The UK and Germany are similar in many ways. Both are multicultural societies with quite a large population of immigrants or descendants of immigrants. However, this multiculturalism has different historical roots in each case. In the UK immigration has mostly been from countries which were once part of the British Empire and later members of the Commonwealth. The first of mass immigration came after the Second World War, when there was a shortage of workers, particularly in public transport and in factories. A lot of people arrived in Britain from the West Indies and they were followed by immigrants from the Indian subcontinent. As citizens of Commonwealth countries entry to Britain was easy for them. The situation was similar in Germany after the war. The country needed rebuilding and there was also a shortage of workers. But Germany’s guest workers were recruited from southern Europe, mainly from Italy, (the former state of) Yugoslavia, Greece and Turkey, which meant that there wasn’t the obvious difference in colour which made the black and Asian immigrants to the UK stand out. In both cases the immigrants were given low-skilled and poorly-paid jobs and many have never managed to rise above the bottom end of the social scale. In Britain they have tended to occupy ghetto-like areas in big cities, the West Indians in Birmingham and Brixton, the Asians in Bradford, Leicester and Tower Hamlets. In particular the Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, who are Muslim, have had problems accepting western values and have often segregated themselves away from the mainstream of society. In Germany the guest workers contributed greatly towards the German economic miracle of the 1960s. Most have assimilated well and are accepted for adding some colour to German society. Only the immigrants from Turkey, also Muslims, have a similar problem with integration as the Pakistanis and Bangladeshis in Britain, with large Turkish communities in many of the big cities, and with Turkish children generally over-represented in the Hauptschule, the least academic of the three types of German secondary school. Also the Turks are the most visible of the immigrant groups in Germany mainly due to the headscarf worn by Turkish women. In both countries there have been attacks on immigrants and examples of racial discrimination, though the situation has always been worse in the UK. In the last twenty years there have been increasing numbers of immigrants to the UK from eastern Europe, especially from Poland, while during this time a lot of Russians of German extraction have come to live in Germany. This has been mainly for economic reasons, rather than because of a labour shortage, and they are not always made welcome. Both in the UK and in Germany there are people who are worried by the thought of their country becoming too multicultural and losing its identity. Until immigrants like the Bangladeshis in Tower Hamlets and the Turks in Kreuzberg are able and willing to integrate properly there will always be an immigrant underclass and discrimination will continue.