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There are classic immigration states like the USA or Australia whose existence can only be explained by migration.

And there are countries like Germany where an immigration society is only gradually emerging.

While around half a million foreigners lived in the Federal Republic of Germany in the middle of the last century, today a quarter of the population has a so-called migration background, i.e. they immigrated themselves or have at least one parent who was born without German citizenship.

The so-called guest worker recruitment can be seen as the starting point for this development towards a country that is strongly characterized by migration.

65 years ago, on January 5th, 1956, the first 50 Italian guest workers arrived in Siersdorf on the Lower Rhine.

During the first few years of recruitment, nobody thought that the workers could stay in the long run, Max Frisch's word was imprinted in the collective memory: "We called workers, and people came."

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The start of the immigration society happened unconsciously: The German economy grew by almost eight percent annually in the 1950s, and workers were becoming scarce in many industries.

In Italy, however, there is mass unemployment, which is why Rome has been promoting the posting of Italian workers in Bonn since 1953.

Unsuccessful at first: The government around Chancellor Konrad Adenauer (CDU) has declared full employment as its goal, and the Ministry of Labor is resisting recruitment with reference to the still noticeable unemployment rate in agriculture.

The unions also fear pressure on wages.

After they were able to enforce that the recruited Italians may only be employed at the usual wages, the man whose name stands like no other for the success of the social market economy, Minister of Economics Ludwig Erhard: “With regard to the special conditions on the In the labor market, the Federal Government will immediately take measures to attract foreign workers in certain critical work areas. "

At that time integration was a foreign word

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In December, Germany and Italy finally meet the "Agreement on the recruitment and placement of Italian workers in the Federal Republic of Germany".

The first 50 come on January 5th, in April 1956, the first larger contingent of 1400 seasonal workers leaves Italy.

December 21, 1955, Rome: German Economics Minister Anton Storch (CDU, left) and Italy's Foreign Minister Gaetano Martino (right) after the agreement was signed

Source: pa / dpa / UPI

At the end of the year only around 10,000 workers were employed, mainly in agriculture and construction.

Integration is still a foreign word, in Germany the so-called guest workers from Italy are housed separately from the local population in their own accommodation.

The first agreement with Italy was followed by those with Spain (1960), Greece, Turkey (1961), Morocco (1963), Portugal (1964), Tunisia (1965) and Yugoslavia (1968).

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While the number of these “guest workers” is increasing slowly at first, in 1960 it was around 300,000, in 1965 the mark of one million was exceeded, the largest groups being the Italians, Greeks and Spaniards.

1960: Italian dock workers taking a breakfast break at the Kuhwerder quay in the port of Hamburg

Source: pa / dpa / Gerd Herold

When recruitment was stopped in 1973 in the wake of the oil price shock, around four million foreigners were living in Germany, including 2.6 million foreign workers, of whom only about a third came through the "guest worker" procedure, because a significant one was difficult a determinable proportion of the “guest worker” migration took place in an uncontrolled manner beyond the official procedures.

Family reunification gained in importance in the 1970s

It is often forgotten that the vast majority of them returned: Since the 1950s until the early 1970s, around 14 million foreign workers moved to Germany, while around 11 million returned during the same period.

This rotation principle was a basis of the agreements, for example that with Turkey provided for a limitation of the stay to two years.

Most of the Turkish “guest workers” also returned.

After the German government approved the Turkish initiative in 1961 to accept citizens of the country as temporary employees, around 867,000 workers from Turkey traveled to Germany by 1973.

In the same period, around 500,000 people returned as planned.

1964: Turkish “guest workers” in a Cologne car factory

Source: picture alliance / CPA Media Co.

However, after the recruitment stop in November 1973, family reunification became more and more important - according to the Federal Agency for Civic Education, around every second person of Turkish origin came to Germany this way.

At the end of the 1970s, the federal government reacted to the sharp increase in the number of immigrants with initial restrictions on the formerly generous regulations.

Despite recruitment stops, restrictions on reunification and the Return Assistance Act of 1983, the number of foreigners rose slightly from 3.9 to 4.7 million between 1974 and 1988.

Due to further family reunification and increasing asylum immigration, the number has increased more sharply since 1988 and reached 7.5 million in 1996, the highest level ever. In the following years it stagnated - also because since the major reform of the nationality law up to 2010 it was more than 1.4 million Immigrants were naturalized.

Between 2011 and today the number of foreigners rose sharply from 6.3 million to the previous high of 11.2 million;

another ten million have a migration background.