Willkommen, Ausländer

Since the early 1970s, when the last of the Turkish gastarbeiters arrived, Germany has scrupulously limited the number of immigrants allowed into the country. And before the European Union admitted 10 new members last month, Germany and other E.U. states insisted that workers from the accession countries should be barred for up to seven years from holding jobs in Western Europe. Fearing the effect of cheap labor on already high unemployment — and damage to Germany's Christian heritage — politicians from the conservative opposition claimed that Germany was "not a country of immigration." So it comes as a pleasant surprise that...