by Mary Lou U. Hardillo-Werning
BACKGROUND INFORMATION ON MIGRATION
Between 1955 and 1990, there were about 20 million people who came and settled in Germany (SZ, 04.05.04). The country has had to cope with a number of immigrants like Soviet Jews, ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe (Aussiedler) and asylum seekers, who have been coming in since the last fifty years. The influx of people intensified when East and West Germany reunited. Most of these people were granted German citizenships and were fundamentally differentiated from the “Gastarbeiter” (guest worker) category.
The so-called Gastarbeiter started to arrive in 1955, with the signing of the first bilateral agreement with the Italian government for the import of workers for German industries. Until the ban on recruitment in 1973, there were about 11 million Gastarbeiters staying in Germany (SZ, 04.05.04).
Of some 82 million people who live in Germany, 7.3 million are foreign nationals. This is about 9% of the whole population. Foreign population ratio of Germany is one of the highest in Europe (German Embassy London).
“Some 1,856,000 of the approximately 7.34 m foreigners in Germany (key date: 31 December 1999) come from EU countries (25.3 percent), the majority of them are nationals from Turkey (28 percent), from the former Yugoslavia (16.2 percent), of which 737,204 come from the former Yugoslavia. 167,690 come from Bosnia-Herzegovina, 213,954 from Croatia, 18,648 from Slovenia, and 49,420 from Macedonia, from Italy (8.4 percent), from Greece (5 percent), and from Poland (4 percent).” (Federal Ministry of the Interior, 03.06.2004)
Heavy concentration of foreign population is found in federal states like Baden-Württemberg, Berlin, Bremen, Hamburg, Hesse and North-Rhine/Westphalia.
“Of the approximately 7.3 foreigners registered in the Central Aliens Register as of 31 December 1999, some 52 percent had been living here for at least 10 years, approximately 32 percent had been living here for 20 years or more…” (Federal Ministry of Interior). The topic of migration or issues concerning foreigners remain one of the classical controversial issues debated in all walks of German life from Kneipe (bar) clients to the Bundestag parliamentarians. “Strong resistance exists in postwar Germany, the biggest nation of global immigration after the USA, to its multicultural reality, an attitude rooted in the country’s complex historical and political circumstances. The ‘jus sanguinis,’ key principle of the country’s citizenship law has inevitably excluded permanent or long term nonethnic German foreign migrants from being ‘German’ (A.C.Attardo, Legislation Online).”
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