Looking Into a Mirror, Seeing 7 Million Strangers

Germany is accepting what it once loathed to ponder: It is a country of immigrants.

The nation’s cities flicker with the languages, cultures and skin tones of people who have been arriving since the end of World War II. But it is only now that the country, with its history of cultural intolerance, appears ready to pass a sweeping immigration law.

Citing shortages of engineers, scientists and computer specialists, the legislation would ease entry requirements for some and recognize the need for skilled non-Europeans in this rapidly aging population.

It also meets the demands of conservative politicians for swifter deportation of religious extremists. German courts have heard three Al Qaeda-related cases in the last year, and police have questioned dozens of alleged Islamic radicals.

The compromise bill between conservative Christian Democrats and Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s left-leaning Social Democrats comes amid fears that foreigners are eroding Germany’s national character. A similar attitude resonates throughout Europe. The continent needs new blood to stay economically competitive, but since terrorists bombed several Madrid commuter trains in March, Europeans worry that many immigrants are espousing anti-Western values.

“People are afraid of immigration,” said Olav Gutting, a conservative Christian Democrat in Parliament, who noted that 9% of Germany’s population of 83 million is foreign-born. “Germans, especially politicians, never talk about Germany as a country of immigrants, but the fact is that for 40 years we’ve been one. Yet Germany is no melting pot.”

Several political parties, notably the Greens, are concerned that the legislation would give law enforcement agencies broad discretion in investigating foreigners. Many politicians are critical of the detentions of suspected militants by the U.S. Justice Department and warn against an atmosphere that jeopardizes constitutional protections. The country’s Nazi past has made Germans sensitive to targeting anyone based on race or religion.

Vural Oger knows well the subtle but deeply entrenched dividing lines in German society. A successful businessman, he moved to Germany from Turkey more than 40 years ago. He became a German citizen, was recently elected to the European Parliament and advises Schroeder on immigration matters.

“But newspapers still refer to me as a Turk with a German passport,” said Oger, who owns a travel agency, hotels and other tourist ventures. “The new law was to create a modern, forward-thinking society. It was watered down. What happened on Sept. 11, 2001, directly influenced this law, and I’m worried about possible abuses to civil freedoms.”

Statistics suggest that Germany might be forced to temper its uneasiness about foreigners. To sustain its current population, the country would need a net gain of about 500,000 immigrants a year, according to the Bureau of Federal Statistics. To keep the labor force stable, the statistics suggest, Germany would require about 30 million working-age immigrants by 2050.

Some estimates indicate that -- with a national birthrate of 1.4 children per woman -- 40% of Germans will be older than 60 by the middle of the century.

“The homogeneous society is fading, and it’s bye-bye old Germany,” said Hans Fleisch, chairman of the Berlin Institute for World Population and Global Development. “Germans are frightened of this change. I just came from a conference of 80 mayors and they’re saying, ‘What now?’ In the next 20 years, populations in cities such as Frankfurt will be 50% foreign-born.”

The proposed immigration law, expected to pass Parliament as early as today, would allow Germany to be selective, admitting only highly skilled foreigners. It would extend visas and encourage employment for foreign graduates of German universities. The legislation also threatens cuts to social benefits for immigrants who don’t learn the German language and fail to quickly integrate.

Since the emergence of Turkish guest workers in the 1960s and through the arrival of hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers from Bosnia-Herzegovina and Iraq, Germany has failed to create a seamless ethnic society. The veneer of integration has been further strained as the nation undergoes painful social and labor reforms that have created resentment toward immigrants, whom many Germans see as milking the system.

The country’s unemployment rate of nearly 11% has labor unions unconvinced of the need for importing workers. But, unlike in Asia and the United States, the German education system has not produced enough highly skilled technical professionals. Business leaders also have complained for years that thousands of young and educated Germans shun the nation’s high taxes and bureaucracy to work elsewhere.

“Germany has a lack of qualified engineers and scientists and needs new workers,” said Detlef von Hellfeld, who runs a website forum for skilled immigrants. “The new law would follow the needs of our labor market. If we want to compete in getting the best minds, we have to do this.”

Prasad Addepalli, a software specialist from India, is the type of immigrant Germany wants. Motivated and well educated, Addepalli began working for a computer company in Munich in 2001 under a special green card program. His time in Germany mirrors the promise and frustration that Germans and foreigners share in eliminating prejudices and building a multicultural nation.

“It is very difficult to climb the career ladder in Germany. Many firms give more preference to German natives,” said Addepalli, who plans to return to India by 2008 and start his own company. He said other Indians rejected the prospect of working in Germany because of low salaries, cold weather, a troubled economy and perceived racism. Of the 20,000 green-card slots open for computer specialists three years ago, only 11,000 were filled.

“People didn’t come to Germany, because they believe racism still exists here,” Addepalli said. “They went instead to the U.S., the United Kingdom and Australia. I personally don’t have those perceptions, but I had a friend working in Rostock who felt racism.... Germans are not very open. You need a lot of time to make friends.”

The debate over immigration began after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, as hundreds of thousands of Eastern Europeans and Soviet Bloc immigrants of German ancestry joined nearly 2 million Turks and other foreigners already here. A surge of skinhead violence against immigrants stunned the nation in the early 1990s. The rise of leftist politicians a few years later coincided with a more liberal shift in attitudes on German identity.

When Schroeder took office in 1998, partisan politics sidelined an immigration law, but regulations were relaxed on naturalization and other rules regarding the country’s more than 7 million foreign-born residents.

Schroeder and Christian Democratic leaders finally hammered out a compromise law last month. “It was a contentious debate,” said Rainer Ohliger, an analyst with Network Migration in Europe. “But there was no more denying the reality about immigrants. Germany is saying, ‘As immigration numbers rise, we want to steer it.’ ”

The legislation is less tolerant of radicals such as Metin Kaplan, the leader of a banned Islamic organization who recently served a German prison sentence for his role in the murder of a political rival. Kaplan is fighting extradition to Turkey, where he’s wanted for treason.

His case bolstered efforts by German Interior Minister Otto Schily and conservative politicians to include provisions in the immigration bill to speed the deportation of extremists and expel suspected terrorists without trials.

The proposed law, legislator Gutting said, would not uncover terrorist cells, such as the one in Hamburg that supplied hijackers to the Sept. 11 attacks.

“But it will for the first time allow you to catch the hate preachers and fundamentalists and send them abroad,” he said.

Gutting said he was troubled that immigrants in Germany had not become more integrated.

“In Europe,” he said, “multiculturalism doesn’t seem possible like in the U.S. The leading culture here is the Western, Christian way of life, and we’re not willing to accept another way of life.”