Germany's Greens Switch Tracks on Integration Policy

For decades, Germany's Green party, long-known for its pacifist and environmentally-friendly stance, has been considered to have a benevolent attitude towards the country's immigrants -- the underlying principle has been to allow them to nurture their culture and traditions in their adopted country.

The position hasn't been entirely uncontroversial. In a reference to their benign tolerance of the sometimes jarring cultural differences displayed for instance by its large Turkish minority, some people Germans have disparagingly called the Greens the "foreigner's friend" or the party of "cuddly multicultural policies."

In an abrupt turnaround this week, however, the Greens unveiled a policy paper urging immigrants in the country to do their bit towards ensuring they integrated into German society.

"Nobody is infallible"

Protecting immigrants from discrimination and xenophobia has always been at the heart of Green policies, said Renate Künast, head of the Green parliamentary group on Wednesday. Now it's about both "encouraging and making demands" from immigrants she added. The policy paper also spoke of immigrants as "citizens of this country with all the corresponding rights, but also with responsibilities."

Referring to the sudden change in the party's stance on foreigners, Künast simply said, "Nobody is infallible."

Her party had realized too late that "immigrants are also citizens," Künast said. She added, however, that her party had been one of the first to accept that Germany was an immigration country, pointing to the country's first immigration law, which was hammered out by the Greens and the Social Democrats in the previous government led by Chancellor Gerhard Schröder.

Paper puts onus on immigrants

According to the document released this week, the Greens want to push naturalization of immigrants living in the country. Around 14.5 million foreigners are estimated to be currently living in the country. Only 1.5 million people have acquired German passports in the last 25 years. Germany's citizenship law was eased in 2000 to also allow people without an ethnic German link to the country to be naturalized.

The Greens have also proposed an "integration agreement" as an instrument for better integration -- also for those who don't apply for a German passport. Though the details remain unclear, such an agreement would spell out rights and duties both for German society as well as for immigrants.

Another cornerstone of the Green's change in policy on foreigners included learning the German language. While demanding that the government offer more language courses, the party wanted immigrants to "individually do the most to independently fulfill the conditions for naturalization." The Greens also urged immigrants to take responsibility for bringing up and educating their children so they would have better chances for upward mobility in German society in future.

In a veiled reference to a spate of so-called honor killings among its Turkish minority, the Greens also said that immigrants or German citizens of foreign origin who distance themselves from their original cultural realm shouldn't be prevented from doing so.

Josef Winkler, Green party spokesman on immigration, also demanded this week that Islam should be "naturalized, too." Winkler said Islamic religious education should be taught in German schools by teachers educated and trained in the country and that all students should be required to participate in swimming, sports lessons, class trips and biology classes.

An exception for Muslim students "isn't in keeping with the times and is discriminatory," he said.

"A realistic integration policy"

The Greens' policy paper coincides with a heated debate in Germany about how to better integrate immigrants in light of recent statistics pointing to a higher school drop-out rate, unemployment and rising violence among its younger immigrant population.

The debate has also been fuelled by populist moves -- which have since been scrapped -- in a few German states to put up higher barriers for Muslim immigrants applying for German citizenship.

Bavarian Premier Edmund Stoiber of the conservative Christian Social Union (CSU) called the change in the Greens' policy on foreigners as "a late realization that their multicultural dreams have failed."

He added that the Greens "must make way for a realistic integration policy free of ideology."