BERLIN, March 22: Germany’s parliament approved a controversial immigration law on Friday, but opposition conservatives staged a walkout in protest, saying its adoption was unconstitutional.
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s Social Democrats (SPD) won the Bundesrat upper house vote to allow a limited number of skilled foreigners into Germany — but the conservatives would not accept the way the vote was counted.
The immigration law, already two years in the making, would open Germany to foreign labour for the first time since the early 1970s, when it ended a programme to attract so-called guest workers, mainly from Turkey, amid rising unemployment.
The legislation was passed by the lower house earlier this month.
After Berlin’s SPD Mayor Klaus Wowereit, who holds the rotating Bundesrat presidency, refused to reverse his decision to declare the controversial law passed, the conservatives said they would not take part in the rest of afternoon’s session.
Amid heckles from conservatives in the normally staid upper house, Wowereit recognised a rare split vote by one of the 16 states represented in the Bundesrat — one coalition partner in favour and one opposed — as a vote in favour of the law.
“I am very worried that the constitution has been so brazenly trampled upon to achieve an alleged political goal,” Bavarian Premier Edmund Stoiber, Schroeder’s conservative challenger in the September 22 election, told reporters.
Stoiber, whose conservatives are holding a clear lead in opinion polls, has fought the measure, saying Germany does not need more migrant labour because unemployment was already above four million and had no capacity to integrate more foreigners.
Roland Koch, Christian Democrat premier of Hesse, said he was sure President Johannes Rau would not sign the legislation into law and said Germany was facing a constitutional crisis.
“This is a calculated break of the rules of our constitution, it shouldn’t have happened,” he said.
Franz Muentefering, Schroeder’s deputy in the SPD, said the decision of the Bundesrat represented the triumph of common sense and said the conservative’s blocking tactics had failed.
“The agreed law reflects a broad consensus between industry associations, trade unions, churches and politics,” he said in a statement. “Stoiber is isolated...Stoiber is not fit to govern.”
ELECTION ISSUE?: Manfred Stolpe, the SPD premier of the state of Brandenburg whose vote in favour of the legislation triggered Friday’s dispute, said the row was obviously the result of the rising political temperature in the run-up to Germany’s election.
Interior Minister Otto Schily told the house in a heated five-hour debate that Germany needed the reform if it was to compete with nations like the United States for the most skilled foreign workers.
“If the Bundesrat agrees this law today, Germany will have the most modern immigration legislation in Europe,” he said. “With this law, Germany shows itself to be an open country.”
When coalition governments in Germany’s states are divided on legislation before the Bundesrat they usually abstain.
But Stolpe, who rules the eastern state of Brandenburg with the Christian Democrats, backed the measure, even though his coalition partner, Joerg Schoenbohm, wanted to vote against.
Conservatives said a split vote was invalid, but the SPD argued that the vote of the state’s premier, Stolpe, should be counted as representing Brandenburg.
The reform, which is also aimed at improving the integration of foreigners already living in Germany and overhauling asylum procedures, provides a framework for selecting skilled workers which industry says it needs despite high unemployment.
Demographers warn that Germany, with a low birth rate and ageing population, could face labour shortages from about 2010—Reuters