IMMIGRANTS IN GERMANY

Germany plans to have immigrants sign “integration contracts” that would oblige foreigners seeking to live in the country to avow certain values, such as freedom of speech and equal rights for women. German Integration Commissioner Maria Boehmer has said that she wants to move on plans to have new immigrants sign a contract with the state. Such a move, she argues, would make integration efforts more binding. Boehmer said the contracts would explain what services and assistance were available to new immigrants, and at the same time would clarify “what we expect from them.” This development may be relayed to the racist comments of the former Berlin finance minister Thilo Sarrazin, made in late September in an interview with the journal Lettre International, to be racist. “I don’t need to respect anyone who lives off the state, denies the state, doesn’t do anything to educate their kids, and just produces more headscarf girls,” he told the publication. “That goes for 70 per cent of the Turkish population and 90 per cent of the Arab population in Berlin.”