Focus on Germany London Office The Chandlery Office 609 50 Westminster Bridge Road GB London SE1 7QY Tel 00 44 20 77 21 87 45 Fax 00 44 20 77 21 87 46 www.feslondon.org.uk May 2007 Perspectives of German Immigration Policy Steffen Angenendt Germany is the main immigration country in Europe. As in other countries, German politics are facing the challenge to manage this process, taking into account political, economic, demographic and social criteria and interests. The present paper describes the main trends and challenges German immigration policy faces in the years to come. After a long period of political discussions, a new German immigration law came into force in January 2005. The law imple­mented was viewed as a long-term meas­ure, a workable basis for future German immigration policy and even as the"most modern immigration policy in Europe"(Otto Schily) 1 . How is this reform and the policy pursued since then to be viewed at a distance of al­most two years? Did the new law really pave the way for a"workable future" Ger­man policy? In order to answer these questions, certain fundamental migration policy facts need to be stated: Steffen Angenendt works as researcher for the German In­stitute for International and Security Affairs. He is one of Germany’s leading experts on international migration and demography. Germany has a long history of immi­gration: There has been a continual stream of work-related immigration into Germany from the days of the Kaiser through the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich into the present-day Federal Republic of Ger­many. Germany has a high proportion of im­migrants: By international comparison, Germany has one of the highest propor­tions of immigrants. The microcensus of 2005 finally provided some reliable statis­tics on this subject: about one fifth of the population in Germany has an immigrant background- a figure twice as high as hith­erto assumed from the official statistics on foreigners and which is approximately equal to the number of immigrants in a"classical" immigration country like the USA. Germany has actively managed immi­gration: There is a perception in Germany