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Contributions from
the Column
Focus
“Evolving transnational communities”
Development work with the diaspora
Permanent right of abode
A reluctant immigration country
Turkish diaspora in Germany
10/2004
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[ Reform in Germany ]
A reluctant immigration country
Germany is a multicultural society, but for decades, successive governments denied this reality and left the country without a law to regulate immigration. This finally changed in July, when after four years of heated debate, parliament passed an immigration bill. But critics say even this hard-won compromise falls short of what Germany needs.
Germany’s ambivalent relationship to immigration has its roots in the post-war era. To facilitate the economic boom of the 1950s and 1960s, Germany recruited “guest workers” from countries such as Italy and Turkey. The idea was that they would return home after a few years in Germany. In 1973, the government issued a general recruitment ban. But the number of foreigners in Germany continued to grow as new immigrants joined family members who had settled here, and the first generation of children was born. Germany also became the destination for growing numbers of asylum seekers. Their fates were decided by a patchwork of rules and regulations.
Even as the birth rate among Germans decreased and gaps in certain sectors of the labour market became noticeable, Germany had no laws to ensure a controlled influx of immigrants to stabilise its population and work force. In February 2000, at the height of the New Economy boom, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder proposed an American-style “Green Card” system to attract workers to fill jobs in the information technology sector.
The government commissioned a study on Germany’s demographic needs, and the cabinet passed its first immigration draft legislation in November 2001. In March 2002, after a debate in which the opposition conservatives insisted that Germany was not an immigration country, the bill was approved by the lower house of parliament, the Bundestag. It also squeaked by in a controversial vote in the upper house of parliament, the Bundesrat. But the opposition challenged the vote, and won a Constitutional Court verdict to have it overturned.
A new bill was drafted in early 2003, with a bipartisan group of parliamentarians wrangling over every single provision. In July 2004, the bill passed both houses of parliament. But there were several critical moments along the way when it seemed that the negotiations would collapse, mainly because the conservative camp insisted on rules to make it easier to expel foreigners deemed to pose a security threat.
Many from the junior coalition party, the Greens, say the concessions on security issues have distorted the law’s original purpose. While the conservatives didn’t get all the concessions they wanted, they were generally satisfied with the compromise. “The law is a dramatic improvement,” said the chief negotiator for the opposition Christian Democratic Union, Peter Müller. “It creates more security and provides better opportunities for the integration of foreigners. We are now able to better channel immigration.”
The new law doesn’t lift the general recruitment ban in Germany, but it does contain some key changes. Highly skilled foreigners will be granted easier access to the German labour market, and foreign students who finish their degrees in Germany can apply for a work permit. The rules on granting asylum on humanitarian grounds have been reformed, and there is more of a focus on integrating foreigners in German society. For instance, there are new regulations concerning language courses for migrants. Still, demographers, business leaders and some politicians say the new law, which comes into effect in 2005, doesn’t go far enough. Despite persistently high unemployment rates, Germany’s dwindling, ageing population means the country will eventually have to open its gates even wider.
“The unfortunate thing about this compromise is that it’s not what the German economy needs, and it’s not what German businesses have been calling for,” said Rezzo Schlauch, the Green party’s spokesman for the economy. “The conservatives are going to have to realise that the pressure from industry to let in not only highly qualified workers, but also workers for our service industry, is only going to grow. Sooner or later they’re going to have to improve this law.”
Deanne Corbett
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