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Germany faces a major crisis.

The German birth rate is considerably below whats needed to replace the population. German seniors, meanwhile, are living longer and drawing more on state resources for their pensions and health care.

There are basically two ways out of this demographic crisis. First of all, Germany could boost its birth rate.

The German state provides generous family leave and child-care policiesnot to mention the famous Kindergelt, the direct monthly payments of child benefitsand the fertility rate has indeed edged up over the years from 1.24 children per woman in 1994 to 1.57 today. But the trend in industrialized countries suggests that it will be difficult to push the rate much higher. The closest to the replacement rate of 2.1 children that any EU country gets is France at 1.88.

The second way out of Germanys crisis would be through immigration. The country could throw open its doors to people from all over the world to take unwanted and unfilled jobs, pay taxes, and support the increasingly aging population.

That is exactly what Germany did. The government of Angela Merkel, in 2015 and 2016, accepted over a million refugees from the Middle East and North Africa. Germany now has the fifth largest population of refugees in the world (after Turkey, Colombia, Pakistan, and Uganda).

This headline-grabbing decision, five years later, has been a remarkable success. The million refugees have prospered, reports the Center for Global Development.

Today, about half have found a job, paid training, or internship. On arrival, only about one percent declared having good or very good German language skills. By 2018, that figure had increased to 44 percentSuch successful integration also has impacted the local German population. For example, between 2008 and 2015, the number of employees in companies founded by migrants grew by 50 percent (to 1.5 million). It has also mobilized civil society. A survey by the Allensbach Institute for Public Opinion Research suggests that 55 percent of Germans have contributed to the integration of refugees since 2015.

In 2015, nearly everyone in the mediaGerman, European, internationalreferred to the millions of desperate people trying to get into Europe as an immigration crisis. They should have given it a different label: the immigration solution to the continents demographic crisis. Germany wisely chose to take advantage of this opportunity, while the countries of Eastern Europe by and large have embraced demographic suicide.

The naysayers had a field day back in 2015 with their predictions of political failure for Merkel and social chaos for Germany. Today, Germany continues to be the strongest European economy. It struggled during the pandemic, but is now rapidly scaling up its vaccinations. And the anti-immigrant backlash, represented by the far-right Alternative fur Deutschland, has ebbed, with the popularity of the party falling to 11 percent in recent polls. Meanwhile, with its liberal platform on immigration, the Green Party has surged to 25 percent and may well win the September 2021 elections.

Its useful to bear the German experience in mind as the United States once again tackles its own immigration crisis.

Immigrants Are a Gift

The United States has been the exception to the demographic rule for industrialized countries. The U.S. fertility rate, at 1.73, is also well below replacement. But because of a constant stream of immigrants, America has managed to grow at a healthy clip.

That began to change in the 2010s. According to the latest Census numbers, the United States grew at the second slowest rate over the last decade since the founding of the country. The culprits were a declining fertility ratethe birthrate has declined 19 percent since peaking in 2007and a reduction in the number of immigrants. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemicin terms of mortality, long-term disability, and anxiety over economic insecuritywill only make matters worse.

America has always depended on immigrants and undocumented workers. That dependency has only grown more acute over the years. Lets take a look at four critical sectors.

Between half and three-quarters of the farmworkers who ensure a supply of food to the American population are undocumented workers, and many of the rest are recent immigrants. The pandemic hit farmworkers and food manufacturing workers hard, and even the Trump administration had to acknowledge them as essential workers in reducing their risk of deportation (though not providing them additional protection against infection).

Even before the pandemic hit, the food sector faced a shortage of workers. In a 2017 survey of farmers by the California Farm Bureau, 55 percent reported labor shortages, and the figure was nearly 70 percent for those who depend on seasonal workers, according to The New York Times. Meanwhile, Congress (read: Republicans in the Senate) has failed to provide a legal framework for what remains an essential workforce, pandemic or no pandemic, though the recent Farm Workforce Modernization Act has a shot of passing with bipartisan support to provide a million undocumented farmworkers with legal status.

The health-care sector similarly depends on immigrants. Of the nearly 15 million people working in the health sector, about 18 percent are immigrants. COVID-19 is going to exact a heavy toll on this sector, though. According to a recent Washington Post poll, one in three health-care workers are thinking about exiting the profession: Many talked about the betrayal and hypocrisy they feel from the public they have sacrificed so much to savetheir clapping and hero-worship one day, then refusal to wear masks and take basic precautions the next, even if it would spare health workers the trauma of losing yet another patient.

