In view of the looming economic crisis, the federal government decides to freeze recruitment in January 1973. The number of so-called “guest workers” and their families in Germany that year is around four million. As a result, in 1973 the Federal Republic “accidentally” becomes what politicians actually wanted to prevent: a country of immigration.
Due to the onset of the oil and economic crisis, which heralded the end of the so-called economic miracle that had been ongoing in the FRG since the 1950s, the federal government imposed a recruitment freeze for workers from non-EC countries (countries that were not part of the European Community at the time) on January 23, 1973. From then on, legal immigration was mainly possible through family reunification and asylum applications. As a result, around 500,000 people returned to their countries of origin between 1973 and 1975.
At the same time, there is a discourse in the media about alleged foreign infiltration, which is openly directed against “guest workers” and immigrants and portrays them as a danger. For example, the news magazine DER SPIEGEL ran the headline “Ghettos in Germany – One Million Turks” in its 31/1973 issue and referred to “Turkish colonies” in the article “The Turks are coming, run for your lives.”
A few months earlier, in November 1972, a decree was passed lifting the ban on the return of ethnic German immigrants, making it easier for them to enter the FRG. Following the decision, an increased wave of emigration from Soviet states began in early 1973. The group of ethnic German immigrants, who are imagined to be “ethnically” closer to the construct of the “German ethnic group,” are given entry advantages and, if not in reality, then at least on paper, the status of desirable immigrants.
