The World - News from Sept. 1, 1988

The West German Cabinet approved a special $1-billion spending package to cope with a record influx of ethnic Germans who are taking advantage of relaxed exit policies in Poland and the Soviet Union to return to their ancestors’ homeland. The money will go to build apartments and provide German-language training and other services between now and 1990. West Germany’s constitution obliges the government to grant citizenship to anyone who can satisfy the authorities that he or she is of German ancestry. Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who said in announcing the package that “we must welcome them with open arms,” said that more than 200,000 ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe are expected to arrive this year. That far exceeds the record 86,000 returned in 1987.