Protest over German immigrant law

BERLIN, Germany -- The opposition Conservative Party in Germany staged a walkout over new legislation that allows foreign labour into the country for the first time in almost 30 years.

The Bundesrat upper house passed the immigration bill, promoted by Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democratic Party, on Friday by a 35-34 margin, but conservatives protested, saying the way the votes were counted rendered it unconstitutional.

Conservatives, led by Bavarian Premier Edmund Stoiber, said the vote count was highly irregular when a rare split vote was recognised as in favour of the measure. Stoiber is Schroeder's main political challenger in the coming elections.

The immigration law would open Germany to foreign labour for the first time since the early 1970s, when it ended a programme to attract so-called guest workers, mainly from Turkey, amid rising unemployment.

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"Germany needs this law," Schroeder said. As well as admitting refugees under tightened rules, "those that we need to maintain and increase our economic prosperity can come too," he said.

Schroeder's centre-left government had tried in vain to reach a compromise with opposition parties in a bid to keep immigration out of the campaign for national elections on September 22.

Arguing that the bill would expose Germany to a flood of immigration at a time of high unemployment, conservatives had vowed to block the law in the upper house, where the country's 16 states are represented. The lower house passed the bill earlier this month.

But the government won in the upper house by the narrowest of margins when the eastern state of Brandenburg, governed by a coalition of Schroeder's Social Democrats and conservative Christian Democrats, voted in favour.

Brandenburg's Social Democrat governor, Manfred Stolpe, was expected to abstain after failing to agree a position with his Christian Democrat interior minister, and conservatives claimed his vote was invalid.

Leaders of the opposition-led states walked out in protest after upper house president Klaus Wowereit, a Social Democrat, turned down their request to reconsider the result. They urged President Johannes Rau not to sign the bill into law and threatened to take their complaint to the supreme court.

"It's a bad bill. It's a bill that divides more than it unites," Schroeder's election challenger, Bavarian governor Edmund Stoiber, said. "We will present a new bill immediately after the election that respects the social balance in our society."

The law was drawn up after a government-appointed commission argued last year that Germany needs tens of thousands of new migrants each year to supplement its ageing, shrinking population.

Michael Rogowski, president of the German Industry Association, welcomed the passing of the law, saying it would help to avert a skills shortage in areas such as engineering and computing.

"I hope that the topic will no longer be the subject of an emotionalised election campaign," he said in a statement.