German Chancellor Angela Merkel German multicultural society has failed

I wonder how long before our politicians will admit that we have simmilar
problems here?

Chris
............

Merkel says German multicultural society has failed

16 October 2010

German Chancellor Angela Merkel: "lmmigrants should learn to speak German"

Attempts to build a multicultural society in Germany have "utterly failed",
Chancellor Angela Merkel says.

In a speech in Potsdam, she said the so-called "multikulti" concept - where
people would "live side-by-side" happily - did not work.

Mrs Merkel's comments come amid recent outpourings of strong anti-immigrant
feeling from mainstream politicians.

A recent survey showed that more than 30% of Germans believed Germany was
"overrun by foreigners".

The study - by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation think-tank - also showed that
roughly the same number thought that some 16 million of Germany's immigrants
or people with foreign origins had come to the country for the social
benefits.

Foreign workers;

Mrs Merkel told a gathering of younger members of her conservative Christian
Democratic Union (CDU) party on Saturday that at "the beginning of the 60s
our country called the foreign workers to come to Germany and now they live
in our ountry... We kidded ourselves a while, we said: 'They won't stay,
sometime they will be gone', but this isn't reality.
"And of course, the approach [to build] a multicultural [society] and to
live side-by-side and to enjoy each other... has failed, utterly failed."

In her speech, the chancellor specifically referred to recent comments by
German President Christian Wulff who said that Islam was "part of Germany"
like Christianity and Judaism.

While acknowledging that this was the case, Mrs Merkel stressed that
immigrants living in Germany needed to do more to integrate, including
learning to speak German.

"Anyone who does not immediately speak German", she said, "is not welcome".

By speaking now, Mrs Merkel has now joined the increasingly hot debate on
multiculturalism, coming down on the side of those who are uneasy about
immigration, says the BBC's correspondent in Berlin, Stephen Evans.

Her comments come a week after she held talks with Turkish Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in which the two leaders pledged to do more to improve
the often poor integration record of Germany's estimated 2.5 million-strong
Turkish community.

Earlier this week, Horst Seehofer, the leader of the CDU's Bavarian sister
party, CSU, said about integration that it was "obvious that immigrants from
different cultures like Turkey and Arab countries, all in all, find it
harder".

"'Multikulti' is dead," Mr Seehofer said.

In August, Thilo Sarrazin, a senior official at Germany's central bank, said
that "no immigrant group other than Muslims is so strongly connected with
claims on the welfare state and crime". Mr Sarrazin has since resigned.

Such recent strong anti-immigrant feelings from mainstream politicians come
amid an anger in Germany about high unemployment, even if the economy is
growing faster than those of its rivals, our correspondent says.

He adds that there also seems to be a new strident tone in the country,
perhaps leading to less reticence about no-go-areas of the past.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11559451