Conditions have changed so much in the past 16 years, in fact, that the debate about immigration/integration has almost reached an absurdist crescendo, beginning with Bavarian Premier and Christian Social Union leader Edmund Stoiber attempting to maintain some kind of balance between past calls for acceptance and present cries for fences and walls: "Yes to openness and tolerance, no to Islamist head scarves," Stoiber said (DW Staff, 2004). Merkl proclaimed in 2010 that multiculturalism had "utterly failed" in Germany and that more had to be done by immigrants to integrate themselves into German society, echoing the paradoxical position of Stoiber (Weaver, 2010)