Even without pandemic-related job changes, the United States has been looking at a major upcoming nursing shortage: over a million new RNs are needed by 2022. Nursing schools are just not keeping up with the demand created by retirement.

Manufacturing, challenged by foreign competition and outsourcing, has infamously declined in the United States. Despite the spread of automation, this sector too needs more workers. There are currently 500,000 job openings, and one recent report estimates 2.1 million unfilled manufacturing jobs by 2030.

Then theres domestic work, one of the fastest growing sectors of the U.S economy. Home health aides, child-care providers, housecleaners: the vast majority are women and more than one-third are foreign-born. By 2026, care jobs will constitute one of the fastest growing professions in the country, and we will need more caregivers and nannies than we have ever needed before, writes the National Domestic Workers Alliance. Home-based elder care is already the single fastest growing occupation in our entire economy due to the rapidly growing aging population.

Home health aides directly take care of aging Americans. But the United States needs younger workers across all professions to keep alive federal programs like Social Security that support aging Americans. The cohort of people aged 55 to 64 grew by 70 percent between 2000 and 2016 while the working-age population expanded by only 15 percent. Thats bad news for people looking to retire in the future on their Social Security benefits.

Fortunately, immigrants have come to the rescue. They are overwhelmingly working age and have a higher participation rate in the labor force than the native born. Their contributions to Social Security help keep the system afloat. The undocumented have been even more generous, providing an estimated $12 billion to the Social Security system through payroll taxes in 2010 alone (without much hope of ever drawing from the system themselves).

Even with these contributions, however, Social Security is still expected to face a major funding shortfall by 2035 under current projections. One answer: more immigrants!

If this story were a fairy tale, the immigrant would be the goose that lays the golden egg. Immigrants didnt just build America. They are essential to the health and prosperity of the country today. Immigrants are the gift that keeps on giving.

Whenever a goose starts laying golden eggs, however, someone invariably starts talking about wringing the poor animals neck and impoverishing everyone involved.

The Politics of Immigration

The Republican Party remade itself into an anti-immigrant force before Donald Trump entered the political scene. Tea Party insurgents called for closing the border with Mexico. David Brat, an unknown economist, ousted House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a 2014 Virginia race by hammering at the immigration issue. Trump, however, took immigration and ran with it, promising to build a new wall along the southern border, shut down travel from predominantly Muslim countries, and make it nearly impossible for refugees and asylum-seekers to find haven in the United States.

Because of Trumps success in turning his extreme positions into federal policy, immigration largely disappeared as an electoral issue in 2020. The Republican Party focused instead on economic attacks (Biden as a socialist) and cultural broadsides (the perennial racist and misogynist dog whistles).

But with the Democrats back in the White House and in control of Congress, immigration will likely become again a major campaign issue in the mid-term elections. The economy is on an upswing, the pandemic is waning, and the Biden administration has been competent and relatively scandal-free. Without an actual platform of their own since they decided to turn their party into a personality cult, the Republicans will inevitably characterize the influx of people over the border as a crisis and the presidents biggest failure.

The numbers at the border have indeed increased, with the influx for April near a 20-year high. Despite the Republican Party criticisms, these numbers are not the result of Biden administration policies. The number of people apprehended at the border, for instance, spiked in 2018, under Trump, at more than 850,000, which obviously had nothing to do with Biden.

The surge so far this year is largely seasonal, a result of pent-up demand from the COVID-19 border closures, and a function of all the applicants stranded south of the border by Trumps Remain in Mexico policy. The numbers already appear to be plateauing. And the number of unaccompanied minors being held in Border Patrol facilities dropped dramatically in the last week.

The Biden administration has reversed many of Trumps policies, canceling funding for the border wall, reversing the Muslim travel ban, and dismantling the Remain in Mexico program. Without any fanfare, the president also allowed the ban on guest worker visas to expire at the end of March. Pictures of joyful family reunifications at the border are now replacing Trump-era images of children separated from the parents.

The administration has also pledged to address the root causes of migration by funding initiatives in Central America that will reduce violence and corruption, stabilize economies, and address humanitarian crises. That, of course, is easier said than done given the authoritarian leadership in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. Tasked with tackling this issue, Vice President Kamala Harris is well aware of the folly of funneling aid into corrupt governments, and she is reportedly lining up civil society representatives to meet on upcoming visits to the region. A long-term strategy of fostering political and economic transformation in the region, however, wont win any points with Republicans or most voters in the United States in the short term.

