The story is important from a historic and diversity perspective, and as I lived in Austria during the late 1960s and early 1970s--the height of the "Gastarbeiter" (guest worker) era--I can attest that much of what is written (I won't use the word "reported") here is true. More about whether this is quality journalism later. As for the theme of this article, the writer is correct: There are lessons for the United States, chilling ones, concerning the label "guest worker." The divisive word is "guest." As Ben Franklin states, guests and fish stink after three days--or in Germany's and Austria's case--three years. Then those governments wanted you to go home, and this article chronicles that illogical assumption, because human beings in three years tend to find mates and have children and then want to remain when their visas, like ethnic "sub-prime" loans, become due. Now a word once again about journalism written on a computer with access to search engines (whose ad-based optimization is killing the news [but that's anther story]). This article has the hallmarks of an extended executive summary--based, perhaps, on factual documents, but with no interviews with or focus on those impacted by the phenomenon. Neither do we get videography or even digital photos using the multimedia potential of the Web. This sad assessment tracks back to Slate's technological focus; but in stories like this, we're not writing for the technorati about why the Google-Yahoo ad deal is bad for the Web (no need for videography or digital photography there [because there is no "there "there"]); we're writing about people and places. I see the same type of "journalism" too often in online magazines, and to use a Slatian term, this is a "downgrade" in service--not to technology--but to society.