Germans are 'xenophobes' says Schmidt

Schmidt ran West Germany between 1974 and 1982

Former German chancellor Helmut Schmidt has entered a heated national debate on immigration by arguing that guilt has led the country to allow in far too many foreigners.

Due to idealistic convictions which were formed on the experiences of the Third Reich, we allowed in far too many foreigners

Helmut Schmidt

In a new book, Mr Schmidt writes that Germans are thoroughly xenophobic at heart and have been unable to properly integrate the millions of foreigners who currently live in the country.

Of these immigrants, "very few indeed" wanted to integrate, writes the former Social Democrat chancellor, according to excerpts published in the Bild newspaper.

His comments were published just a week after the Social Democrat-led government pushed a landmark bill through parliament which would allow a limited number of skilled immigrants to help fill more than a million positions, lying vacant due to a domestic skills shortage.

Guest workers

The legislation is currently being contested by the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU), who are opposed to more immigration and argue that there were constitutional irregularities in the approval of the bill.

Chancellor Schroeder: Bill is economic necessity

The bill had already undergone several amendments in the face of conservative opposition, and envisages restricting current asylum practices as well as obliging foreigners to integrate.

Its principle aim however was to enable German employers to look abroad to fill an estimated 1.5 million professional posts.

Without elite foreign labour, the government argued, there would be serious consequences for the economy of Germany, which, like other European countries, is suffering from a declining birth rate.

But the remarks by Mr Schmidt, a respected statesman in office from 1974 to 1982, are unlikely to help them win the argument in German public opinion.

Of a population of 82m, some seven million people currently living in Germany are of foreign extraction.

Idealism

Many of these were in fact invited to Germany during the 1960s to fill low level positions that Germans were unable or unwilling to fill.

But according to Mr Schmidt, ideological rather than practical reasons explain the number of foreigners in Germany today.

"Due to idealistic convictions which were formed on the experience of the Third Reich, we allowed in far too many foreigners," he writes. "That was something we did not have to do."

"We Germans are unable to assimilate these seven million foreigners. The Germans in fact don't want to, because they are fundamentally xenophobic at heart."