In that period, foreigners increased to 36 percent, reported the regional Neue Westfälische daily. Among children and adolescents, the proportion of inhabitants with a migration background is now more than 50 percent.
In addition, the study provided information about the living conditions of those in Bielefeld with and without a migration background. Almost half of those with a migrant background lived in a household with “families with two parents and one child” in 2016.
For Germans, only one in four lived in traditional family home. Some 43 percent of them lived in either single households or multi-person households with no children.
The survey also revealed that foreigners in Bielefeld are more likely to be unemployed than Germans. Around one in three unemployed in Bielefeld had no German passport in 2016.
There are also differences in education. Around 44 percent of young people with German nationality leave school with a high school diploma. In contrast, only 18 percent of foreign adolescents succeeded in doing so.
The city has a population of over 330 000 and is home to a significant number of internationally operating companies.
Bielefeld is also famous for the Bielefeld Conspiracy, which satirises conspiracy theories by claiming that Bielefeld does not exist. This concept has been used in the town’s marketing and was alluded to by Chancellor Angela Merkel.
This latest study on migrants in the city however, is not a conspiracy theory.
Die Welt reported that, according to the Federal Statistical Office, in Western Germany, 42 percent of children under the age of six now come from a migrant background. And for two years already, the Federal Statistical Office has recorded many more permanent departures of German citizens. In other words, Germany has lost more than 700 000 citizens in just two years, compounding the ratio of foreign births.
Germany has received more immigrants since the 1960s than the US, the classic “immigration country”.
Distinguished historian Victor Davis Hanson recently noted: “Judged by the great historical determinants of civilizational power — fuel, energy, education, demography, political stability, and military power — Europe is waning. It is spending a mere 1.4 percent of its collective GDP on defense… And with a fertility rate of less than 1.6 percent, Europe is slowly shrinking and aging — hence the short-sighted immigration policy of Angela Merkel who apparently sees immigration also as a solution to the demography crisis and a shortcut to low-cost labor.”
French author Michel Houellebecq said in his speech at the Frank Schirrmacher Prize ceremony: “[T]he advance of Islam is just beginning, because demography is on its side and because Europe, which has stopped having children, has entered a process of suicide. And it is not really a slow suicide. Once you have arrived at a birth rate of 1.3 or 1.4, then in reality things go very fast.”