May 24, 2005

Herr Michna

At the beginning of his class, Herr Michna makes it clear that it was a big mistake on Germany’s part to bring so many (gastarbeiter) guestworkers from Turkey, and the question now is how to best fix the mistake. Michna begins by showing his students pictures of radical Islam from the front pages of several popular German magazines and newspapers. He mentions September 11th and the recent death of Theo Van Gogh. The problem of immigrants as Herr Michna frames it is existential in nature: either integrate the immigrants in society or face death by radical Islam.

An employee with the Social Ministry of the State of Hessen, with the confusingly German title of Leiter des Referats Zuwanderungs Politik und Landesauslanderbeauftrager, Herr Micha picked me up from my office to attend his university class on German immigration politics he teaches for future state employees. Fortyish, with a receding hairline, although without a hint of grey in his hair, Herr Michna plays the part of the typical German Beamte, or state civil service employee.

Driving between the sleepy state capital of Wiesbaden and its largest city, Frankurt am Main, I began to discuss with Herr Michna, the comparative problem that we have in the United States. Conservative estimates believe that eight million illegal immigrants reside in the United States, mainly from Mexico. Herr Michna quickly retorted that the Mexicans are Catholic; the Turks, Michna continued, are Muslims. Furthermore, the Turks in Germany are not the educated elites from Ankara of Istanbul but come from the Anatolian Plain, a place that has not taken on the trappings of modernity and remains a cultural backwater. Michna explained that he had visited the Anatolian plain and witnessed life there firsthand. He could not believe that Turkey was going to join the EU.

In the 1960s and 70s the Germans brought millions of Turks to work in Germany to fuel their growing economy. Many of these Turks chose to say and the German courts have made it virtually impossible to deport them. The Turkish population, however, suffers from 20% unemployment, double the already high national average and lacks many of the qualifications necessary to obtain highly-skilled jobs. In fact, Germans claim that the Turks are moving in the other direction, renouncing the Germans ways in order to create what they term parallelgesellschaft,” or parallel society. Germans continually say that the problem in Germany is that you see third and fourth generation immigrants of Turkish descent still speaking Turkish on the street, something you only see in the most sealed off of American communities such as the ultra-orthodox Jews and the Amish.

Three recent threads have recently animated the immigration debate in Germany (which mainly means Turkish debate) and brought it to center stage. First, September 11th and the recent death of Theo van Gogh, has brought the presence of militant Islam to the attention of German authorities, and they have become acutely aware of the religious difference between themselves and their immigrant populations. Second, in 2004, the Bundesrat, passed a revolutionary law that allowed for jus soli. Jus soli allows for citizenship to be based on place of birth rather than on blood, and this new law has allowed for many Turkish guestworkers to apply for German citizenship. The price of allowing these Turks citizenship, however, also included a much more proactive stance towards integration on the part of the government, which increased the burdens on those with what Germans call a “migration background”, prospective citizens including 650 hours of language instruction Third, there has been a spate of honor killings that has outraged a German public, which feels that Islam is oppressing women and not allowing them the freedom of choice.

Seventeen university students file into the classroom. They looked similar to a group of students attending state university in the US. Most of them appear in their late teens or early twenties with the necessary tattoos and piercings. Judging from their names and accents, however, none of is of other than German origin. This is an interesting fact given that more than 50% of those that live in Frankfurt have immigrated their within the last several decades and do not speak German as their first language.

In typical German style, this three hour class has been whittled down to 45 minutes because Herr Michna must attend a conference. However, this week Herr Michna wishes to leave his students with one important fact: the third generation is the most important. In his trip across the United States, he claims that officials continually told in the third generation it’s, “Princeton or prison, Yale or jail.” What the Germans want of the Turks, however, remains unclear.
Posted by Aaron at May 24, 2005 01:36 PM

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