insists that “Germany is and remains a foreigner-friendly country.” He’s wrong. Throughout their history Germans have grappled with the “Jewish problem,” the “Polish problem,” the “Turkish problem” and now the “asylum problem,” all the while ignoring the more profound German problem underneath. Kohl and many of his compatriots cling to the fiction that “Germany is not an immigrant country.” But nearly a million newcomers, including 256,000 asylum-seekers, arrived last y alone, and almost 3 million in the five previous years. To keep pace proportionally with Germany, the United States would have to admit 2.5 million immigrants each year, instead of the 714,000 currently allowed (not counting refugees). Some 6 million foreigners live permanently in Germany, more than in any other country in Western Europe. In some large cities, the proportion of foreigners-whose menial labor is essential to Germany’s economy-is nearly 20 percent. Yet despite these demographic realities, Germans have resisted the painful transition to a multicultural society that France and Britain started years ago. The lack of a fair, modern immigration policy cannot be solved simply by deporting illegal aliens like the Gypsies. Germany must come to terms with the “foreigners” who are an integral part of its society.
As its borders have shifted over the centuries, Germans have had to rely more than other Europeans on ethnicity and cultural identity as markers of nationhood. As a result, Germanness is to this day determined by blood, by the atavistic law of jus sanguinis. A farmer in Kazakhstan whose ancestors left the Rhine Valley 250 years ago is considered a German. A Pole whose grandfather served in the Wehrmacht is, according to Germany’s Constitution, also a German. But a second-generation Berliner whose grand parents came from Ankara is not a German and not likely ever to become one. Naturalization laws are so complicated, it can take 15 years to qualify.
These days the 6 million descendants of the 1960s “guest workers” are called “fellow foreign citizens.” This oxymoron explains in large part why non-Germans are politically and socially invisible. Fellow foreign citizens can’t vote or enter mainstream society. Most of them are still factory workers and greengrocers, a niche they have occupied since the mid-1950s. In four years in Germany I have never encountered a non-German teacher, professor, politician, corporate leader or even middle manager. I’ve never seen a non-German police officer or television broadcaster. Even sports stars who lack German ancestry are isolated: black soccer players in the Bundesliga endure cries of " Neger," which in that context means “nigger.”
Media images of Auslander (foreigners) are overwhelmingly negative, routinely depicting them as hapless scroungers, waiting in line to collect something from a German official. It is true that Germans have been generous to those in real need, welcoming 50,000 refugees from the Yugoslav civil war this year alone. Still, the public’s readiness to assume that all foreigners are asylum-seekers has gotten so bad that Japanese companies in Berlin give employees tips on how to dress and behave so as not to be mistaken for Asian refugees.
In past years the mass media reported with some agitation on the horrors that neo-Nazis perpetrated against foreigners. But last week’s attacks were recited on the news with no more emotion than the nightly weather forecast. Manfred Stolpe, prime minister of the eastern state of Brandenburg, has warned that right-wing extremists have embarked “on a path that ended once before at Auschwitz.” An overblown analogy, but perhaps it takes such rhetorical flights to sting a no-fault nation into self-recognition.
