Do ageing countries need newcomers?

Many rich countries share a demographic fact: their populations are ageing. People live longer, families are smaller and, in many places, fewer workers pay for the pensions and care of more retired people. Some governments have begun to answer with their immigration rules. In April 2019, Japan created a new residence status for skilled workers, which it presented as a response to serious labour shortages (1). Germany passed a skilled immigration law whose stages came into force between November 2023 and June 2024; it introduced an opportunity card, which allows some people to come to the country to look for work.

The argument for newcomers is easy to state. Hospitals, care homes, building sites and farms already struggle to find staff. People who arrive to fill these jobs pay taxes, spend money and sometimes start businesses. Without them, services shrink, and the burden on those who remain grows heavier. A country's age structure changes slowly, but its effects are felt quickly: a shortage of carers is noticed by families long before it appears in a statistic.

Yet immigration cannot be the whole answer. Migrants grow old too, so they offer a boost, not a permanent solution. Recruiting nurses or doctors abroad can also drain poorer countries of the professionals that they trained at great cost, a loss often called brain drain (2). A rich country that fills its wards with foreign nurses may be solving its own problem by creating one elsewhere.

Public opinion complicates the picture. Many citizens accept foreign workers in principle but worry about housing, schools and the pressure on public services. Politicians therefore face a dilemma: businesses ask for workers while voters ask for control. Schemes based on points or on job offers are attempts to square (3) that circle, by choosing who comes according to skills rather than chance. Whether they calm public fears depends less on the mechanism than on whether voters see results.

Integration is where policies are won or lost. Economic need does not teach a language or find a flat. The German reform also made it easier to recognise foreign vocational qualifications, a sensible step, since a trained nurse who ends up stacking shelves is a loss for everyone. Countries that want workers must also be ready to offer language courses, fair recognition of diplomas and decent housing.

Immigration is neither a miracle cure nor a threat in itself. It is a tool, and its results depend on how well a country organises welcome, training and housing. An ageing society that wants newcomers must be ready to treat them as future neighbours rather than as temporary labour.