Integration summit
January 31, 2012
The German government on Tuesday said it wanted to visibly increase the number of immigrants working in the public sector, after some 120 participants in a national summit in Berlin approved a plan to better integrate immigrant communities.
National integration commissioner Maria Böhmer told a press conference that the public sector served as a model for the rest of the labor market, and that the government should do a better job ensuring the public sector reflects the demographics of the country.
Chancellor Angela Merkel declined to name a specific quota for immigrants in civil service jobs, saying Germany is still in the early stages of dealing with integration and a quota is not always helpful.
Instead, Merkel announced a marketing campaign to encourage more people in Germany with immigrant backgrounds to apply for public sector jobs. She named fire departments and the media as sectors in which more immigrants should be working, while praising sports for being much more integrated.
Schools, law enforcement and municipal government are sectors in which the percentage of immigrants is markedly lower than the national ratio.
Ali Ertan Toprak of the Alevist Congregation of Germany - which represents one of the country's Turkish communities - said that steps forward in integration policy have been far greater in recent years than before. But he added that debates are often framed around the shortcomings of immigrant communities, adding that Germany needed a "second reunification."
Tuesday's was the fifth integration summit in Berlin, with the next due in 2013.
Author: Andrew Bowen (AFP, epd)
Editor: Richard Connor