The recent kerfuffle around refugee policy illustrates the political stakes.

As a candidate, Biden promised to bring U.S. policies on refugees and asylum in line with international standards and raise the annual ceiling to more or less the level of the Obama years. Because of a failure to file the necessary paperwork, however, the number of refugees admitted into the United States in the first months of the Biden administration remained extremely low. Because refugees are often conflated in the public mind with immigrantsand the administrations immigration policy was getting poor marks in the pollsthe president tried to get away with suppressing the number of incoming refugees. Challenged by members of his own party, Biden again reversed himself, returning to the previous promise of a cap for the remainder of this year of 62,500 and an annual ceiling of 125,000 for 2022.

The back-and-forth on refugee policy is an unusual deviation from an otherwise consistent set of policies coming from the administration. Its a sign that immigration will continue to be subject to finger-in-the-wind calculations rather than rational debate. Its a shame that it will require enormous political courage to embrace policies that are in the best interest of the United States, whether from the point of view of the labor force, the sustainability of the social welfare system, or the livelihoods of the newest residents of the country.

Republicans, with their steadfast commitment to political divisiveness and firearms, love to shoot themselves in the foot. Theres no reason for the rest of the country to follow suit. Maybe a delegation of Syrian-Germans can come to America on a speaking tour to explain how a crisis is really an opportunity.

Read more here:
Immigrants to the Rescue - FPIF - Foreign Policy In Focus

Earlier this year, the pandemic left me ditching the massive traditional ceremony of my dreams to plan a Disney wedding I never thought I could afford.

Originally, my fianc and I had planned a 400-person wedding in Oklahoma City with all our friends and family. But amid the pandemic and changing state guidelines, we cut our guest list down to 27 people, and I started looking into something that I'd never thought was a possibility: a wedding at Walt Disney World.

Planning a Disney wedding was nothing like I imagined, and I was blown away by the venue, food, event, details, and overall cost.

Keep reading for the biggest things that surprised me about planning my dream Disney wedding on a budget.

When I started planning, I (naturally) envisioned Cinderella's castle. But most of my guests aren't huge Disney fans like me, and I didn't want my ceremony to completely feel like it was at a theme park.

The castle is also one of the most expensive venues, with a starting fee of $25,000, which would eat up our budget.

But there are over 100 Disney venues to choose from, and they start at $2,500. Spots such as Fort Wilderness, Luau Pointe, and the Tree of Life which has a venue fee starting at $4,500 were definitely more in our budget.

We chose to have our welcome dinner at Tamu Tamu Courtyard in our favorite park, Animal Kingdom. For the ceremony, we wanted something with natural views and plenty of florals, so we looked at some of Disney's resort locations.

Sea Breeze Point at Disney's Boardwalk, which overlooks Crescent Lake, was a top contender, but we wanted to get married in the park. Eventually, we landed on Italy Isola in Epcot, which cost $4,500 and included rental fees, chairs, a musician, and a sound system.

We were also lucky to have a date during the park's International Flower and Garden Festival, which meant we could enjoy all of the flora in the park at no extra expense.

The biggest drawback of an in-park ceremony is that couples must work around park hours, which means choosing a super early (about 6 a.m.) or late (around 10 p.m.) time slot.

But the World Showcase in Epcot, where my venue was located, is an exception to the time rule. Since the World Showcase opens at 11 a.m., ceremonies start at 9 a.m.

For most venues, including ours, menus are 100% customizable. We went with a standard one for our reception and then modified items based on what we wanted.

For example, we got the famous Mickey-shaped waffles and turned them into an action station, where the chef cooks them and adds toppings of guests' choice at the reception. We also had action-station crepes and omelets, plus a bar for mashed potato and macaroni.

I also wanted to share my favorite food from the parks with my family. Fortunately, couples can request any food on a Disney property. The culinary team either re-creates it or provides a chef's interpretation of it customizations weren't pricey either; we just paid based on the costs of the items we chose.

Some of the food we served included Sanaa's bread service, Jiko's cauliflower bisque and lamb shank, Tiffins' Lion King dessert, Liberty Tree Tavern's Ooey Gooey Toffee Cake, and churros drizzled with Oreos. The Grey Stuff from Be Our Guest was our cake filling.

I also love that my husband and I can visit the Disney restaurants in the future to enjoy some of the food that was at our wedding.

Although Disney food was a focus for us, the chefs aren't limited to park menus.

