As Angela Merkel’s CDU suffers a further slip in the polls during two regional elections due largely to her chaotic management of the coronavirus management, her government is still mainly preoccupied with social engineering projects and a fight against the country’s political right.
During this month’s 13th Integration Summit, the German government and the federal commissioner for migration, refugees and integration have unveiled a new action plan for the integration of the millions of migrants now residing in the country. According to the published roadmap, enormous cultural changes must take place within German society in order to make the new arrivals feel at home and to integrate them into the job market, with jobless migrants currently costing the country at least €6 billion a year and most failing to enter the job market.
The new action plan, drafted with the help of increasingly influential pro-migration NGOs, is a brainchild of the Green Party dominated German Integration Commission. It purports to “support the federal government in further developing integration policy and promoting the coexistence of all people in the country — whether Germans and foreigners, with or without a history of immigration… [and to] further develop the conditions for the most tension-free coexistence between all citizens, promote mutual understanding, and counter xenophobia and inequality.”
The five-stage plan envisages a period of a multi-stage integration, a phase of “growing together”, and finally a state of cohesion. It not only aims to integrate migrants already in the country, but also to positively encourage foreign nationals with job adverts and language courses in their country of origin, to prepare for a life in Germany before their arrival.
Its aim is to attract more immigration on top of the ongoing spontaneous process by means of “resettlement and humanitarian admission” or by offering “support to employers in recruiting foreign workers”.
The proposal recommends the acquisition of more healthcare workers with migration background, and recommends the establishment of a learning platform for existing employees to “promote transcultural skills in nursing”. In other areas of professional life, during stage five of the integration process, the action plan recommends participation in political education, the launch of anti-discrimination initiatives, and the introduction of quotas for migrants or people with foreign background in public services.
The latter refers back to an earlier demand by Elke Breitenbach from the radical left Die Linke party for the creation of 35-percent migrant quotas in the capital of Berlin’s administration and public services. In these there is already a 60-percent quota existing for women, and if the 35-percent migrant quota were to be fulfilled, this would make it increasingly difficult for native White man to get a job in public services, or at least they could be excluded from active recruitment for the next two or three decades.
The action plan would also aim to introduce radical changes in the business environment. Under the heading “Diversity in Business”, the government urges business to create what they call a “working environment that is free from prejudice”. This would not only mean the introduction of special recognition schemes for promoting diversity or diversity projects in which employees should participate, but this would inevitably lead to sanctions against those who would refuse to take part in such political schooling on the basis of their conscience. The initiative could in fact overrule Germany’s Basic Law, which forbids negative or even preferential treatment towards anyone on the basis of their religion or racial origin, and also protects every citizen’s right to choose their own political or cultural viewpoint.
This fact does not seem to discourage the main authors of the action plan, Germany’s Green party, who proclaim the creation of a “diverse country of immigration” in their own mission statement. This is confirmed in the final stages of their integration action plan, where they advocate the cultural transformation of German society via immigration, where the majority society is expected to open itself up to more influences from foreign arrivals. Under the Green Party’s proposal, the new arrivals are spared of almost all responsibility for their own success in Germany, and instead the program unmistakably resembles a drive for the large-scale political re-education of the country’s native population.
The government’s influence on the freedom of speech is also targeting Germany’s free press, as it is evident from the pages of the New German Media Makers Association, which is broadly seen as the Merkel government’s long arm in the world of German media.
Through the association, the government is attempting to interfere with the country’s media outlets in order to advise them to accept their diversity drive as their own. The government openly declares on its own website that “in order to promote diversity in film, television and editorial offices, the New German Media Makers Association, in cooperation with media houses and journalism schools, aims to provide targeted support to media workers with an immigration and refugee background, and media companies and journalistic training centers to develop their approaches to diversity.”
By any standards, this is just short of direct interference with the staffing policy of the German media, as well as mandating a particular political ethos as the one to follow in their journalistic editorial decisions.
