Comment on Anon misses the classic design
idiomaddict@lemmy.world 4 days agoThat was the original plan, which caused a lot of the trouble the Germany currently has. There weren’t big programs for immigrants to learn German until decades after the original Gastarbeiter had arrived. There was no effort at all of integrating them or their children until basically an entire generation had already come, settled, and retired. Even aside from cultural aspects, a lot of the descendants of Gastarbeitern don’t have German citizenship. It’s fucking wild to me that someone could be the third generation of their family born in a country and still not be given citizenship.
I’m an immigrant and a German teacher, so I’m probably biased, but that’s not the way to go about things.
tetris11@feddit.uk 4 days ago
My ex was like that; 3rd generation, no German pass.
Her grandad worked the factories, her mum grew up in the workhouses next to the factories (apparently they’d hand him lunch through the wall), and her mum had no formal education other than sunday school.
When I saw the way things were going in Germany, I begged her to get her German passport before it was too late.
idiomaddict@lemmy.world 4 days ago
It’s an incredibly sensitive topic for both ethnic Germans and descendants of Gastarbeiter (as well as for people who are both, obviously), and I’m an autistic foreigner, so I’m trying to be delicate, but I might be missing the mark.
It seems to me that it created a group of people treated as second-class who weren’t given the tools to do well in the German education system, and systemic discrimination solidified that. I hear complaints from (some, racist) Germans that immigrants haven’t integrated, but how could they (obviously there are individuals who integrate under those circumstances, but that’s not going to work with a wave of immigrants from the same country- they’ll just form cultural enclaves, because they won’t get community support otherwise)?
For more recent immigrants, like my coworker from Syria, who’s been in Germany for nine years as a refugee, the choice is between staying a refugee (the German government could at any time say that Syria is safe again and send him back with a few days’ notice) and applying for residency outside of his claim for asylum, thereby giving up his right to asylum (so if they say no, he’d also have to go back with a few days’ notice). His wife and their daughter are in the same position. How on earth can anyone expect him not to teach his daughter Arabic? She might at any point have to move to Syria.
tetris11@feddit.uk 4 days ago
I guess it’s the same in England with the benefit that if you’re born here, you get a UK passport and all the rights that come with it. I’d argue that Germany played both sides of the “Europe means Europe” passport game to both include and exclude people from being naturalized citizens.
Plus the racism obviously, but every country has a large racist overbelly. England is easier in the sense that english media is everywhere, already diverse, and you can communicate in whatever pidgin english you know. German is much much harder, and I do blame the language being the main barrier to easier integration.
idiomaddict@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Yeah, having birthright citizenship makes a huge difference, imo. I’m from the US, which is obviously not currently immigrant friendly, but at least had the veneer of such when I was growing up (at least from my childhood perspective), and it’s hard to tell whether birthright citizenship or the idea of an “immigrant nation” played a bigger role in the difference between the two.
Germany and England do have specific and individual cultures that are worth protecting, but cultural exchange doesn’t inherently destroy extant cultures and if you follow the roots of any tradition far back enough, you’ll find influences from outside cultures.
I don’t know exactly how to describe it, but I got a feeling similar to what I imagine compersion to feel like (I’m not poly) when I saw a group of women wearing full hijabs integrated into their Karneval costumes bringing their costumed kids to a Faschingsparade. It was such a clear image of cultural blending that I got a little sappy about it.