These socio-cultural tests are increasingly popular proposals across Europe; the Netherlands, which has a very strict program, and Britain are revising their processes to become citizens. This particular article focuses on the German’s willingness to test its Gastarbeiter population. The German tests are not federally coordinated; each state can provide its own citizenship test, as each state?not the country?grants citizenship to resident immigrants. To date, Hesse and Baden-Wurttemburg, which implemented their test in January 2006, require citizenship tests. Hesse state, for example, calls theirs the “knowledge and values” test. The Baden-Wurttenburg test, however, also includes an “opinions” test that is aimed squarely at Muslims’ values and is nicknamed “the Muslim test.” It is hardly a surprise that immigrants applying for German citizenship have halved since 2000, according to Spiegel Online. This, then, is a long overdue national debate that may depend on the political leanings of each state’s governments and leaves plenty of room for conflicting state laws, and consequently loopholes. Thus far, this debate has been contained as a state-issue, although discourse prudently has begun to implement a state-wide citizenship law, a move that could splinter the federalist left-right coalition government of Angela Merkel . For, as Integration Commissioner Maria Bohmer said, “A person becomes a citizen of Germany, after all?not of a German state” (source).
It is certainly important for immigrant populations to integrate into host countries’ language, culture, and legal system. As one immigrant said, “It’s reasonable to expect people to know about the country they want to live in?A lot of these questions are very important especially when it comes to legal matters?” (source). For example, a Baden-Wurttemburg question on honor killings, while specifically targeting Muslims, might be considered fair in the context of abiding by German law, not Sharia.
Under Merkel’s predecessor, Germany passed a conservative law requiring immigrants to sit for 630 hours of Germanic courses. The need and desire for such training, to include language courses, is acceptable. The civics tests purportedly underscore a person’s knowledge of German history, politics, and culture and to build a sense of German nationalism. As Chancellor Merkel said, “citizenship can’t be granted in passing.” Interestingly, too, reference to the Nazi era is specifically excluded from the tests.
Most concerning is that the stated goal of the citizenship tests is to provide would-be citizens with well-rounded knowledge of Germany. However, many of the proposed questions may, in fact, be difficult for German citizens to answer correctly. For example, one question asks what Otto Hahn did in 1938. As many immigrants have attested to, arcane knowledge that might do well on a game show do very little to instill national pride and integration. According to right-leaning Die Welt, “Immigrants who want to stay in Germany don’t need to know the Bible or the poems of Schiller. They need to have the will and talent to raise our gross national product through legal labor.”
Citizenship questions focusing on religiosity and personal behaviors may prove discriminatory. For example, open-ended questions about the Jews’ being “responsible for all the evil in the world” to include 9/11 or media rights as part of a democratic society (ref: Mohammed Cartoons), has little to do with German citizenship. Other questions focus on women’s rights, attire, and social normatives. These sorts of questions, while comprising 10 percent of the civics tests, are specifically anti-Muslim and do nothing to counter terrorism in Germany. Based on these questions, even German Pope Bendict XVI might fail, as might a majority of arch-conservative Germans who probably would not pass the historical and cultural questions. According to former Constitutional Court judge Professor Ernst Mahrenholz, “This catalogue of questions is absolutely useless?If I may speak honestly, I have the impression this has something to do with the electoral fight that takes place in Baden-Wuerttemberg at the moment. This is an appeal to the German citizens to vote CDU because of their critical stance towards Muslims.”
Germany’s rising unemployment, failing social welfare system, and low national birthrate may have more play in these civics tests than has been let on. Germany is an immigrant country, despite rhetoric to the contrary. Since the 1960s when Germany invited Turks, in particular, to work jobs that Germans would not take, Germany’s face has evolved from the Aryan nation of Hitler’s intentions to a multicultural proverbial melting pot. Now that unemployment rates are high, xenophobia and anti-immigrant rhetoric slips easily into the layman’s discourse. The overly generous welfare system is rapidly imploding with little relief in sight. Germany’s Federal Statistics Office portends that Germany’s population will shrink to 67 million by 2050 due to low birth rates, leaving many pure-blooded Germans to fear for their identity.
The citizenship tests bring to the fore the massive attention in Germany, and throughout Europe, that has fallen on Islam in the post-9/11, post-3/11 , and post 7/7 environments. While integration was not a priority, mass scale al-Qaeda terrorism had also not been a reality on German soil?debunked by the Hamburg cell, in particular. The tests are allegedly designed to filter out religious extremism, yet answers are graded by the interviewing naturalization official, who may or may not have any training in identifying religious extremism. According to Eckart von Klaeden, a conservative parliamentarian, “These tests are designed to keep the extremists out, not just Islamic extremists but right- and left-wing extremists too.” Little, however, is done on these tests to address the rising neo-Nazi movement, the anarchist movement, or the radical environmentalist movement. This, in light of a neo-Nazi attack that nearly killed an African foreigner on April 18 in Potsdam. In fact, the tests cannot conclusively prevent a terrorist from gaining citizenship. Once the contents of the test questions are released publicly, those wishing to gain citizenship will surely learn the ‘correct’ answers. Some officials have proposed that citizenship could be revoked should answers have been skewed away from radicalism or fundamentalism. This, too, is likely illegal. But, profoundly, nefarious terrorists may not even wish to gain citizenship, thus eluding the test in the first place. This is the same argument used in the US about gun registers; the bad guys do not register.
If Germany, for example, wishes to implement immigrant testing, it should be on a universal scale, not just for?or better yet, against?Muslims. Such exclusionary practices do nothing to combat the transnational need for integration and cross-cultural understanding within Europe, thus likely leaving a disgruntled population susceptible to radicalization and a willingness to attack the host society. These tests do nothing to shield a nation from terrorism nor do they deal with the root causes of terrorism or radicalism. Despite economic difficulties, the German government needs to sponsor legitimate integration initiatives and rites of passage, like citizenship ceremonies, to celebrate and embrace their foreign populations. Should these sorts of examinations be put into place in Germany and/or throughout Europe, the simmering racial and economic tensions are likely to erupt throughout the continent (see this WAR Report) embodied in forms like the violent race rioting that was seen in France or the anti-cartoon riots, both seen in early 2005.
To take the Hesse citizenship test, please link to Expatica.