Couples can give the chefs a family recipe to re-create, which we briefly considered. I think it's a sweet way to bring a piece of home to a destination wedding or honor someone who has died.

Since we had a small guest list, we definitely splurged on extra events, such as a "ride mix-in" that allowed our guests to go on a private ride after the welcome dinner. It cost under $20 a person, and I was charged only for people who went on the ride.

We chose Flight of Passage, so our guests were escorted to the ride with no wait time. Plus, they got to experience Pandora at night in an empty park.

After our wedding ceremony, we had a dessert party. Typically, these events are used for watching Disney's fireworks and eating desserts. Because of the pandemic, Disney wasn't doing fireworks, so we adjusted our plan.

We also took into consideration the Florida heat. We shortened our reception to only brunch, and then later in the evening, once the weather cooled down, we held a party for dancing, cake, and desserts.

This allowed our guests to go back to their hotels and rest before the party portion of our event. In between events, my bridal party even headed over to Universal Studios for a few hours.

We held our dessert party at Whitehall Patio at the Grand Floridian, which featured the famous Monorail flying right over us.

For a higher cost, we could've added a farewell brunch, a bridesmaid tea party (you can invite Alice and the Mad Hatter), and a dessert cruise to our wedding.

I'm a very type A sort of planner, so it was really hard for me to just trust the Disney wedding coordinators to do their job.

Once I gave them my plans and ideas, I didn't hear from the team for a while, which was kind of terrifying.

I felt like something was bound to go wrong I've heard so many horror stories about wedding planners. But nothing did, and the few times that plans had to be adjusted, my coordinator already had a solution before contacting me, and everything was resolved in a quick email exchange.

Overall, the planning process was delightfully hands-off, which let me focus on the fun stuff, such as my menu, without stressing over the little details.

I easily hit Disney's wedding minimum of $10,000. Beyond that, my planner helped me use the rest of my budget in a smart way.

Since Disney was all-in-one planning, I was able to look at my overall budget and cut non-priority items, and I kept only the must-haves throughout the entire process. For example, the Ooey Gooey Toffee Cake was putting me over budget, so we removed one item of decor from the dessert party that I didn't even notice was gone, and I was back on track.

The coordinators were also helpful when it came to making affordable swaps. When I told my florist I love white roses but wanted to be cost-effective, she designed a bouquet with white florals that captured the essence of what I wanted and stayed within my price range.

Getting married at Disney isn't necessarily cheap, but it is much more cost-effective than I'd imagined. My mind was definitely blown by Disney's pricing models.

Above all, our intimate Disney wedding was much cheaper than what we were going to spend on our larger, standard wedding.

At home in Oklahoma City, venues we looked at started at $5,000 so I definitely feel like we came out on top with our $4,500 venue fee at Epcot. Disney's venue fee also included a violinist, chairs, an audio system with a sound technician, and a planner which would've been thousands of more dollars for a traditional wedding.

Let me be clear: Getting married in front of Cinderella's castle with a big guest list is certainly going to cost you, but Disney has a lot of venues that I felt were cost-effective.

Plus, we got the famous Epcot ball as our backdrop.

See the original post:
My Disney World wedding cost $25,000. Here are 9 things that surprised me the most while planning it. - Insider

For the most part, President Joe Biden has begun his term as a relatively popular leader. FiveThirtyEight's averages of the latest national surveys show the Democrat with a 54% approval rating -- a level of support his immediate predecessor never reached during his White House tenure.

In theory, Biden's support would be even higher, but in a time of intense political polarization, so many Republican voters reflexively oppose a Democratic president that more robust poll numbers are nearly impossible. That said, as HuffPost noted in an interesting item, "a mass movement in opposition" to Biden simply hasn't materialized yet.

At this point in his presidency, Obama faced the Tea Party revolt. On April 15, 2009 Tax Day thousands of protesters took to the streets in cities across the U.S. to demonstrate against high taxes and increased government spending following the Great Recession. In Washington, D.C., a crowd even forced a temporary shutdown of the White House after they hurled tea bags onto the executive mansion's lawn. Republicans insist the same type of backlash is coming for Biden if he continues down the path he's on.

Maybe. But it's worth pausing to appreciate the qualitative and quantitative differences between 2021 and 2009.

NBC News has been conducting national polling for many years, asking Americans whether they believe government should be doing more to solve problems, or whether they believe government is doing too many things that should be left to the private sector and individuals. In the mid-1990s -- around the time then-President Bill Clinton said the "era of big government is over" -- most of the public said it wanted the public sector to do less, not more.

