About 10 million inhabitants of Germany are of non-German origin and use German and one or more other languages in their everyday life. The number of foreign students in German schools is constantly growing. About 25 percent of Germany's foreign population are citizens of other European Union states. The largest group of minority language speakers in Germany, and the most important ethnolinguistic group, are Turkish citizens. The second largest group of minority language speakers are Bosnians/Croatians/Serbians, followed by Italians. German immigration and integration policies legally define the various immigrant groups with different rights, which affects their language maintenance. Newspapers are available in all important immigrant languages, and radio and television broadcast some programs in other languages. Teaching of immigrant languages in supplementary lessons was introduced in the late 1960s. This paper presents examples of educational policies in three German states: Hamburg, a center of massive immigration with changing educational policy; Northrhine-Westphalia, Germany's largest state, which has a high immigration rate and an educational policy devoted to linguistic diversity; and Hesse, a state with different immigration patterns that supported immigrant languages in school until 1999. (Contains 22 references.) (SM)