ZURICH – About a year after banning minarets, Swiss citizens went to the polls again last week. This time, they were asked to decide whether foreigners convicted of crimes should be expelled automatically. Fifty-three percent of those voting said that they should.

What does the proposal include? Foreigners who are found guilty of serious crimes will have to leave the country. Under current law, deportations are dealt with on a case-by-case basis. According to the new resolution – which still needs to be enacted into law – a new paragraph in the constitution will enumerate what is defined as a serious crime. And here the problem begins. Murder, sexual offences, robbery, and drug dealing count as serious crimes. So do false claims of unemployment benefits. If a foreigner is proven guilty, he will be immediately expelled and will not be allowed to re-enter the country for up to 15 years. Judges would not have the administrative discretion to decide case by case. The offender’s specific family situation, the degree of integration, or the circumstances under which the crime was committed will not be taken into consideration. The principle of proportionality would be levered out. It is a rather merciless legal approach.

The underlying rationale is: More than 50 percent of crimes in Switzerland are committed by foreigners, who account for 22 percent of the population. However, most offences are committed by foreigners lacking legal residence status. Legal residents cannot be deported, either because it is not clear where they came from, or their countries of origin refuse to take them back.

So in practice, this measure amounts to nothing. What is really important though is the symbolic value of this vote, insofar as it reflects the growing uneasiness about immigration. When the Swiss public voted against the minaret last year, they did not only voice their concerns about the architectural features of their cities. They actually voted against the influence of Islam.

Regarding the referendum, Switzerland might be a special case. Immigration always sells well in direct democracy. It mobilizes people as they feel personally affected. When it comes to foreigners, feelings are running high. The right-wing Swiss People’s Party (SVP) owes much of its success to populist campaigns on immigration-related issues. It addresses latent concerns. People are worried about alleged “Überfremdung,” foreign domination.

However, Switzerland can also be seen as an example of a broader trend in Europe. There is a quiet, but growing hostility against immigrants. Suddenly right-wing populist agendas are considered socially acceptable, as seen in the Netherlands. A book that proposes demographic policies aimed at the Muslim population in Germany and fuels cultural hostility towards immigrants with genetic arguments turns into a best-seller. Moderate politicians are on the defensive. As Jürgen Habermas put it: “The usual stereotypes are being flushed out of the bars and onto the talk shows, and they are echoed by mainstream politicians who want to capture potential voters who are otherwise drifting off toward the right.”

What is urgently needed is a convincing voice of reason, to objectify the debate. And an integration strategy for the host societies. Apparently they are still struggling with the fact that immigrants are a social reality.

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Germany is a country of immigration. 15 million people living in the country immigrated or are descendants of immigrants. This means that almost 20% of the population has a migration background €“ one of the highest numbers in Europe.   There has been the impression that not all immigrant groups are doing well when it comes to integration. Earlier this week, the Berlin Institute for Population and Development published a serious piece of research that confirmed just that. Germany has not yet managed to fully exploit the potential that the immigrants brought with them.

According to the study, immigrants are, on average, poorer educated, more likely to be unemployed and participate less in public life than native Germans. Although half of the immigrant group with Turkish background has been born in Germany, they are faring poorly when it comes to integration. They are lagging behind in education, have a harder time in finding jobs, and are less socially integrated than other migrant groups. This lack of integration is a result of missing policies in the early years after the first Turks stepped off the trains in Dusseldorf and Mannheim in 1961. Acting under the assumption that people would go back after a couple of years, any integration assistance was considered provisional and temporary. As the study shows, the results of this policy (or lack of) are still reflected in today’s social architecture of Germany. The integration deficits among Turkish immigrants are a direct consequence of the model of trying to rotate the low-skilled labor force.

But it seems that Germany has learned a lot from this experience. Asking the population today if they agree with temporary labor schemes, the results are totally different, to the surprise of many policymakers. The rotating model wouldn’t be socially accepted anymore. According to a recent study by the German Marshall Fund of the United States, Transatlantic Trends: Immigration, majorities of the German population (66%) think that legal migrants who come to Germany to work or study should be given the opportunity to stay permanently, rather than being asked to leave the country after their contract expires. And measures that promote integration are strongly supported: banning discrimination against legal immigrants in the labor market, offering free language courses or promoting the teaching of mutual respect in schools received overwhelming support.  59% of the German respondents are in favor of giving legal immigrants the right to vote in local elections, with 39% opposing it. Looking at party affiliations, this support reaches across party lines: 67% of the SPD voters, 67% of the Bändnis90/Die Gränen voters, 59% of Die Linke voters, 57% of CDU/CSU voters and 49% of FDP voters support this idea.   58% of the German respondents think that Western and Muslim ways are reconcilable, 45% believe that Muslims have a lot to offer to German culture. 66% of the respondents are in favor of giving legal immigrants access to social benefits.

And what really counts are language and passport. When asked what attributes they consider important to be “German”, large majorities of the respondents in the GMF study agreed that respecting the institutions, speaking the language and holding the national citizenship really counts. But: only a third of the immigrants with Turkish background in Germany have a German passport. There are indicators that having the German passport has a positive effect on integration (or, vice versa, that better integrated immigrants are more likely to apply for German citizenship). German nationals with Turkish background are more likely to reach a higher level of education than Turkish nationals, are less likely to be unemployed, and are more frequently employed in the public sector. Fostering naturalizations among immigrants should therefore be a top priority.

The study by the Berlin Institute for Population and Development rightly concludes that significant investments in education are key to overcome integration deficits of immigrant groups, particularly Turks. Due to its demographic situation, Germany will need immigrants in future, in growing numbers and with high qualifications. And it doesn’t need a magic formula. Recognizing the link between migration and integration policy will be the first step.

For more details on Transatlantic Trends: Immigration, please see www.transatlantictrends.org.

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“We are freezing, but we are very excited to be here” was the reaction of the first group of American, African and European TFMI participants descending from the airport shuttle bus and pulling their suitcases across the gravel to Castle Hotel Pommersfelden. The organizing team who rushed to great them handed over the conference material, the TFMI T-Shirt and – hot tea.

After 18 months of preparation, TFMI was finally becoming real.

55 emerging leaders representing more than 20 countries have arrived to participate in the first annual Transatlantic Forum on Migration and Integration (TFMI). They are a diverse group: from the business sector, governments, media, academia, and the nonprofit sectors. They come from both sides of the Atlantic and the Pacific. They have diverse views on the challenges and opportunities presented by ongoing migration flows. And they venture to start something totally unique in the next four days: a transatlantic learning community of young leaders who work on migration and integration issues around the globe.

TFMI hopes not to be a normal conference. With its variety of contents and formats, it aims to challenge perspectives and views. The range of issues to be discussed will be broad: starting with a general introduction by Dr. Joseph Chamie on the first night, participants have the opportunity to engage in focused workshops on Thursday: on local integration policies, migration control, migration and the media, migration and development, national identity and asylum and refugees.

We hope that TFMI 2008 in Pommersfelden is going to be the beginning of a long-lasting global network on migration and integration issues.

I want to invite all participants to comment on this post on anything you would like to say about TFMI.

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