quote:

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. . most of them are ethnic Germans, descendants of those who immigrated to Russia in the time of Peter the Great and kept up their traditions for centuries until deported to Kazakhstan by Stalin. After the USSR had collapsed Germany called its lost citizens back home.

An elderly lady Galina who used to be the head of a school in Karaganda and is now working as a cleaning lady in Germany says, "There was nothing to eat in Karaganda, where my family and I had been living. That is why we considered an invitation to Germany a blessing. We've been here for nine years already. Oh yes, they gave us some money for rising up so to say. Our relatives that are still living in Kazakhstan think that we are living in paradise. It isn't so, though. Germans are concealing their dislike for foreigners behind their polite smiles. I am not accepted for the teacher's position although my German is rather good and I've proved my professional skills. But when they see the place of my birth in the passport they say politely they are not able to hire me at the moment. I had to face it about twenty times. Then I gave up and am currently working as a cleaning lady. All of my acquaintances gave gone through similar situations".

". . the level of unemployment here is so high that the even those who were born in Germany can hardly find a job. That is why my parents who have degree in medicine are glad to be working as nurses".

Almost in every city there are two quarters - Turkish with its snack bars, small shops and mosque and Russian with its discos, schools and kindergartens. German is a rarity in these quarters. Russians, who have been living in Germany for a long time, are said to mix the two languages. They use Russian as their main language with a few German words for their convenience. Pensioners who moved to Germany to live their last years on pension could not master German. Many young people who immigrated while they were teenagers still consider German a foreign language. They hardly finished schools where they studied together with the similar Russian Germans and now they go on communicating mostly with their compatriots.

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Granted this problem is really quite complex, as the immigrating group will need to make an attempt to integrate. But this is a given, and if they're segregated then their attempts will be much more difficult. And that of course will lead to alienation, and take a look at the Muslim community in France, it's the same type of situation. Luckily for Germany it’s unlikely that the Russian-Germans are susceptible to foreign influenced extremism, nonetheless the anecdote about them and the Turkish immigrants making up most of the jail population is quite a good example of the difficulties that un-integrated minorities face (similar examples being First Nations in Canada, and Blacks and Hispanics in the US).