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GMF’s Washington headquarters hosted Dr. Jürgen Rüttgers, minister president of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, on Feb. 21 for a talk on immigration and integration issues.  Dr. Rüttgers heads the government of Germany’s most populous state since local elections in May 2005, when sparked an early federal election the following September.    Dr. Rüttgers began by highlighting the challenges he currently faces in North Rhine-Westphalia, where roughly 11 percent of the 18 million population are foreign, the largest group being Turkish.  In calling for true integration of immigrants — which he distinguished from both multiculturalism and assimilation — he admitted that Germany had not done enough to absorb immigrants into mainstream society.  For too long, Dr. Rüttgers said, Germany had thought of immigrants as temporary guest workers, but it must now face a third generation of Turkish immigrants who have not been acculturated to mainstream German culture.  Dr. Rüttgers did recognize the complexity of the issue, saying that the Turkish-German community sees itself somewhere between his view of the group as “Germans of Turkish descent” and Turkey’s view of them as “Turks in Germany.”   Following Dr. Rüttgers remarks, Susan Martin, director of Georgetown’s Institute for the Study of International Migration, and Flavia Jimenez, an analyst at the National Council of La Raza, spoke about current immigration debates in the United States.  The discussion compared the Latino experience here with that of the Turkish community in Germany, taking into consideration how Islamic culture affects the latter.  Participants also exchanged best practices on language instruction and equal access to education.