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Germany has one of the highest immigrant populations in Europe. But for several decades, immigrants were simply ignored. It was only a very low birth rate, fear of a significant decrease in the number of workers in the future, and its concomitant peril for the economy which made the government change its mind about immigration. First, it introduced legislation aimed at integrating the immigrants who were already living in Germany. But knowing that immigrants from other European countries, in particular from the East or the South, would not sufficiently compensate the labour deficit in Germany, the government launched several initiatives intended to attract workers from overseas in the 1990s, notably in the high-technology sector where the lack of qualified workers was particularly severe. These half-hearted reforms may indeed suffer due the economic crisis and the removal of immigration restrictions for Romanians and Bulgarians in 2014. And because of the great gap in living conditions between Germany and these two countries, Germans now fear both a wave of poverty immigration and increased clamouring for state benefits. In spite of the dire need for more immigrants and the now borderless European Union, many are now calling for immigration restraint once again. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]