BERLIN — 2009 has been dubbed Germany’s “super election year,” with voters in five states casting their ballots and a nationwide parliamentary election scheduled for September 27. Even more important than the number of votes are their potential implications for future politics. In theory, there are plenty of important campaign issues, such as the economy and its recovery; or the army’s Afghanistan deployment; or nuclear energy policies; or the future of the welfare state. And the list could easily be lengthened. Thus — and with the Bundestagswahl only a week away — it is all the more surprising that the leading parties prefer debating mostly irrelevant spats instead of jumping on the issues.

One policy item seems to have dropped off the public radar completely in this campaign: immigration and integration management. In the past, conservative politician Roland Koch of Hessen caused controversy and mobilized the electorate by initiating a signature campaign against dual citizenship. Chancellor Kohl paid a returnee bonus to Turks to win votes. In 2002, the center-right opposition led by Angela Merkel made immigration a key election issue. This year, there is only silence. And although campaigning on one of the most sensitive issues in German politics has not been helpful to achieving meaningful solutions, the danger of ignoring it altogether is an even bigger one. There should be more than enough to talk about as Germany is still trying to find ways for its immigrants to get both the employment opportunities and education they need. Immigrants are paid less and have a higher rate of unemployment than the overall population. A meager 14 percent of second-generation Turkish immigrants obtain their Abitur, allowing them to study at university (the German average is roughly twice that).

Today, almost one out of five German residents has an “immigration background” (first-generation immigrants living in Germany for decades as well as children born here as their descendants fall into this somewhat confusing category, too). Many first-generation immigrants originally came as guest workers in the early 1960s. By the time the Gastarbeiter program was terminated in the 1970s, it began to dawn on the Germans that many guests were not going to go home. Over the next decades, these workers and their families became a permanent presence; along the way, they also became the source of political tensions.

The perception among many Germans is that immigrants have failed and continue to fail to integrate. Especially conservatives argue that they need to fit in, to accept Germany’s religious-cultural heritage and social order in exchange for political privileges. The German Grand Coalition of CDU and SPD has mostly tried to keep controversy about integration policies at the federal level out of party politics; at the same time, it has actually done a lot to overcome the past gridlock preventing immigration reform. This allowed for a new immigration law to come into force in January 2005; the fact that Germany had become an immigration country finally received official acceptance. Meanwhile, Chancellor Merkel decided that immigrants and their situation in Germany would be important political priorities for her and organized the first national “Integration Summit” in 2006 as well as the “Islam Conference.” But immigrants who want to become German still have to overcome many hurdles: they need to have lived in the country for eight years, speak German, commit to the constitution, earn their living, and — as of September 2008 — pass a citizenship test. To date, only a quarter of Turks eligible for German citizenship have opted to go through the process. Those who decide against it often say that they simply do not feel welcome and that widespread discrimination prevents their identification with German society: integration is not a one-way street. But that is not a good campaign topic, it seems.

But then the current election campaign saw at least a little bit of immigration-related controversy the other day — stirred by Järgen Rättgers. The conservative state premier of North Rhine-Westphalia already caused outrage back in 2000 when campaigning under the slogan “Kinder statt Inder” (“Children instead of Indians”), to argue that Germany should improve education rather than bring in Asian computer experts. Commenting on the move of a phone factory from Germany to Romania, Rättgers said in August: “In Romania, the workers don’t come at seven in the morning like they do here in North Rhine-Westphalia, and they don’t stay until the factory closes. They come when they want and go when they want, and that’s why they don’t get any mobile phones built.” The quote was probably not directed at immigrants in Germany; but it definitely did not make them feel more at home.

A much needed discussion on how to actually make immigrants feel more welcome and on how to prevent such public blunders in the future would also need to address the continued lack of immigrant voices in German politics: only two percent of members of the outgoing Bundestag have an immigration background. The picture is unlikely to improve with the upcoming election next week. Cem à – zdemir became the first politician with a Turkish background to be elected into the Bundestag in 1994; he is now the head of the Green Party. “We still have a long way to go before immigrants will be considered a normal part of politics,” he has said.

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