Angela Merkel reflects popular opinion in her emphasis on the need for integration, writes DEREK SCALLYin Berlin
GERMANY’S IMMIGRATION debate is heating up, with a new plan announced to find out how many immigrants have failed to complete obligatory integration and language courses.
The news came as Chancellor Angela Merkel rowed into the debate at the weekend with an attack on the record of German multiculturalism.
Germany’s federal interior ministry wants to know how many people have failed to start and failed to complete obligatory integration courses, which are regulated by the country’s 16 federal states. “We want to find out what has happened to people who haven’t participated in these courses, obligatory since 2005, or who have not successfully completed the courses,” said a ministry spokesperson.
Preliminary figures quoted by Der Spiegelsuggest that just 3.8 per cent of migrants failed to finish the course. "The federal states have tools at their disposal – to cut social welfare or end residency – and we want to see what the states have done in this respect."
Dr Merkel said at the weekend that the multicultural ideal of “living side by side and being thrilled for each other” had “failed, failed utterly”.
The German leader knows she is walking a political tightrope, with her support in free fall.
Dr Merkel’s remarks were greeted with enthusiasm by many in her Christian Democratic Union (CDU), particularly right-wingers. They have accused her of neglecting them and have threatened to break away to form a new party to the right of the CDU.
The German leader knows that taking too extreme a position on integration risks repelling the moderate middle-class voters the CDU is chasing to keep ahead in the polls. Thus her weekend speech – beyond her widely reported “failed utterly” verdict on multiculturalism – was remarkably moderate.
The German leader agreed it was important to place greater integration demands on immigrants, she said, but it was wrong to close Germany to skilled workers it urgently needs.
“Four million Muslims live in this country and these people are staying,” she said.
Dr Merkel criticised “people who act as if Germany hasn’t changed since 1949”, an apparent rebuke to CDU right-wingers who refuse to acknowledge that Germany has been a country of migration for 40 years since the arrival of the first Turkish and Italian gastarbeiter. “Refusing to accept reality has never been a good thing,” she said.
Dr Merkel went further, backing President Christian Wulff who said Germany’s Muslim community had de facto made Islam a part of German society alongside its Judeo-Christian heritage.
“He said [Islam] is a part of Germany and it is,” said Dr Merkel, to decidedly less enthusiastic support from party delegates on Saturday.
This debate will be fuelled further when Mr Wulff begins a five-day visit to Turkey this morning. So far Germany’s integration debate has been moderate compared to that of its European neighbours. But there are extreme voices to be heard too.
Bavarian premier Horst Seehofer, head of the CSU, sister party of the CDU, said Germany had “no need” for migrants from “alien cultures” such as Turkey and Arab countries because of their “integration difficulties”.
He was applauded and condemned equally for calling on the authorities to “get tougher on those who refuse to integrate”.
Germany’s integration debate was sparked by a bestselling book’s claim that Muslim migrants, for cultural and religious reasons, were unable or unwilling to integrate into German society.
That claim has forced a debate on integration and struck a nerve among ordinary Germans: a poll for national television at the weekend found that just 8 per cent of Germans believe migrants living among them are well-integrated.
The other side of Germany’s integration debate is the labour market, and a claim at the weekend that Germany lacks 400,000 skilled workers due to immigration restrictions.
Labour minister Ursula von der Leyen has promised to ease the restrictions for migrants with in-demand qualifications.
Mr Seehofer contradicted her yesterday, saying that voters “don’t want Germany to become the world’s social welfare office”.
It’s clear that the emotional debate over migration will play a dominant role in regional elections next year, polls which could well decide Angela Merkel’s political future in Berlin. Weeks later looms the May deadline for Germany to open its labour market to Poland, the Czech Republic and other eastern EU neighbours.