The advance of right-wing or populist parties in several European countries has been the political story of 2002 in the EU. How curious, then, that Germany has been marching to a different drummer. Under Gerhard Schr?der's red-green coalition, there has been neither a crackdown on immigration nor a populist backlash. Instead, since 1999, Berlin has passed a succession of liberal bills that together have modernised naturalisation, asylum, and immigration law. The opposition Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) has made immigration something of an issue in September's general election, but a conservative victory is unlikely to undo the substance of the reforms.
How could this happen in a country with 10 per cent unemployment, a stagnant economy, and a deeply troubled history of dealing with non-Germans within its borders? Germans remain deeply divided over the issue, and most would like to see fewer immigrants, not more. What has happened is that key groups-including big business and the Green party-have united to push through reform. And the liberal elements within the red-green coalition have mastered the Clintonesque technique of advancing controversial measures in carefully calibrated steps. One Green MP of Turkish heritage describes this agenda as a "revolution in homeopathic doses."
The changes have taken shape in three major bills. First, in 1999, the government overhauled Germany's archaic and ethnically restrictive citizenship law to make naturalisation easier for long-term foreign residents and their children. Then, in the following year, Berlin followed the urging of German industry and implemented a "green card" programme that set aside work permits for up to 20,000 foreign IT specialists in response to a chronic labour shortage. Finally, the government pushed through a contested law last March to make immigration policy both more humane and rational. Along with broadening the green-card approach to bring in more qualified foreign workers, the bill streamlines asylum proceedings while expanding certain asylum categories. Echoing the New Labour rhetoric of "immigration with integration," it also includes integration measures, such as language training. Although some conservatives have criticised the measures for carrying the potential for vastly expanded immigration, the letter of the law is moderate: future inflows are likely to be targeted at the most labour-strapped sectors of the economy.
BE MY GUEST WORKER
These changes are all the more remarkable given where Germany stood a decade ago, under Helmut Kohl. There was then no effective immigration policy because-in Kohl's own words-Germany was "not a land of immigration." But there were many non-Germans already living in the country-mostly Turks, Croats, Italians and others who had settled in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s as guest workers (numbering more than 2m by the early 1970s), and who later brought their families in. Acquiring German citizenship was next to impossible for these immigrants, and matters such as residency and work permits were managed through a hodge-podge of regulations. Asylum policy, however, was quite liberal-a legacy of Germany's moral reparations for the Nazi period-so many foreigners would claim asylum instead as a way to get in through the back door. The result was a long backlog of cases; an asylum-seeker could wait for years for a ruling, often subsisting on state aid or jobs in the informal economy.
Germany was thus poorly prepared in the early 1990s, when it was hit by two big new immigration flows in the wake of communism's collapse. When war broke out in Yugoslavia, hundreds of thousands of asylum-seekers arrived from the Balkans. There was also an even bigger influx of ethnic Germans from eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Germany's citizenship law, unchanged since 1913, granted nationality to anyone claiming a German grandparent. The law was retained after the second world war to allow the repatriation of the millions of ethnic Germans left outside the Federal Republic's borders. (The old nationality law was backed by the lobbies representing these ethnic Germans, a force in conservative politics.)
Altogether, these two groups-plus a large number of other non-EU migrants-meant a net population gain of 500,000 to 700,000 a year. After a rash of xenophobic violence-which took 17 lives in 1992-and rising fears that the country was "swamped," asylum law was dramatically tightened in 1993, with exceptions made for Bosnian refugees and ethnic Germans. But the refugee numbers did fall rapidly as the Balkan turmoil ended. Most migrants from the former Yugoslavia eventually went home or settled elsewhere. Today, fewer than 13 per cent of the original Bosnian refugees are still in Germany.
Many conservatives still fret over the "hundreds of thousands" of immigrants who enter each year-they tend to use the figure for total inflows, over 600,000, without subtracting the large number who leave each year. But the figures show that the situation has stabilised: the total number of foreigners living in Germany has roughly held steady since 1996, at around 7.3m, or 9 per cent of the population. Moreover, in the past three years, the net gain in immigrants has averaged around 130,000 a year, significantly less than in Britain. The immigrants are a diverse mix of asylum seekers, short-term farm workers, EU citizens, ethnic Germans and Jews from Russia, and workers in the high-tech industries. It would be difficult to curb immigration by singling out one "undesirable" group.
THE NEW GERMANS
The modest scope of these flows has made the reforms more politically acceptable. In recent years, Germany has become a more visibly diverse nation and has accepted that, like other European countries, it is a land with big immigrant minorities, many of whose members will become citizens. As if to underline this point, the German soccer team fielded Ghanaian-born Gerald Asamoah in the last few minutes of the World Cup final against Brazil.
