Official statistics indicate the number of Indians went from 3,579 in 2014 to 41,472 in 2014. That represents a 1,059 percent increase in 10 years, and accounts for the largest immigrant influx to the city during that time in terms of growth. However, in terms of raw numbers, Turks are still the largest group of citizens with foreign citizenship overall, representing 109,585, while Ukrainians are in second with 70,501, according to RBB.
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| An Indian businessman waits for customers inside his shop in the Dong Xuan Center Center, Berlin's largest Asian market, Germany, Monday, April 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi) |
Unlike immigrants from the Middle East and Africa, Indians are not routinely featured in the daily barrage of murders, rape, stabbings, and robberies. However, that does not necessarily mean that a massive influx of Indians is not going to be met with anti-immigration sentiment — at least if it continues at its current pace.
Germany may have to confront the issue of mass immigration from India very soon, as the previous government signed the German-Indian migration agreement of December 2022 to promote tens of thousands of Indians coming to the country every year.
Outside of Berlin, Indians also make up a huge number of newcomers, totaling 274,910 nationals as of November 2024, according to the Central Register of Foreign Nationals. India is ranked fifth overall in terms of countries where more people immigrated than emigrated, ranking behind Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan, and Turkey. Many of these immigrants work in the IT and healthcare sectors; however, many also come to study or for family reasons. In 2024, the number of Indian students surged 40 percent compared to the average seen in previous years, meaning that a soaring number of university spots are going to this demographic group.
What can Germany expect from mass immigration from India?
Other countries, and their reaction to mass immigration from India, may showcase what is in store for Germany and other European countries that head down this path, which has mostly been an Anglo phenomenon.
Canada is a good example. Indians are the top non-European group that has immigrated to the country, but there, anti-immigration sentiment is soaring. Competition for jobs is now fierce, with an influx of foreigners now competing for dwindling jobs.
The chart documenting Canada’s net immigration totals from 1952 to 2025 highlights the incredible surge of immigration into Canada in just the last few years, with the lion’s share of newcomers arriving from India.
The housing crisis will only get worse
This influx of immigrants, while not necessarily a point solely against Indians, has made the Canadian housing market extraordinarily unaffordable. Indians just so happen to be the largest group, and their numbers, left unchecked, appear to grow nearly exponentially due to family reunification and other measures. Canada is not the only one, but also the U.S., the U.K., and Australia have all seen incredible demographic transformation in recent years, with Indians playing a key role. In London, for instance, Indians are now the top property holders, even pulling ahead of native Brits.
In Australia, Indians are the top buyers of housing in new estates, outpacing Australians by a large margin. The situation is so bad that experts are calling for a “wartime response” to the housing crisis.
“The future of our country in terms of our economics is based upon whether we can house a growing population and we can’t,” said Metricon Homes CEO Brad Duggan.
“I think we need a wartime response. When we look back over the last three years of this government, we’ve not had a wartime response,” he added.
If Germany continues on the path of Indian immigration, housing prices will continue to soar and the property that is available will be bought up by Indians en masse, if Britain and other Western countries are any guide. In fact, Indian media openly writes that real estate is by far the most favored form of investment by Indians, which is very unlike Germans, who have historically been very adverse to buying their own property. Germans have the highest share of renters in the entire EU. This model worked for many decades because renting was so affordable, but that has quickly changed in the last two decades.
Indians are not to blame for this development, but increasing numbers of Indians will only greatly exacerbate the problem that already exists. Germans will be increasingly priced out of the market and will find it harder to own property, have children, and raise families, at which point, the government will claim it needs more immigration to fix the native labor shortage.
Indians are pros at taking advantage of grants and benefits
Competition for housing is not the only factor; there will also be competition at all levels of society, which is not always guaranteed to be a good thing. Indians have excelled in many facets of business in the West, but in many ways, due to laws favoring minorities, there has not always been a level playing field. At least some of them have been accused of exploiting grants and interest-free loan programs in the United States for minorities, which were originally meant for groups like Blacks, to buy up property, business, and hotel chains. They now own 60 percent of all hotels and motels in the United States.
In fact, the internet is rife with videos making “tutorials” on how to take advantage of these special loan programs, which are often targeted at minorities. These programs offer low-interest loans, and sometimes even outright grants, to start businesses. Straight White people are often excluded from these programs or do not have as good loan conditions as groups such as Indians.
