January 27, 2004

"Guest worker program offers lessons: Bush might profit by German experience"

From the AJC:

As the United States contemplates a proposal by President Bush to temporarily legalize some foreign workers with the expectation they will eventually return to the land of their birth, the German experience may provide a cautionary tale.
More than 40 years after the first Turkish guest workers arrived to help the country rebuild --- Germany had Marshall Plan funds and other post-World War II reconstruction money but was short of manpower --- a significant number are still here.

Many of the immigrants live in ghettos. Many, even children, do not speak German. Housing and education are substandard. Crime is high. Unemployment, 18 percent among Berliners, is 35 percent among the city's Turks.

About three of every four Turks in Germany are not citizens, even after decades in the country. Many play no role in the nation's political life. They feel the sting of bigotry and keep to themselves...

By 1970, 3 million foreign-born people lived in Germany, making up nearly 5 percent of the population. The program ended in 1973, when the worldwide oil crisis slowed the German economy.

But as relatives came to Germany to join the workers, the number swelled to 7.3 million by late 2001...

In addition, she said, it is difficult to enforce temporary programs when there is great economic disparity between the new country and the country of origin. While the program proposed by Bush is aimed primarily at workers already in the United States illegally, it would also apply to prospective workers abroad.

People familiar with the German experience say there are lessons for all concerned. Kangal, in addition to recommending that workers learn the language earlier than he did, said the host country should enter the arrangement with open eyes.

If a country needing cheap labor hires another country's least-qualified workers, it will get poorly educated and unsophisticated people ill-equipped to learn the language and assimilate...

The U.S. and Germany are, of course, quite different societies. However, there are many parallels between the German experience and what we've had to date. Assimilation was not pursued in Germany, and it is not pursued in the U.S. Thanks to multiculturalism, there is very little pressure in the U.S. for immigrants of any kind to assimilate and learn English.

Posted to Immigration2003 at January 27, 2004 12:21 PM

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