When Schr?der's government took over in autumn 1998, the worst of the immigration panic was over, but it was clear that a new legal framework was needed. Already during the 1998 election campaign, the Greens and many Social Democrats had been pushing for reform of Germany's "blood" based citizenship requirements, and one of their first acts in early 1999 was to draft legislation overhauling the 1913 law. By making naturalisation easier, proponents said, the rights of long-term foreign residents would be better secured and integration made more attractive. German law would also be brought up to date with the more liberal practices of most other EU countries. This effort was led by the Greens and by the SPD Interior Minister Otto Schily, a former Green and radical lawyer who had moved to the political centre.
Although many German voters approved of reforming the old law, quite a few were unhappy with one of the coalition's more radical proposals: the creation of dual citizenship. Some reformers claimed that if non-Germans, such as Turks, were forced to give up their old passports, they would also have to forego property and inheritance rights in their country of origin; opponents, in contrast, feared the measure would inspire divided loyalties. A conservative challenger won an election in the federal state of Hesse in February 1999 by aggressively opposing the "double passport." The government thereby lost its majority in Germany's upper house (the Bundesrat), and went back to work chastened.
"There was a lot of support for the double passport among intellectuals and the press-even in the tabloids," recalled one Green MP. "But in the end, the man on the street was against the law. We had to compromise." Despite some scaling back, the version that parliament passed several months later was a milestone. Children born to immigrant parents were granted an automatic right to a German passport, provided one of the parents had lived in Germany for eight years; children up to the age of ten could also opt immediately for German nationality. The "double passport" had to be scrapped for adults, but an exception was made for immigrants under 23. The government also allowed dual nationality in exceptional cases, arguing that "integration is more important than avoiding dual nationality." And the waiting period before adult foreign residents could apply for citizenship was dropped from 15 years to eight.
The result is hundreds of thousands of new Germans. From 1991 to 1997, an average of 35,000 non-ethnic German immigrants got German passports each year. Since the law's passage (1st January 2000) the annual rate has risen to 180,000, including 40,000 children in 2001 alone. In a recent poll of Turkish Germans aged 14 to 49, a third claimed they already had a German passport, and another half expressed interest in getting one soon.
September's election will be the first in Germany's history in which there will be an "ethnic vote" to speak of-although predictions of voting intentions are difficult to come by. In one poll, around 60 per cent said they had no political preferences, while 30 per cent sided with the Social Democrats; all other parties fared poorly. The Social Democrats should benefit disproportionately from a "thank you" effect in the first election, but how the ethnic vote will settle down is hard to say.
Meanwhile, Ankara has helped to ease the transition by issuing a "pink card" that lets German Turks keep their Turkish property and inheritance rights if they become German citizens. In fact, dual nationality is widespread in practice: many foreign consulates in Germany allow former nationals to reapply for the old passport after they acquire a German one. When conservatives attack the new law, this is their target. Otherwise, the naturalisation reform ruffles few feathers now.
FROM NATURALISATION TO GREEN CARD
When the Schr?der government came to power in the booming late 1990s, German business was desperate for well-qualified IT workers. Despite high unemployment, German IT companies-the fastest growing sector of the economy-were facing an annual shortfall of about 75,000 such workers. The problem was a mismatch of supply and demand: most of the country's unemployed are low-skilled and over half are concentrated in the less developed east. Moreover, Germans, unemployed or not, are far less likely to move to find work than, say, their American counterparts. And, although the number of IT students has started to rise in recent years, there are not enough graduates to fill the labour deficit. (This problem does not just apply to the IT sector. There are more than 1m job vacancies in Germany that the 4m unemployed cannot-or will not-fill.)
In spring 2000, backed by German industry, Schr?der announced a modest step to redress this gap. He had no desire to lose another state election, so the actual number of jobs in question was tiny: 20,000 green cards were to be handed out to foreign IT specialists, with relatively little bureaucratic fuss. It was targeted toward a booming sector of the economy with a clear labour shortage. The immigrants in this case were "desirable" workers rather than the stereotype of welfare-seeking freeloaders. And-just in case it did not work out-the permit was limited to five-year residency.
But the measure was still radical enough for some conservatives to object. In the state election in North-Rhine Westphalia in the summer of 2000, the CDU's J?rgen R?ttgers tried to replicate the conservative success in Hesse the previous year with the boldly tasteless slogan Kinder statt Inder-"Kids instead of Indians." R?ttgers lost heavily and the CDU has since left the green-card issue alone.
The green card worked politically. Whether it helped the economy depends on whom you ask. To date, only around 12,000 of the 20,000 permits have been granted; most have gone to IT specialists from India (as R?ttgers had fretted) or eastern Europe. Some potential applicants-many of whom speak English but not German-have been deterred by the language hurdle; there are also concerns over xenophobia. Perhaps most importantly, the five-year limit is not attractive to those who have the choice of settling elsewhere for longer.
But the companies which have taken up the card have largely approved. In one recent survey of new media firms with green card employees, over half say they expect higher revenues this year, despite the sluggish economy. In another (more disputed) survey cited by the Federal Labour Office, businesses claim that each job secured by the card has created two to three additional hirings, mainly Germans. Rather than taking jobs, proponents argue, the green card creates them.
