German Immigration Issues Compared To 1950s/1960s Problems
Richard Bernstein, The New York Times, 12/15/04
Imagine a former American president publicly grumbling that it was a mistake for a certain group to have been allowed to immigrate to the United States -- the Irish, say, or Jews, or Pakistanis. The outrage would be justifiably loud.
But a former German chancellor, Helmut Schmidt, now 85, recently declared that Germany should never have invited in all those Turkish guest workers in the 1950's and 60's, because, he suggested, multiculturalism can work only in an authoritarian society.
The comment was not widely regarded as brilliant or wise, but it caused no uproar; indeed, it was consistent with many statements coming from German leaders lately on the subject of ethnic and cultural minorities.
''Multiculturalism has failed, big time,'' Angela Merkel, the almost certain conservative candidate for chancellor in the next national elections, said recently. Many political figures and commentators have been saying that immigrants should accept what the Germans call the leitkultur, the dominant culture, as their own, or they should leave.
''We cannot allow foreigners to destroy this common basis,'' warned Jorg Schonbohm, the interior minister of the state of Brandenburg.
And so the question: why are Germans -- and not just Germans but other Europeans as well -- in such a state of anxiety and uncertainty about matters that have been more or less settled in the world's biggest country of immigration, the United States, for years? Why this discomfort with multiculturalism, this belief that assimilation, accepting the leitkultur, is the only way?
One reason clearly has to do with a dread of terrorism and Muslim fundamentalism. A great deal of the current heated discussion was prompted by the killing of the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, allegedly by a Muslim militant. The killing has had a galvanizing effect in this country, where the feeling was strong that the conditions were in place for something like it to happen here.
But, of course, the Americans suffered a vastly greater attack than the Dutch did, and that has not led to strong anti-diversity sentiment. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, there were deep new suspicions, and widespread roundups of Muslims suspected of connections to terrorism. About the only area where the United States approaches the European debate on assimilation is in bilingual education, an issue that waxes and wanes. But there is no anti-immigrant political party in America, not even the constituency for one.
The difference, many here say, is that the United States was basically created by immigrants, and Europe was not. Therefore, especially after the civil rights movement, diversity in the United States has come to be seen as a value in itself, while Europe sees it as threatening.
But this explanation, too, only goes so far. European countries have experienced large migrations for much of their history -- the Poles in Germany, for example. What many people are saying, and certainly what many more people believe, is that the problem for Europe is less the traditions of the majority population than the nature of the immigrants themselves.
Specifically, in Europe the immigration is largely Muslim, and that has brought into the heart of the Continent a large population that resists integration and includes a proportion of people who are like the suspect in the Van Gogh killing: angry religious militants carrying on a war to the death with the West.
''The cultural problem is the crucial one,'' said Heinrich August Winkler, one of Germany's best-known historians, ''because the political culture of many Muslims is very different from the political culture of Europe.''
Europeans often emphasize the backwardness of the immigrants. ''Our immigration was mostly from the Rif Mountains of Morocco, which is a poor, illiterate area with no jobs and no future,'' said Leon de Winter, a Dutch writer and a columnist for the German newspaper Die Welt. They came, moreover, in the late 1950's and 60's, Mr. de Winter said, just at the time when the Dutch were undergoing the 60's revolution, elebrating sexual liberation, experimenting with drugs, flaunting a colorfully libertarian lifestyle that was especially alien to the newcomers.
In Germany, the largest immigration is Turkish, tens of thousands of people having been lured to Germany by labor-short businesses in the 1950's and 60's. They came from eastern Anatolia, which is conservative and religiously observant by the standards of the majority culture in Turkey, not just in Germany.
The German press often brings this point home with reports of such events as honor killings among the Turks or the forcing of girls into marriage against their will. Because these things do happen, they give credibility to the view that the Turks in general constitute what is being called a ''parallel society.'' And so the political discourse generally rejects multiculturalism and diversity, emphasizing instead the duty to adopt the leitkultur, to learn German, to accept Germany's Judeo-Christian heritage as well as its Constitution, with its guarantees of equality for women.
And yet, most Turks, certainly of the second and third generations, do speak German, and nobody seems to be demanding that Shariah, Islamic law, be instituted in Germany.
To some spokesmen for Germany's 2.2 million Turks, the political discourse misses the point. True, they say, Europe's immigration was poor and traditional, especially compared with that of the United States, but Germany wanted it that way. To insist on assimilation and to repudiate diversity is to fail to accept responsibility for that. Moreover, they say, people cannot be forced to assimilate.
''I was on a television discussion program,'' remembers Mustafa Yoldas, a physician from Hamburg, the son of a guest worker, and now the vice chairman of the Islamic Association of North Germany. ''After it, there was a poll about whether Muslims were a threat to Germany or an enrichment. Two-thirds said a threat, one-third said an enrichment.''
The view that Muslims are a threat seems to lie behind one of the most discussed of the recent statements made after the van Gogh killing, by Annette Schavan, minister for culture in the state of Baden-Wurttemberg, who called for a law requiring all sermons in mosques to be in German.
''In America,'' Mr. Yoldas said, referring not just to proposals like that but to what he feels is the broad attitude underlying it, ''immigrants are proud to be immigrants, but in Germany we are being endured.''
