German Right in Uproar As Immigration Gets Easier

Legislation opening Germany up to immigration for the first time since the 1970s was pushed through parliament yesterday, causing a furious constitutional row and ensuring that race will play a central role in this year's general election.

Rightwing members of the normally sedate upper house bellowed in rage and slammed their desks with their hands after the Speaker, a member of Gerhard Schröder's Social Democrat party (SPD), disallowed a vote that would have robbed the government of its majority.

There is a clear danger that rightwing Germans will feel their country has been tricked into taking in more foreigners. With one in 10 German workers out of a job, the issue has become even more highly charged than usual.

The government had made substantial concessions in an effort to create a bipartisan approach and keep race out of the September election. The amended bill allows in a limited flow of skilled foreign workers. But it also makes Germany's already stringent asylum laws even tighter and lays down conditions for the integration of foreigners.

Courses are to be held for long-term foreign residents covering German language, culture and society. Those whose knowledge of the language is judged to be insufficient will be obliged to attend.

The maximum age at which children can join their immigrant parents in Germany has been lowered from 14 to 12 in a vain attempt to meet conservative objections.

The rightwing opposition, fled by Edmund Stoiber, was never likely to be won over easily. The Bavarian Christian Democrat leader has refused from the start to accept the government's fundamental contention that Germany needs immigration because of its ageing population and shortage of skilled workers in key areas.

His initial response, two years ago, was to propose measures to encourage German married couples to have more children.

"We don't need more immigration but better controls on the immigration we now have," he said.

Mr Stoiber, who will lead the Christian Democrats into the election, said he was "deeply outraged" by yesterday's result, which had pitched Germany into a "comprehensive constitutional crisis".

The upper house, the Bundesrat, is made up of delegations from each of the 16 German states.

They normally cast bloc votes. But the Christian Democrat member for the eastern state of Brandenburg shouted out a "no" as his SPD colleague was registering a "yes".

It was the first time a delegation had split since 1949 and the speaker ruled that the senior, Social Democrat, representative's vote should prevail.

Mr Stoiber held back from a decision to take the matter to the constitutional court, but several leading conservatives appealed to the president, Johannes Rau, not to sign the bill into law.

Race has for years been a subject of intense and continuing controversy in Germany. One of the earliest measures of the Schröder government was a law breaking for the first time the link between blood and nationality.

The millions from Mediterranean Europe who poured into Germany in the years up to the early 1970s and supplied the cheap labour for Germany's "economic miracle" were officially Gastarbeiter (guest workers).

For decades afterwards politicians sustained the myth that these workers would one day go home, and insisted that theirs was "not a country of immigration".

Those who entered Germany did so by seeking asylum. Even today many who would be termed "immigrants" in other countries are described - and treated - as "foreigners" in Germany.

Moreover, as a result of Germany's experience with the Gastarbeiter, there was a widespread perception, as elsewhere in Europe, that immigrants were overwhelmingly unskilled.

But in 2000 Mr Schröder made a canny bid to change attitudes when he offered 20,000 "green cards" to computer specialists from developing countries to fill jobs for which qualified Germans could not be found.

A poll released yesterday showed more people supporting than opposing the bill, which was approved yesterday by the controversial single vote.