Quote from my Kidney: "Thank god for immigration"

I work professionally on the topics of migration, refugees, and technology, so when I recently had the opportunity to experience German specialist medicine I took the time to make mental notes of the demographics of the staff where I was treated. You'll see why, from my kidney's perspective, it's fantastic that there is immigration. However, my kidney can't talk and doesn't know what immigration policy is. It just wants to filter things and get them out of my body, so I'll speak on my kidney's behalf, drawing motivation from some from Ian Dunt's rhetoric (I highly recommend following that link).

Here's what happened: A kidney stone blocked the path between my kidney and my bladder, causing one of my kidneys to simply fill up. Luckily I have two kidneys, so the one that worked properly took over for the one that couldn't drain. Redundancy is great, but regardless having a blocked kidney is agonizingly painful. Dead serious: I would rather break my ribs again than have a blocked kidney.*

So off I went to the closest hospital where there was a urology department. They did something to relieve the pain and have since removed the kidney stone. My kidney is thrilled, and appreciates their work. During my stay, the pain killers made it possible to to wander around the unit (I did a lot of waiting for procedures), so I looked at things like the list of doctors in the unit and chatted with the nurses and support staff. For context: While I don't have numbers handy, what I gather from the media and wider public discourse is that Germany's health system is chronically understaffed at all levels. This is happening at a time when the centre- and far-right parties are bleating like assholes about too much immigration/too many refugees/etc etc.

So it was interesting to me to see how much of just one specialist unit in one small-ish hospital was comprised of either non-Germans or first generation Germans. Looking at the list of urologists, I'd hazard that 25% where either not Germans or first generation Germans. Among the nursing and support staff in the unit, I'd guess the number is quite a bit higher. If I go by what I hear in the media this is a staffing level that is probably just enough to keep things running assuming everyone makes their shifts, no one takes sick leave for an extended period, and there's never a surge in patients. What if suddenly all the non-German medical staff in Germany couldn't practice?

I imagine the loss of just specialist doctors would break Germany's healthcare system (this goes for a lot of other systems worldwide, like the United Kingdom's National Health Service). Even if we imagine a world where immigration policy carve outs would keep the level of doctors steady, the loss of nurses and support staff wouldn't break the health system. It would annihilate it.

If a federal state like Nordrhein-Westfalen where I live is working at the limit, I'd hazard to guess a loss in medical staff like this would be even more acute in a federal state like Saxony-Anhalt where there is a decreasing population. The radical right wing AfD party could well win enough seats in this year's state election in Saxony-Anhalt to govern alone, and one of their platforms is making it harder for non-German doctors and medical professionals to practice in that state.

Why is this stupid? With negative population growth you need more, not less, staff to move into the state to meet the demands placed on the health system - and since there are a limited number of native born German doctors, nurses, and support staff to go around a place like Saxony-Anhalt needs immigrants with medical training to move there. If AfD wins an absolute majority in Saxony-Anhalt and Ulrich Siegmund gets his way, if you live in a city smaller than Magdeburg or Halle you better hope you don't get a kidney stone (unless you fancy driving to Magdeburg, Halle, or farther, while experiencing the equivalent of birth pains hoping to find a urologist with access to the hospital facilities necessary to help you).

So this is why my kidney and me say thank god for immigrants. Thank god for people who move to a country (Germany) that can be terribly unfriendly in some ways (and lovely in many others), who learn a language that's difficult to master, work in a healthcare system that's pretty stressful, and still do the job well. Thank god for the immigrants building buildings, fixing sewage lines, laying fiber optic cable, delivering food. The list of ways our lives are improved by immigration and welcoming refugees are so myriad we can't see them because they're so deeply embedded in our everyday lives. So to go back to that Ian Dunt article at the start: Thank god for immigrants.

*Men, if you want to find out how painful it is to give birth, the doctors said the pain of a blocked kidney is similar in intensity. I reckon if more men experienced this, we'd have very different conversations about birth control and women's bodily rights.