Imagine a former American president publicly grumbling that it was a mistake for a certain group to have been allowed to immigrate to the United States -- the Irish, say, or Jews, or Pakistanis. The outrage would be justifiably loud.
But a former German chancellor, Helmut Schmidt, now 85, recently declared that Germany should never have invited in all those Turkish guest workers in the 1950's and 60's, because, he suggested, multiculturalism can work only in an authoritarian society.
The comment was not widely regarded as brilliant or wise, but it caused no uproar; indeed, it was consistent with many statements coming from German leaders lately on the subject of ethnic and cultural minorities.
''Multiculturalism has failed, big time,'' Angela Merkel, the almost certain conservative candidate for chancellor in the next national elections, said recently. Many political figures and commentators have been saying that immigrants should accept what the Germans call the leitkultur, the dominant culture, as their own, or they should leave.
''We cannot allow foreigners to destroy this common basis,'' warned Jorg Schonbohm, the interior minister of the state of Brandenburg.
And so the question: why are Germans -- and not just Germans but other Europeans as well -- in such a state of anxiety and uncertainty about matters that have been more or less settled in the world's biggest country of immigration, the United States, for years? Why this discomfort with multiculturalism, this belief that assimilation, accepting the leitkultur, is the only way?
One reason clearly has to do with a dread of terrorism and Muslim fundamentalism. A great deal of the current heated discussion was prompted by the killing of the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, allegedly by a Muslim militant. The killing has had a galvanizing effect in this country, where the feeling was strong that the conditions were in place for something like it to happen here.
But, of course, the Americans suffered a vastly greater attack than the Dutch did, and that has not led to strong anti-diversity sentiment. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, there were deep new suspicions, and widespread roundups of Muslims suspected of connections to terrorism. About the only area where the United States approaches the European debate on assimilation is in bilingual education, an issue that waxes and wanes. But there is no anti-immigrant political party in America, not even the constituency for one.
The difference, many here say, is that the United States was basically created by immigrants, and Europe was not. Therefore, especially after the civil rights movement, diversity in the United States has come to be seen as a value in itself, while Europe sees it as threatening.
But this explanation, too, only goes so far. European countries have experienced large migrations for much of their history -- the Poles in Germany, for example. What many people are saying, and certainly what many more people believe, is that the problem for Europe is less the traditions of the majority population than the nature of the immigrants themselves.
Specifically, in Europe the immigration is largely Muslim, and that has brought into the heart of the Continent a large population that resists integration and includes a proportion of people who are like the suspect in the Van Gogh killing: angry religious militants carrying on a war to the death with the West.
''The cultural problem is the crucial one,'' said Heinrich August Winkler, one of Germany's best-known historians, ''because the political culture of many Muslims is very different from the political culture of Europe.''
Europeans often emphasize the backwardness of the immigrants. ''Our immigration was mostly from the Rif Mountains of Morocco, which is a poor, illiterate area with no jobs and no future,'' said Leon de Winter, a Dutch writer and a columnist for the German newspaper Die Welt. They came, moreover, in the late 1950's and 60's, Mr. de Winter said, just at the time when the Dutch were undergoing the 60's revolution, elebrating sexual liberation, experimenting with drugs, flaunting a colorfully libertarian lifestyle that was especially alien to the newcomers.
In Germany, the largest immigration is Turkish, tens of thousands of people having been lured to Germany by labor-short businesses in the 1950's and 60's. They came from eastern Anatolia, which is conservative and religiously observant by the standards of the majority culture in Turkey, not just in Germany.
The German press often brings this point home with reports of such events as honor killings among the Turks or the forcing of girls into marriage against their will. Because these things do happen, they give credibility to the view that the Turks in general constitute what is being called a ''parallel society.'' And so the political discourse generally rejects multiculturalism and diversity, emphasizing instead the duty to adopt the leitkultur, to learn German, to accept Germany's Judeo-Christian heritage as well as its Constitution, with its guarantees of equality for women.
And yet, most Turks, certainly of the second and third generations, do speak German, and nobody seems to be demanding that Shariah, Islamic law, be instituted in Germany.
To some spokesmen for Germany's 2.2 million Turks, the political discourse misses the point. True, they say, Europe's immigration was poor and traditional, especially compared with that of the United States, but Germany wanted it that way. To insist on assimilation and to repudiate diversity is to fail to accept responsibility for that. Moreover, they say, people cannot be forced to assimilate.
''I was on a television discussion program,'' remembers Mustafa Yoldas, a physician from Hamburg, the son of a guest worker, and now the vice chairman of the Islamic Association of North Germany. ''After it, there was a poll about whether Muslims were a threat to Germany or an enrichment. Two-thirds said a threat, one-third said an enrichment.''
The view that Muslims are a threat seems to lie behind one of the most discussed of the recent statements made after the van Gogh killing, by Annette Schavan, minister for culture in the state of Baden-Wurttemberg, who called for a law requiring all sermons in mosques to be in German.
''In America,'' Mr. Yoldas said, referring not just to proposals like that but to what he feels is the broad attitude underlying it, ''immigrants are proud to be immigrants, but in Germany we are being endured.''