At this point 12 years ago, meanwhile, NBC News found the public largely divided on the issue -- 47% wanted government to do more, while 46% wanted the opposite -- and in the months that followed, opponents of government activism gradually built an enduring advantage.

But in the latest national poll, released last week, NBC News found 55% of the public wants government to do more, not less. This is hardly the basis for a Tea Party-style backlash.

Similarly, Gallup released a report in March that explained, "The latest update shows that 54% of Americans say the government should do more to solve our country's problems, while 41% say the government is trying to do too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses. This is the highest percentage choosing the 'government should do more option since Gallup began asking the question in 1992."

It's against this backdrop that the latest surveys pointed to roughly two-thirds support for the White House's American Relief Plan, American Jobs Plan, and American Families Plan.

Republicans may be waiting for a broad national backlash to Biden's popular proposals, but given public attitudes, such a reaction appears unlikely to grow organically.

Excerpt from:
Why Biden hasn't seen a Tea Party-style backlash (so far) - MSNBC

Lola's Traveling Tea Party in Seattle delivers English or Filipino-inspired tea boxes to doorsteps. #k5evening

SEATTLE If you want to have a traditional tea party without leaving your house, a family-run business in Seattle has just what you need.

Lolas Traveling Tea Party offers English and Filipino-style tea menus, and delivers to doorsteps.

"Lola means 'grandmother' in tagalog, and she's actually our mom. She's the inspiration for us and it sort of was a passion project for her, said CEO and Culinary Director Annaliza Valdez. "We have the traditional English menu which is just your classic tea sandwiches and scones, and then we also wanted to incorporate our heritage and infuse Filipino flavors.

She operates the business with three other women, connected by family, friendship, and a shared love of laughter.

"I think it's a natural Filipino thing to just have jokes at the ready, said Creative Director Michelle Trenter.

Each box is stocked with handmade delicacies, meticulously decorated and presented with coordinating napkins, flatware, flowers and tea.

What makes the experience truly unique is the selection of island flavors.

"Longganisa is a sweet sausage for the Filipino community, Trenter said.

There are also ube scones, Filipino steam buns, pandan shortbread cookies, and coconut cakes dipped in white chocolate and covered with toasted coconut.

"We enjoy baking the desserts and making the savory goods and being able to share it with everyone, said Procurement Director Marivic Quintanilla.

Just as carefully as they are prepared, each tea box is also personally delivered to customers doorsteps.

"I think it's important for us to celebrate who we are, Valdez said. "Part of Filipino culture is sharing food. The first thing a family member will ask you when you visit is, 'Have you eaten yet?' That is what we want to give to everybody - that feeling of giving love through food."

Lola's tea boxes are available for holidays and during pop-ups. The next one is scheduled for May 15th.

KING 5's Evening celebrates the Northwest. Contact us: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Email.

Go here to see the original:
Celebrate tea time infused with Filipino flavors - KING5.com

Dear Editor,

In his speech to Congress on April 28, President Biden asserted that we the people are the government. You and I.

With this proclamation, he intends for the nation to turn away from the course it adopted when Ronald Reagan declared government the problem at our doorstep. Biden reminds us that the people have powerthat government can be good or bad, effective or ineffective, according to the choices the people make in their votes for representation.

We the people never united in our views, of course allowed the Reaganite standards to dominate economic and political life until the hint of a course correction in Obamas 2008 election, which produced the significant Tea Party backlash two years later. Trumps election and the unification of a radical Republican party generated a surge of counter-activism that led the country to a different choice.

People power, ever stirring and always in tension with its differences, now pushes President Biden to think big.

Bidens ambitious agendathe passed COVID relief bill, the proposed American Jobs and Families Plans aims to harness government to meet peoples essential needs, neglected far too long: new jobs built on a response to climate change; economic equality that restores a thriving and broad-based middle class; racial justice that creates equal opportunities for building wealth and lives lived in safety and respect; subsidies for health care, child care, and education that give everyone a better chance to lead healthy, happy, productive lives.

If Bidens proposed legislation passes, even in part, radical Republicans in Congress will find it difficult to convince Americans that government cannot work to serve the peoples needs.

We the people do have the power and the instrument if we speak up, speak out, act. Pressure our representatives, campaign, vote. We can make our government work for us, the people.

Tom Denton

Highland, N.Y.

Read this article:
Letter: We, the Government | Opinion | dailyfreeman.com - The Daily Freeman