The numbers aside, the programme helped change the tone of the immigration debate. For the first time, immigration was no longer simply an unwelcome threat which had to be contained but something that-at least in certain cases-might be encouraged.
Buoyed by the green card experience, Schr?der's coalition devoted much of 2001 to discussing how other areas in immigration policy could be modernised. The Greens wanted a more progressive asylum-law reform. The big industrial lobbies felt that the green-card strategy should spread to other sectors of the economy. Many worried that the integration of foreigners into German society was still lagging, contributing to high unemployment and crime rates.
The Social Democrats and Greens were not alone this time. Some liberal Christian Democrats, such as the minister-president of Saarland, Peter M?ller, and several CDU MPs led by Rita S?ssmuth, cobbled together a mix of policy recommendations in 2001 that came close to those of the government. But the CDU liberals did not prevail. By last winter, the party's conservatives had not only rebuffed the coalition's feelers to work out a compromise, but Edmund Stoiber-head of the CDU's Bavarian sister party the CSU-became the right's standard-bearer for the 2002 national election. Stoiber proclaims the usual Bavarian mix of economic competence plus a conservative social agenda. This includes outright opposition to any further loosening of immigration controls and a tough stance on asylum and family unification.
So the red-green coalition set to work on its own package last winter. The bill broke new ground by explicitly including integration measures. It called for German language classes for all who need them, free of charge if necessary. Relatives of ethnic Germans-who are often actually Russian rather than German-must now pass a German language test before being allowed in.
The bill also simplified asylum policy. Rulings on asylum are to face a one-year deadline, making an indefinite wait less likely. The law cuts the number of work and residency permits for foreigners from five to two, and those asylum seekers with jobs will have the right to stay. Moreover, the new law allows an asylum seeker to wait one year, as opposed to up to five, to seek work-a move aimed at neutralising the charge of freeloading. (Grounds for asylum will now include sexual violence and non-state persecutions.)
Finally, certain kinds of economic migration are positively encouraged. Under the bill, entrepreneurs who bring in investment and jobs are guaranteed residency immediately. Foreign students at universities are now allowed to stay in the country as long as they find a job soon after graduation. And picking up where the green card left off, the new law allows any company to hire well-qualified foreign labour as it sees fit, provided it has already sought German or EU workers for three months and not found them.
Taken together, the measures above are unlikely to affect immigration very much; asylum and family unification account for only around one sixth of total current inflows. But that has not ensured an easy political passage. The bill passed the parliament's lower house (Bundestag) with its red-green majority in March. As expected, the conservatives did not sign on. The bill then went to the Bundesrat, which represents the federal states; there the coalition does not enjoy a clear majority. After a tumultuous session, the vote was split down the middle following a divided "yes-no" decision by Brandenburg, which is governed by an SPD-CDU coalition. The Social Democrat chair of the Bundesrat allowed the minister of Brandenburg-also a Social Democrat-to cast the deciding "yes" vote. Not surprisingly, that set off a firestorm of conservative protest. Germany's president, Johannes Rau, has signed the law into effect, but the CDU/CSU has filed an appeal with Germany's supreme court to contest the bill's passage. Legal experts are split on how the court will decide.
AN ELECTION ISSUE?
An electoral revival of the far-right is unlikely. A smattering of small extreme-right or populist-right parties still exist, and occasionally they do well enough to enter into a state legislature; Hamburg is now governed by a coalition that includes a law-and-order populist party. But no such party has ever sustained its gains or broken through on the national level. Political observers cite a variety of reasons for this, from the powerful role of historical memory to a political system that manages protest better than many others.
In the campaign for the September election, immigration has been overshadowed by political scandals, unemployment and Schr?der's attempt to distance himself from Bush's Iraq policy. None the less, the belief that the red-green coalition has spent too much time on issues such as immigration and reforming homosexual marriage laws, without sorting out more basic economic problems, leaves it vulnerable to the charge of liberal aloofness. A recent opinion poll found that three-quarters of Germans believe that the country will have to reduce immigration to beat unemployment.
The conservatives have not, yet, made a big issue of immigration. They have also opted not to rush their supreme court appeal, so the court will not be forced to issue a potentially controversial decision during the election. Moreover, if the CDU/CSU does win the election it will probably need the Free Democrats to form a government, and the latter favour a more liberal immigration policy.
Furthermore, many conservatives are coming around to the view that green-card style immigration is both desirable and necessary. More green cards went to Stoiber's Bavaria-home to many fast-growing IT companies-than to any other state. The CSU website recycles the view that Germany is not a "classical land of immigration" whilst lauding its own spin-off of the green card-the blue card-for being more efficient and less bureaucratic. The clashing imperatives of economic growth and the desire for cultural homogeneity are rarely more painfully obvious.
In the end, even if Stoiber wins, the red-green coalition will have left an enduring legacy. As it faces the choice of whether to build upon or deny this legacy, Germany's next government should recall Goethe's words: "Sameness leaves us in peace, but it is contradiction that makes us productive."
