What's German for "we knew that already"?

Angela Merkel has declared multiculturalism in her country a failure, leading some to trumpet Canada's success.

Canadian commentators are still flipping through their German-to-English dictionaries to interpret some remarks made by German Chancellor Angela Merkel earlier this week, when she declared that multiculturalism in her country had utterly failed. No one’s quite sure if she was making the frightening assertion that diversity could never succeed in Germany, or offering a pointed criticism of the inadequacies of European efforts to integrate. One thing is certain: the German word for multiculturalism is “mulitikulti,” and is very cute.

Kudos to the chancellor, who “has challenged a taboo that silenced anyone who tried to argue that newcomers have an obligation to integrate,” argues the Ottawa Citizen. It’s about time that some one took on the “long-prevailing attitude in Europe that host countries should accommodate with little question the cultural practices of immigrants, even if those traditions are inconsistent with the values of the host country.” We may be reading from a different history textbook from the Citizen here, but the two major wars Europe has fought over nationalism in the past century and the ethnic conflicts that continue to fester across the continent seem pretty good proof that if Europe has a “long-prevailing attitude” about foreigners, it’s that they can barely tolerate them outside their borders, let alone inside them.

The National Post’s John Moore says that Merkel’s comments aren’t evidence of neo-Fascism on the rise, rather she was referring to a specific guest-worker program that brought Turkish labourers to post-war Germany and backfired spectacularly because no one ever expected them to stay. “Complaining that these workers and their children have stubbornly refused to integrate is a bit like inviting someone to dinner, telling them to keep their coat and boots on and then asking why they look so damn uncomfortable,” he writes.

The Montreal Gazette surmises that as a nation of immigrants, Canada has been much better at integrating other newcomers because unlike Germany “We understood that new immigrants, too, were here to stay.” You heard it here first. Canada: historically better at diversity than Germany.