The term “immigration” remains controversial in the Federal Republic of Germany, especially in political discourse. This article uses it in an inclusive sense, encompassing not only foreign “guest workers” (Gastarbeiter) but also “displaced persons” (DPs), refugees, ethnic Germans expelled from Eastern Europe during or just after World War II, postwar ethnic German immigrants from the East (Spätaussiedler), former residents of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), and workers with temporary contracts in the GDR.

Historical differences between Germany and the United States became readily evident in the two countries' immigration policies in the twenty years following World War II. West Germany's policy reflected the problems arising from the loss of Germany's former eastern territories and the division of the country. The need to integrate refugees from the eastern territories and the GDR meant that the concept of German descent and common culture, laid down in the Imperial Citizenship and Nationality Law (Reichs- und Staatsangehörigkeitsgesetz) of 1913 and elsewhere, became fixed as the dominant principle of West German immigration policy.