Immigration to Germany

Introduction

The main purpose of this paper is to discuss the issue of immigration to Germany post WWII to present. The paper discusses the policies, statistic, laws, guest worker programmes, political and social issues and concerns.

Discussion

A glance at history shows that Germany had always been through and finishes area of numerous migrations and is (Benjamin, 23). The immigration of Eastern European Jews to Germany over a century ago was accompanied by a German emigration to America. The heyday of industrialization meant that it attracted a large number of Polish migrant workers in the Ruhr. Today they are an integral part of the population. The presence today of most immigrants without German citizenship, however, goes to the so-called guest worker recruitment in the fifties and sixties of the 20th Century back.

The migration history of Germany is not much different from the rest of Western Europe. The period after the Second World War can be divided roughly into two phases: The first phase was characterized by large manpower needs of the booming western and northern European economies. The Federal Republic began in the fifties, an active "guest worker" recruitment policy in the Mediterranean - and, although in previous years, more than 10 million displaced persons, had taken off and emigrants (Tiling, 90). Other European states met their increased demand for labor by immigrants from the former colonies. Overall, the Western European industrialized countries promoted in this period about 30 million migrant workers. The second phase began with the economic crisis of the seventies - the "oil crisis". Most EU countries have responded with recruitment ban. Since then, immigration to Europe took place mainly through family reunification and asylum. Due to the tightening of asylum laws in the early nineties, this possibility of legal access route to Europe was still close. This was formed out of a spiral that turns up on today: The more restrictive, the opportunities for labor migration, the more migrants try to reach an asylum in the EU. And the more restrictive, the asylum provisions, the more migrants trying to enter illegally (Struve, 11) (Bolwijn?, 161).

Political and Social Issues

Due to historical events in the history of immigration in the two German states since the Second World War has developed very differently. In the former GDR was the presence of foreigners primarily an expression of political decisions of leadership and was used mainly for political purposes, such as the massive Soviet military presence and the trainees or students from the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America. At the end of the seventies, economic constraints led to the use of contract workers, the first time managed a kind of "immigration reality" in the history of the GDR, without the political leadership it would ever so intended. But the integration of these migrant workers was never provided (Reeves, 56). Away from the organized events "in a spirit of solidarity and international understanding" were hardly any personal contacts and were often not desirable (Bolwijn?, 161).

With today's inflows of foreigners in the new ...