Europa : A land of immigrants, but do Germans know?

25.06.2004: International Herald Tribune

By Richard Bernstein

Always beware the word "historic," which is often a politician's attempt to give an ordinary gesture a gloss of grandeur. And, indeed, there might have been a bit of that when Germany's interior minister, Otto Schily, declared the hard-won agreement on a new immigration law for Germany — the result of four years of ideological bickering — to be a "historic turning point." . "It's psychologically an important event," Kay Hailbronner of Constance University, and one of Germany's leading experts on immigration, said a bit more cautiously. Ratcheting down the enthusiasm still farther was Volker Beck, a Green Party parliamentarian, who found it a bit "ridiculous" to call the proposed new law historic, but felt that nonetheless that it was "a modernization of our immigration legislation." . And yet, one element in the picture does seem certainly important, even historic, particularly for a country whose population is already 9 percent foreign. The new legislation, assuming it is now passed into law by the Parliament, will officially and for the first time recognize Germany as a country of immigration. Indeed, Germany, the law says, will be a country of immigration permanently in the future. . To anybody who has wandered the streets of Kreuzberg or Neukölln, two heavily immigrant neighborhoods in Berlin, it would seem pretty obvious that Germany is already a country of immigrants. Three years ago, the Commission on Migration to Germany, the official group appointed by Chancellor Gerhard Schröder to study the immigration question reported that, since 1954, about 31 million Germans and foreigners had immigrated to the Federal Republic — and 22 million had left — including millions of ethnic Germans kicked out of their homes in Eastern Europe after World War II. . Yet a change in self-definition for a country as central to the destiny of Europe is a noteworthy event. The new law will make it easier for skilled and educated immigrants, and for people with capital to invest in new business, to come permanently to Germany, even while making it easier to expel "hate preachers" and others deemed undesirable. . The law is based on the demographic projection that, because of declining birth rates and an aging population, the working population of Germany will decline from 41 million people to 26 million by 2050. . What that means is that for Germany to stay at its current economic size, it will need, probably, about 250,000 to 300,000 immigrants per year, or more, depending on the newcomers' ages and birthrates. The paradox is that for Germany to sustain itself more or less as it is, it's going to have to become less German, more multicultural. . Is Germany ready for that? From the standpoint of an American, the answer would seem to be maybe not, or at least not yet. Indeed, one of the striking differences between America and Europe in general is the absence in Europe of the sort of diversity discourse that is pervasive in the United States. . True, there is plenty of pious talk about equality and the fight against hatred in Europe. But there do not seem to be many politicians or business leaders talking about the necessity of helping ethnic minorities rise up in the ranks to serve as role models for younger people. There is not even a debate about affirmative action in Germany. It essentially does not exist. . It is almost as if most Germans still consider the influx of "guest workers," who were invited in by West Germany in the early 1960s out of the economic need of the moment, to be temporary. Indeed, for some years both sides agreed. The Turks thought they would eventually go home, and the Germans thought they would, too. Neither side of this ethnic equation made the mental preparations necessary for heart and soul integration. . "We don't even have an antidiscrimination law," said Ozcan Mutlu, a Green Party member of the Berlin State Parliament, and one of the rare ethnic Turks prominent in political life. "There isn't even any research on the subject of immigration. Minority studies are not an issue in Germany. Every year, I meet six or seven researchers from the U.S. studying the Turkish guest workers, but at German universities, that's not an issue. It's incredible, isn't it?" . There may be some exaggeration in Mutlu's remark about the total absence of minority studies, but the main point seems difficult to dispute: even though there are almost nine million foreigners in this country, a total of 2,300 mosques, and schools in the big cities where Turkish is the language of the playground, Germany does not consider itself multicultural, and multicultural is almost surely what it is already. . "The other day I saw a Turkish doctor on 'Lindenstrasse,"' Mutlu said, referring to a long-running German television series. It was a first. . Let us be clear. It's a lot better for minorities today in Germany than it was for minorities, especially nonwhite minorities, in the United States for decades. In the last couple of years, Germany's very restrictive legislation on naturalization has changed, making it possible for the first time for substantial numbers of former "guest workers" and their children to become citizens. . Governments at most levels have programs to recruit minorities, though it is still difficult for many of them to get government jobs, despite the changed rules. . "The real problem is that the population in Europe has problems accepting diversity," Reiner Dinkel, a professor of demography at Rostock University, said. "In the United States you're used to this. In Europe we have to learn." . "Someday there will be a Turkish anchorman," Mutlu said. "Why will that be important? Of course it will enhance the self-confidence of Turks. But it will also tell the people living in some small town in Germany that this person is one of us." .