EUROPE : Germans Want a Solution on Immigration : Ruling and opposition parties will meet in an effort to stem the flow of foreigners into the country.

With words flowing thick and fast, worried German political leaders are signaling a new sense of urgency in their desire to resolve the country’s growing immigration problem.

Their ability to turn this rhetoric into meaningful action will be tested later this month, when leaders of Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s Christian Democrats and the main opposition Social Democrats will meet to try to bury differences that have so far blocked any steps toward limiting the flood of foreigners into the country.

The stakes are high. Failure to agree on a common strategy would almost certainly lead to increased social tension and heighten the appeal of Germany’s xenophobic, extreme political right, which has used the immigration issue to woo disenchanted voters.

Indeed, the new sense of purpose in Bonn to confront the immigration issue stems directly from the shock results of two state elections earlier this month in which right-wing extremist parties scored enough votes to enter both state legislatures.

“Voters have not shown much understanding,” lamented Claudia Conrad, a spokesman at the Christian Democrats’ national headquarters in Bonn. “They see only the years of talk and no results, so they either didn’t vote at all or voted for the extreme right out of frustration. For us, there is new pressure to get solutions in place.”

While the immigration problem plagues most of affluent Western Europe, Germany is especially vulnerable because of a liberal asylum law that allows anyone to enter the country who claims to have been politically persecuted in his or her own country. Once admitted, asylum seekers enjoy the benefits of Europe’s richest country until their claim can be formally evaluated--an action that can take years.

Germans, already pressed by the costs of unification and the social dislocation it has caused, increasingly view asylum seekers as unwelcome moochers.

The recent state election results are seen as a rebuke to all mainstream parties for their failure to deal with the issue effectively. Despite the new climate of urgency and pledges of cooperation, neither Kohl nor the Social Democrats have indicated a willingness to compromise on specifics.

Kohl argues that the disturbing state election results only underscore the need for what he has demanded for months--namely, a constitutional change that preserves the principle of political asylum yet closes loopholes to potential abusers.

Closing these loopholes--which, for example, permit someone who has already been refused asylum in a neighboring European Community country to apply again in Germany--would cut the number of asylum seekers entering the country by 50% to 60%, he claims.

Kohl has also pushed for speedy implementation of an all-party plan--a proposal agreed on last October but held up by inter-party bickering on detail--that would isolate new asylum seekers in special holding camps and reduce the time to investigate their claims of persecution from the current several months or years to just six weeks.

Although Social Democrat leader Bjoern Engholm has said he wants to cooperate with Kohl, neither he nor his party has so far hinted at any readiness to give Kohl the parliamentary backing required for the two-thirds majority needed for constitutional changes. Instead, they say the constitutional change can come only after consultations with neighboring countries as part of a move toward a uniform EC-wide policy on asylum seekers.

They also advocate controlling immigration into Germany through a quota system that would affect both foreigners and ethnic Germans now streaming back into the country from the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. This would be “immigration with an (ethnic) German preference,” Herta Daeubler-Gmelin, the Social Democrats’ deputy parliamentary leader, told the Hamburg weekly Die Zeit.

Initial talks on the issue involving the leaders of both parties are scheduled for the last few days of the month, just before Kohl plans to introduce legislation for constitutional change into Parliament.

As politicians this week left Bonn for their long Easter break, few were predicting the outcome, although officials at the Social Democrats’ headquarters hinted that final obstacles to introducing last October’s agreement on asylum seekers will probably be removed quickly.

Seeking Refuge Number of foreigners seeking asylum in Germany

1983: 19,737 1984: 35,278 1985: 73,032 1986: 99,650 1987: 57,379 1988: 103,076 1989: 121,318 1990: 193,083 1991: 256,112 1992 (Projected figure): 400,000 Source: German Ministry of Interior