It is important to note that even previous waves of refugees are calling out what they say are people now coming to Canada who are just taking advantage of the system, and are not actual refugees.
The Sudanese refugee immediately points to an Indian influencer talking about the Canadian government handing out money “for doing nothing.” These types of videos are rampant across the web, and not only do they showcase blatant opportunism at the expense of Canadian taxpayers, but also highlight how these programs for marginalized people are exploited by very recent newcomers.
India’s divisions also migrate West
India is a country with incredible poverty, racism and discrimination, both through its caste system, and due to religious hatred — often between Hindus and Muslims but also Sikhs. In many cases, these divisions carry over to Western countries.
Even the liberal media acknowledges that caste-based discrimination is alive and well in the Indian community after they move to the West. India is one of the most unequal societies in the world, and this mindset is difficult to extirpate even within the West.
As the Guardian writes: “The Hindu caste system, which is assigned at birth and determines occupations and social status, is made up of four tiers, with Brahmins or priests and teachers at the top and Dalits at the bottom. Dalits are often tasked with scavenging and street cleaning, are considered ‘untouchable’ and are outcasts from Indian society.”
In fact, the situation is so prevalent in the United States that caste-based discrimination now has to be banned in American cities, such as Seattle. A BBC special documents its prevalence in the United States.
India also features a number of ethnic and religious groups, with tensions growing between Muslims, Sikhs, Dalits, and others. This tension often leads to explosive violence outside of India as well. In one case, for example, an Indian student was ordered to leave Australia for a series of attacks on Sikhs. In return, he was greeted as a hero upon returning to India.
“International student Vishal Jood was asked to leave Australia after being linked to a series of attacks on Sikhs. Rather than opprobrium, on his return he was greeted by a roadshow and politicians calling him a patriot. Critics who accuse Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP party of fuelling Hindu nationalism in India warn Jood’s case shows how the problem has spread to overseas diasporas,” wrote the SCMP.
TRT World also wrote an entire article about the topic of racism and hatred between Sikhs and Indians in Australia, entitled: “Sikhs fall victim to rising Hindu nationalism in Australia.”
Germany and other continental European countries that embrace immigration from India will likely see these same conflicts, on top of the already existing rivalries between other migrant groups, whether it is Russians versus Ukrainians, or Turks versus Kurds.
Will Indians fix the Western healthcare system?
Governments across the Western world see India as a solution to the lack of labor, including the healthcare sector. The reality is that the “immigration solution” for national healthcare crisis seen in Western countries has been a mirage.
Canada is perhaps the best example of this, as it has seen the highest rate of Indian immigration in the West, with many of these Indians heralded as a solution to a healthcare worker shortage. One out of ten doctors is now Indian in the country. However, Canada’s hospitals are experiencing their worst crisis yet, with wait times hitting a record high.
“In a recently published Fraser Institute report, “Waiting Your Turn: Wait Times for Healthcare in Canada, 2024 Report,” Canada’s median healthcare wait time hits 30 weeks, the longest ever recorded.
“This is 222 percent longer than the 9.3 week wait in 1993,” reads one report.
All of the Indian doctors and healthcare workers, not to mention all the other immigrant groups, were supposed to improve the system, but it only appears to be getting worse. This all comes at a time when the number of doctors per 100,000 has actually soared higher
“Per 100,000 residents, there are now nearly twice as many doctors in Alberta and across Canada compared to 50 years ago. From 1971 to 2022, Canada’s number of physicians (per 100,000) has grown from 125 to 247, while Alberta’s has grown from 123 to 244,” according to the Business Council of Alberta.
Undoubtedly, Canada is a much older population now, but the massive increase in doctors per capita should, in theory, mean this older population is well cared for. It could be that doctors in previous decades were more competent, more efficient, and better able to handle patient volumes, but the exact reason remains unclear.
As one report notes, Canada has more doctors than ever before, and then tries to explain “why it doesn’t feel like it.“
However, poor communication between diverse groups, including a lack of native-language skills, can cost valuable time and lead to serious patient treatment mistakes. As one major study from Britain’s NHS notes, as reported by the BBC, language barriers between staff and patients are adding up to half a working day per week to working hours, and also reducing to quality of care.
