Hakan Aydin

Germany recently passed a new controversial immigration law. The new law requires that foreign spouses should have a basic knowledge of German language and proof of solid financial support, before they are granted a visa. So far so good. The controversial part of the law is that, this requirement only applies to Turkish nationals. The rules do not apply to German nationals and other EU nationals who want to bring a foreign spouse into the country. Similarly, it doesn’t apply to most of the non-EU countries like Israel, Japan or the USA.

After the German parliament passed the law, the Turkish community in Germany had hopes that the law might be prevented from getting presidential approval on the grounds of lack of compliance with constitutional and human rights principles. However, the German President Horst Koehler approved the law and a spokesman for the presidency said that the law does not have any measures that are unconstitutional.

As expected, the Turkish community (some 2.5 million strong now) in Germany were very upset, as the law appears to be targeted to only one ethnic group. Some call this discrimination, others call it racism. The Turkish community is expected to appeal to the European Court on Human rights, on the grounds that the new law is not in accordance with the European Convention on Human Rights.