POLITICS: Govt seeks to Open up Germany’s Immigration

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Yojana Sharma

BERLIN, Nov 12 2001 (IPS) - In a strong signal that the government is committed to opening up to controlled immigration despite fears in the wake of the Sep 11 attacks on New York and Washington by Muslim extremists, the German government is pressing ahead with its controversial immigration bill.

The bill, which could lead to the first immigration law in Germany’s history, was approved by Schroeder’s cabinet last week and has now begun its difficult passage through parliament.

Originally, scheduled to be introduced in parliament in September, the bill was postponed as Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder realised that the Sep 11 attacks had hardened the already ambivalent attitudes within the country towards immigration.

Germans have been shocked that terrorists like Mohamed Atta, who piloted one of the planes that slammed into the World Trade Centre, was able to live quietly for years in the Northern German city of Hamburg as a “sleeper”.

It has spurred the belief that Germany’s gates are already wide open, and that restrictions rather than further opening is necessary.

Germany is already home to three million Muslim immigrants, the largest Muslim minority in Western Europe. Most are from Turkey.

“Immigration from overseas may seem at present to be politically inopportune, however, from an economic standpoint it remains a must,” said Holger Hinte and Klaus Zimmerman of the Institute for the Future of Work, based in Bonn.

“The terror attack on the U.S. has unexpectedly dampened the social climate and the open society. It would be fatal if history were not just holding its breath but actually slid back to outdated mindsets of the past – closed doors and the fear of the foreigner,” they said in a recently released paper.

Germany is particularly keen to attract younger, highly skilled workers as its rapidly ageing population will mean a dramatic shrinking of its taxpayer base within the next decade. Business groups believe Germany could loose its competitive edge if skill shortages are not dealt with in the next year or two.

Schroeder also sought to remind the public why the immigration bill was needed in the first place. This month the government renewed its “Green card” initiative to allow in foreign computer experts. Some 10,000 permits were approved since the first “Green Card” initiative was put in place in Aug 2000.

The Labour ministry has said that the Green Card was a success. An initial survey by the country’s employment agency revealed that each Green Card had created 2.5 further jobs.

The immigration bill is seen as putting the Green Card initiative on a sounder, long-term footing. “What the country needs are long-term solutions to meet the challenges posed by a shrinking population. A second allotment of green cards alone will not do the trick,” said an editorial in the respected Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper.

In pushing ahead with the bill, officials say Schroeder is gambling on the reluctance of anti-immigration voices in the opposition to alienate Muslims at a time when Germany has become an active member of the U.S.-led alliance against terror which also relies heavily on the support of Arab countries. The conservative opposition backs Germany’s role in the alliance.

However Social Democrat sources believe it is only a matter of time before the opposition, which is currently in disarray and lacking in other major issues to attack the government, will use immigration as its main weapon against the government.

Guenther Beckstein, Bavaria’s hardline interior minister and a Christian Socialist, has warned that the bill will “open the immigration floodgates”.

In an attempt to sweeten the immigration bill, which needs to clear the upper house, or Bundestat, where the opposition has a majority, Schroeder has simultaneously pressed ahead with a new internal security bill.

The bill aims at immigrants who abuse their religious privileges to conduct or plan terrorist acts or other crimes on Germany soil.

While not part of the same package, the two bills will go some way towards placating hard-line opposition leaders, according to sources within the ruling Social Democratic Party (SDP).

“The message is we want to let in more foreigners but we are also willing to deal more harshly with foreigners in our midst,” said an SDP official, unwittingly expressing the paradox of the government’s policy.

Changes to Germany’s Alien Act approved at the end of last week allows Germany to refuse entry and residency to foreigners who “endanger state security” or the “constitutional order”, commit violent crimes or belong to any group that supports international terrorism. Although the mere suspicion of a crime would not be enough to merit exclusion.

Already the government has said Metin Kaplan, who heads the Cologne-based Union of Islamic Associations and Communities will be stripped of his asylum status.

Turkish-born Kaplan, who calls himself the “Caliph of Cologne” has served half of a four-year jail term for incitement to kill a rival. The government wants to deport him to Turkey, even though the German constitution forbids deportation to a country with the death penalty.

But Beckstein is not content with the new anti-terrorism laws. “Militant foreign extremists” should be “deported as speedily as possible”, Beckstein says, calling for laws to that effect.

“This is the only possibility to break up the organisations which comprise several thousand followers from Islamic organisations inclined to violence,” he insists.

Beckstein is not a lone voice in the opposition. In an indication of how easier anti-foreigner sentiment can be whipped up in the current climate, some Christian Socialist politicians are even advocating internment of foreigners within Germany if they cannot be deported, a point rejected by the ruling Social Democrats as “reminiscent of German concentration camps” during WWII.

However, Schroeder has a new problem on his hands as a result of his decision last week to commit troops to Afghanistan. He has tried to appease his coalition partners, the pacifist Green party that threatens to pull out of the government on the issue.

Schroeder wants to avoid a “second front” with the Greens over immigration, which the Greens support.

Schroeder softened some proposed rules, notably the right of anyone under 14 to join their immigrant parents. The original proposal reduced the age of reunion to just 12, under pressure from the Bavarian Christian Socialist Party, who insist older children find it difficult to “integrate”.

This makes the passage of the bill even more fraught, officials say. But critics add that Schroeder is banking on the business lobby, the main constituents of the conservative parties, to pressure the Christian Democrats and Christian Socialists to accept the bill.

The Association of Turkish Entrepreneurs and the German Chambers of Industry and Commerce have called for the speedy introduction of a regulated immigration system.

Germany should not “pull out of the international competition for highly skilled labour”, despite the security concerns raised by the terrorist attacks in the United States, the groups said earlier this month.

Schroeder himself is keen to have the bill passed by parliament well before campaigning starts for national elections that take place in autumn 2002. He does not want immigration to become an unedifying election issue as it has been in the past, whipping up xenophobia and playing into the hands of the extreme right neo- Nazi parties.

“If there is no agreement now (between government and opposition), we will lose more than a year before it can be discussed again,” said Ludolf von Wartenberg, head of the Federal Association of German Industries.

He fears that elections next year could mean immigration would not be on the agenda again till 2003.