The Empty Land - Scotland’s Lonely Search for People. Germany’s Future if the Course Remains

Kyle of Lochalsh - Late in the evening, five men stand in the hall of Scot West Seafoods. The light is harsh, the air smells of salt and metal. They sort live langoustines, slide them into white Styrofoam boxes, stick labels on them: Lyon, Genoa, Barcelona. Outside, wind blows in from the Atlantic, seagulls circle above the pier, and the operations manager, Xohan Dios, says with a quiet smile: “The only thing we need is people.” People - they are the new raw material of the Highlands. While in London populist parties gain ground with deportation plans, while Prime Minister Keir Starmer wants to cap immigration, the northwest lacks workers, caregivers, teachers, tradespeople. The workshop in Kyle of Lochalsh, not far from the bridge to the Isle of Skye, could employ twice as many workers, says Dios. But the company had to stop processing prawns and is considering moving its packaging operations entirely to Glasgow - four hours south, to where there are still people.

Across Britain, as in many Western countries, resistance to immigration is growing. Nigel Farage’s Reform U.K. is overtaking the Labour Party in the polls and promises to deport 600,000 migrants. Out of fear of a right-wing uprising, Starmer himself has toughened his rhetoric - and in doing so, he closes the door that places like Kyle of Lochalsh urgently need to keep open. Because while the country as a whole is growing, the fringes are bleeding out. Villages are emptying, schools are closing, nursing homes are searching for staff as if for a lost generation. Scotland’s First Minister John Swinney already spoke in the spring of a “significant threat to the nation’s prosperity.” The aging population, he said, cannot be cared for without immigration. Torcuil Crichton, the Labour MP for the Western Isles, even called for special work visas for remote regions. His words sound like a quiet protest against Westminster: “All of rural Scotland is facing a depopulation crisis.”

Crichton speaks of factories that no longer run at full capacity, of restaurants that open only four days a week because there is no staff to be found. The economy, he says, “is running at half speed in some sectors.” Since 2011, the population of the Western Isles has fallen by 5.5 percent - 26,200 people still live there. Young families are leaving because there is no childcare. Since 2007, 147 rural schools have been closed. The causes are intertwined: too few homes, poor transport links, too little medical staff. The pandemic sent many back to their home countries, and Brexit cut off access to European labor. “Everybody is looking for employees,” says Dios. “Hoteliers, restaurant owners, fishermen - everyone.”

Brexit, however inconspicuous it looks in the statistics, has cut a deep path through the valleys and bays of the Highlands. The end of freedom of movement has tightened the labor market, while tourism and fisheries still need people who stay. The number of newcomers from outside Europe rose briefly to almost 900,000 after 2020, but after political cutbacks fell to less than half by 2024. Swinney’s government in Edinburgh has little power to change that. Health, transport, taxes - yes. Migration - no. London controls the borders and, with them, the fate of the regions. The plan to introduce a “rural work visa pilot zone” failed in Westminster. Home Secretary Seema Malhotra declared there was “currently no legal basis” for such a solution.

The irony: Reform U.K., once despised in Scotland, now polls at around 20 percent approval. The mood is shifting, though not everywhere. On the islands from South Uist to Barra, those who have stayed hold tightly to one another. Sheila Peteranna, who runs the Borrodale Hotel, laughs tiredly when asked about young people. “The young ones don’t want to live here,” she says. “They want to go to concerts, to games, just out - all the things young people do.” Her own children are heading to the mainland.

The ferry service from Uig to Lochmaddy is unreliable, doctors are scarce, housing unaffordable. For five rural doctors, the island council had to offer salaries of up to £160,000 - double the usual rate. And even then, positions often remain vacant. On the Isle of Skye, Andrew Powrie, an employee of Scot West Seafoods, says that even locals can barely afford to buy property anymore. “For us, it’s almost impossible,” he says. “Everything goes to tourist landlords. For locals, it’s a nightmare.” Young people, he adds, “go to Glasgow, Edinburgh, or Aberdeen - to where there’s work and a life.” Between the mists of the Highlands, the future of a country reveals itself - one that believed too long that people were replaceable. The empty houses, the silent classrooms, the shuttered village pubs - they are not the result of structural change but of political error. While England closes itself off, the North knows: without immigration, it loses not only its workers but also its heartbeat.

“The only thing we need is people,” Xohan Dios had said. Perhaps it is the simplest sentence in a complicated debate. If the AfD in Germany were ever to take on governmental responsibility, it would raise the same question as in Scotland - and it would not be a political shift, but a cultural rupture. It would divide where there are already fissures and drive away what this country needs most: people, openness, education, trust. Those who stay would grow quieter. Those who leave would be the wrong ones. Entire regions - from the Ore Mountains to the Uckermark - could soon look like the empty valleys of Scotland: aged, embittered, abandoned.

Yet even without the AfD, a country can slide into paralysis. If Merz and Dobrindt continue to shape the direction of the CDU/CSU, fear of the AfD will only produce a copy of its politics. Instead of courage toward reality, they show distrust of people. They talk about migration as if it were a security threat, not the opportunity it is. The party that once helped rebuild the nation now relies on rejection where openness is needed. It is a policy of closed windows - and slow suffocation. While Scotland lacks workers, Germany drives them away. Those who come are expected to be grateful, those who stay are viewed with suspicion. That creates no protection, only stagnation. Germany talks about integration but practices exclusion. It talks about labor shortages but keeps raising the barriers. Too much tactic, too little direction. Too much distrust, too little reason. The result is a country that preaches modernization while fighting migration - and loses both.

Bureaucracy has long since become an enemy within. Anyone trying to build something in Germany loses weeks in a maze of forms. Anyone registering a solar installation despairs over regulations. The state has entangled itself in its own order. It must deregulate itself, at least temporarily, to be able to breathe again. The healthcare system only functions because people push themselves to the brink. Nurses work to the point of collapse, rural doctors disappear, hospitals close entire departments. This system is no longer a safety net, but a thin wire on which millions balance. It must be rethought from the ground up - not reformed, but rebuilt. Digitalization can no longer be a project but must become a mindset. Germany does not need another strategy paper but speed. It is not enough to promise Wi-Fi on trains while ministries still use fax machines. Those who fail to catch up now will lose - not in years, but in months. On climate policy, the country keeps playing for time, as if the Earth were a negotiation partner. The truth is simpler: without radical change, Germany will lose not only its forests and coasts but also its credibility. Climate protection is not a moral question but self-preservation.

Schools are often too old, their structures even older. Children learn in rooms where their grandparents were once bored. Curricula must be rethought. Education must begin anew - without ideology but with courage. The hurdles at universities must rise so that the trades can regain their strength. This is how balance is restored in a country that is losing it more and more - between knowledge and skill, thinking and doing.

The next twelve months will show where this road leads - in Scotland as in Germany. Whether it will be possible to hold the rudder before demographics, anger, and political inertia drag everything down. Scotland is fighting for people, Germany for direction. Both face the same question: who will shape the future - those who are afraid, or those who act. And as America’s shadow stretches further over Europe, it will become clear whether Germany can still resist it - or is already living beneath it.