Nearly one in five Germans has immigrant background

ALMOST a fifth of all people in Germany now have immigrant roots, according to statistics released in Berlin this week.

Some 16 million people - nearly 20 per cent of the 82 million population - have an immigrant background.

The average German with immigrant heritage is aged roughly 35, male and living in Berlin or the former West Germany, the Federal Statistics Office said. Fourteen per cent of them do not have a high school diploma and 48 per cent lack a professional qualification.

The data surprised academics as ordinary Germans still struggle to recognise their land as an immigrant country and tensions with ethnic groups are on the rise.

The bedrock of the German ethnic influx remains the postwar "Gastarbeiter", or guest workers, drafted in from Turkey, Yugoslavia, Italy and other southern lands to fill the manpower gap caused by the deaths of five million Third Reich soldiers and the imprisonment of millions after the Second World War.

About 10.6 million Germans now trace their heritage back to this first group of post-war settlers, while a further 3.3 million people trace their roots to ethnic Germans who themselves had immigrated to parts of Eastern Europe and were granted citizenship after Germany's 1990 reunification.

Germany, which has the lowest birthrate in the EU - and the lowest in the world in some parts of the depressed former Communist east - has had to become an immigrant-destination country out of necessity.

The World Cup players in South Africa served as a microcosm for the new diversity in the country. A total of 11 of the 23-strong German squad that went to South Africa would have been branded foreigners under rules dating back to before the Nazis and would have therefore been ineligible to play only a decade ago.

Under strict citizenship laws dating back to 1913 and the reign of Kaiser Wilhelm II, only children born in Germany to parents who were both Germans themselves could be considered German. They were not repealed until 1999 when Germany finally made it easier to become a citizen of the Fatherland.

But dealing with the increase in immigrants has posed a challenge to Chancellor Angela Merkel's government, as studies have shown that children with immigrant roots struggle more in school and are less likely to fully integrate or find jobs.

Therefore tensions with ethnic minorities remain high. Last month the issue was in the news again when two leading German politicians announced they were campaigning for immigrants to undergo intelligence tests before they are granted residency or citizenship rights in the country.

Peter Trapp, a domestic policy expert with the ruling conservative CDU party in Berlin, recently said: "We have to establish criteria for immigration that really benefit our country.

"In addition to adequate education and job qualifications, one benchmark should be intelligence. I am in favour of intelligence tests for immigrants. We cannot continue to make this issue taboo." He was supported by a conservative MEP..