Germany hopes to avoid mistakes made with earlier migrant workers

Gescher, Germany

AS Germany struggles to absorb more than a million migrants from the Middle East and Africa, the government is hoping to avoid the mistakes it made half a century ago when it brought in a generation of guest workers from Turkey.

In the 1960s, hundreds of thousands of Turkish men were invited in to fill labour shortages. But Germany made no attempt to help them learn the language or upgrade their skills.

The result is that three million Turks in Germany are still struggling today. They are the least integrated minority, with an unemployment rate of about 16 per cent, almost three times the national average.

Now, two years after it threw open its doors to the latest migrants, Germany has devised an integration strategy based on language and job training intended to get the newcomers into work and off welfare. Among the changes a…