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Quartz You might call it migration schadenfreude. As Europe’s economy falters, immigrants are streaming into Germany. And that’s happening just as Germany is confronting an acute shortage of labor. This tide of immigrants is a relatively new thing for the country. The difficulty of mastering German and the perception of administrative hurdles, among other factors, had kept the country’s immigration rate the lowest among Europe’s advanced economies. But after staying flat between 2006 and 2009, immigration to Germany jumped 40% in 2011 to total 840,000, increasing another 15% year-on-year in the first half of 2012, according to a paper (pdf) published last month by Spain’s Foundation for Applied Economic Studies. Of course, Germany is Europe’s largest national economy and has fared much better than almost all of its European peers since the onset of the financial crisis. But the spike in immigration to Germany is not simply due to people fleeing their ailing economies.

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