
The uncomfortable irony in Merzâs position
There is also an irony in Merz's recent confrontation with the AfD.
The chancellor has strongly criticized the far-right party's âremigrationâ agenda, arguing that mass removal of immigrants would damage Germany's economy and accusing the AfD of promoting a form of ethnic exclusion. The Guardian reported that Merz warned that millions of working immigrants are crucial to German society and that removing them would threaten major sectors of the economy.
This puts Merz in a complicated political position.
He rejects the idea that Germany should simply remove immigrants, yet he simultaneously emphasizes that immigrants are needed primarily because Germany needs their labour.
In other words, his argument against extreme anti-immigration politics is partly economic: Germany cannot afford to lose the people who keep its economy functioning.
That may be pragmatically persuasive, but it leaves an unresolved philosophical question: should immigrants be defended because they are human beings with equal dignity, or because German hospitals, restaurants, factories and businesses need them?
The answer should not have to be one or the other.
A country of immigration must also be a country of integration
If Germany truly accepts that it is a country of immigration, then the concept should extend beyond employment statistics.
A sustainable immigration model requires workers, but it also requires integration. It requires language education, access to housing, schools, healthcare, legal protection and opportunities for long-term participation in society.
It also requires recognizing that migrants are not permanently temporary.
Someone who arrives in Germany at 25 to work may eventually become 45, 55 or 70. They may raise children who are German citizens. They may establish businesses, pay taxes, build communities and become indistinguishable from the broader social fabric except for their family history.
At that point, the idea of migration as a simple economic transaction becomes increasingly difficult to sustain.
The real question is what Germany expects from immigration
Merz's position ultimately forces Germany to confront a question that extends far beyond the current political moment.
Does Germany want immigration because it needs workers, or does it accept immigration as part of the country's long-term social reality?
Those two propositions are not identical.
Germany can legitimately demand that immigration be organized, that newcomers respect the law and that employment and integration be strengthened. It can also legitimately argue that its welfare system cannot absorb unlimited migration without sustainable financing.
But a modern immigration policy cannot be built exclusively around the question of how much economic value a person produces.
That is where the metaphor of âslaves, not human beingsâ becomes politically powerful â not as a literal quotation from Merz, but as a warning about what can happen when human beings are discussed almost exclusively through the language of economic utility.
Germany's challenge is therefore not simply to find enough workers.
It is to build an immigration system in which workers remain human beings after the working day ends.
Merz is right about one fundamental point: Germany's economy cannot simply pretend that immigrants do not exist. His own warnings about the consequences of removing working immigrants demonstrate how deeply migration is already embedded in German society.
But if Germany is genuinely going to remain a country of immigration, the debate cannot stop at the factory gate, the hospital corridor or the employment contract.
A country does not become an immigration society merely by importing labour.
It becomes one when the people who arrive are treated not only as workers Germany needs, but as human beings who are entitled to belong.
