Ten years on, how countries that crashed are faring

There are some misconceptions here. What both of you are describing is a scenario of the past when unskilled workers from all over Europe came to Germany during the late 50s, 60s, 70s to work in the steel industry or mining for instance. Asylum seekers/refugees are basically not allowed to work and there are hardly any Africans moving the garbage around, that's not how the system works. Once new arrivals are registered, it depends on their status whether they will be allowed to work or not. People from other EU countries would be considered immigrants and they, as EU citizens, are allowed to work right away. In 2013, more than 50,000 Spaniards came to Germany to get a job or an education. Organisations like the chamber of commerce, trade unions, and employer's associations set up offices in Spain, Italy, Portugal years ago to get people who just cannot find a job in their home country interested in coming to Germany. These are mostly skilled people, technicians, medical staff (esp. from Portugal), electricians, or even people with uni degrees who have no chance of getting work back home and there are Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian associations and officials who are involved in the process. Probably not many Engl. speaking sources on this. Here's one in German.
http://www.deutschlandfunk.de/zwischen-wunsch-und-wirklichkeit.724.de.html?dram:article_id=254085
I met an engineer from Barcelona in 2014 who couldn't find a job at home, so he went to Wolfsburg to work for Volkswagen.
There are, on the other hand, still unskilled jobs esp in farming where we find mostly Eastern European workers. They usually come for a season, leave, and come back next year/season.

 

TEMPEST IN A TEAPOT?

The overall figures for the EU show that Total Employment was (as a percentage of the population) in 2015 had already recuperated its 2007 level (70%) of before the Great Recession crisis imported from the US. (See here).

So, why is there so much rabbiting going on about "immigrants taking our jobs?" And why did a good many of the eastern-EU countries vote rightists into head-of-state positions?

Did they panic - yet again - over nothing? Methinks the EU had an employment tempest in a teapot ...

 

I don't know if "immigrants are taking our jobs" is a topic in France, in Germany it's not really part of the public debate.
My impression is that most people are absoluely fine with other EU citizens coming to Germany to work and those unskilled farming jobs that mostly Poles and other Eastern Europeans do are jobs that others are not always keen on and many farmers say they wouldn't be able to keep going without their seasonal workes from East Europe.
Voting right wing leaders into head of state positions is not really a recent thing. Orban was voted into office in 2010 and these utterly bizarre Kaczynski brothers started 'recreating' Poland in 2005.
Re Unemployment in the EU, it depends what we look at. The rate among younger people (~18-24, I think that's what it's defined as) is very high in Spain, Italy and Greece, so, naturally, quite a few people from those countries - including Portugal - consider Germany an alternative.
https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/74795/umfrage/jugendarbeitslosigkeit-in-europa/

 

Nobody from the southern EU really wants to go work in Germany unless it is an absolute necessity. So, they will simply have to wait until the jobs are created in situ, that is, where they live. With the EU on the economic up-tick that should not take long.

But, I keep repeating the same notion, because I think it is dead right: The jobs that existed pre-Great_Recession aint comin' back. They are dead and gone. So, many laid off during that long recessionary period that the GR caused will find that they need new credentials to get back into the employed workforce. (And, frankly, I doubt that is going to be any great problem in any of those countries. Because I know that here in France such courses exist at the lower employment levels and they are at no cost.)

Let's also remember that it was only the wackos in Italy that (in the southern EU) got elected into a government because of the reaction to the migrants. Understandable - there has not been a "functional government" in Italy since Julius Caesar!

In Portugal, Spain and Greece that did not happen but in Austria, Poland and Slovakia, Right-wing nerds did make it into office and put up barbed-wire fences to keep them out. They reacted like Nazis. Why not reopen the concentration-camps and pack-'em in if the migrants ever dare cross into those countries (meaning Poland, Slovakia, Austria, etc.)

 

IF the income and job stability/security justifies getting those credentials. What we've seen in some fields is not everyone with certain credentials being able to enter a certain field. They don't get counted as unemployed, they just don't get the good job they were expecting to get with their credential.

Don't forget, electrified barbed-wire fences.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...ence-with-few-migrants-in-sight-idUSKBN1692MH