In fact, much like America, where Indians are the number one source of foreign doctors, Canada is seeing a historic decline in health, with life expectancy now falling rapidly for the last three years. Canadian news outlet Global News writes:
Statistics Canada released its report Deaths, 2022 on Monday, showing that the life expectancy of Canadians fell to 81.3 years in 2022 from 81.6 years in 2021. The decline was more prominent among females than men, the data showed.
“This is the first time this has ever happened,” Dr. Doug Manuel, a senior scientist at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, told Global News. “We’ve hardly had any declines, we have had a recession, but never like this, not three years in a row. It’s a pretty big event.”
“This is a measure of how our health is doing as Canadians. And it means that we’re doing worse.”
In a list of 20 OECD countries, Canada ranked second to last. In fact, Denmark, which is notorious for its strict immigration policies, was in first place, tied with the Netherlands, which also features a relatively smaller share of non-EU migrants compared to many other Western EU countries, amounting to 11.7 percent.
Another report from this year states: “A new report says Canada’s healthcare system has fallen behind international peers in access to care, equity and wait times, outperforming only the United States.”
Canada is not the only example. Australia also provides ample warning to any Western country that wants to take in more Indians..Australia now has some of the worst medical metrics in its history, all at a time when Indians increasingly make up a larger and larger share of the country’s medical workforce. As the Australian Medical Association (AMA) notes:
Australian Medical Association President Professor Steve Robson said a lack of capacity in hospitals had led to people waiting years for essential surgery, long waits in EDs and ambulance ramping.
“Australia’s public hospital performance is at its worst since the AMA started tracking the data 20 years ago,” Professor Robson said.
“Public hospitals are inadequately funded and resourced. The outcome is ambulance ramping, patients spending far too long in EDs and a surgery waiting list that is nudging close to one million people.”
“We are seeing more and more Australians die waiting for these essential surgeries, with more than 12,000 deaths in 2022–23, up from 9,000 the year before. While these deaths may not have been because of delayed surgery, it is an alarming increase.”
This all comes despite record immigration to Australia, of which Indians make up a significant percentage. They are now the second-largest immigrant group in the country and by far the largest contributor to doctors with a foreign background, making up approximately 22 percent of all doctors from a foreign country.
It should also come as no surprise that an influx of Indians to a country to work in healthcare is not a panacea, as India’s own healthcare system is in shambles. This is not a racist screed against Indians, but simple data. Some 2.4 million Indians die of treatable conditions every year, meaning India is facing the worst outcome among all 136 nations studied for a report published in The Lancet.
In addition, “poor care quality leads to more deaths than insufficient access to healthcare–1.6 million Indians died due to poor quality of care in 2016, nearly twice as many as due to non-utilization of healthcare services (838,000 persons).” reads a report from the Independent.
If anything, those qualified workers who are arriving in the West are essentially being robbed from India’s own struggling population. Even if one were to acknowledge that Indians are a net benefit to the Western healthcare systems, and that is far from clear, there is no doubt that the most qualified of these doctors are being taken from people who are dying by the millions.
Those that do come often have questionable English-language skills, and as far as Germany is concerned, the medical system is already facing a complete crisis involving foreign doctors and nurses being unable to speak German properly — not to mention the frightening lack of skills featured among foreign doctors.
In short, Western countries like Germany may be better off slightly lowering the admissions standards for their own population for medical schools rather than allowing more foreigners to arrive, often with questionable certifications and a worrying command of the German language.
Concerns about diploma mills and fraudulently obtained diplomas are rife in India, including for medical diplomas, as has been documented. Many cases, however, likely go undetected. India is a chaotic country, where often anything goes for the right price, including masses of underage girls trafficked and sold into sexual slavery, all conducted relatively out in the open.
Undoubtedly, many Indians will come to Germany, and many of them will work hard, but the sheer numbers that have arrived in Western countries present a major challenge going into the future.
Many Western nations see India as a solution, including Germany. The population is enormous while European populations are shrinking. Most European leaders, even on the right, are dead-set on more immigration, as long as its legal, as they try to prop up GDP, boost the pool of consumers, boost housing prices and construction, and keep the ponzi scheme going that represents much of what the modern economy has now become.