I’d be interested in seeing valid statistics regarding the number of 2nd and 3rd generation Turks who don’t speak German. Aren’t they required to go to school? Are there really that many?
Yes, everybody needs to attend school. I do not think any Turk of 2nd or 3rd gen. does not speak any German, yet quite a few have some characteristic speaking style which often comes across as comical to native speakers, even though Germans are normally tolerant with dialects of foreigners or others.
However the classical low-education Turkish slang will be filled with ever-repeating “cool dude” phrases similar to “no problem” and the amount of expressions often seems rather limited.
Comedians start to depict that Turkish chatter with actors having mullets, dark sun glasses and an old sports car as a ride. Probably this depictions does not really increase job chances of the Turkish in Germany.
Here’s a Spiegel article from 2009 where they reference a recent study that found that 2/3rds of immigrant children can’t read adequately at the end of their 4th year in school.
The Globe and Mail had an article about it as well. Unfortunately they don’t reference where they get their statistics from either.
[quote]By 2002, when Turks had been living there for 41 years and numbered 2.5 million, no more than 470,000 had managed to become German citizens. The German-born children of the millions denied citizenship were stranded without cultural or linguistic ties to Turkey, often without the right to start businesses or go to university in Germany.
So, without incentive to become part of the German community, many didn’t learn the language. According to one study, 80 per cent of Turkish parents can’t participate in parent-teacher meetings because their German is inadequate.[/quote]
That is a massive indictment upon the German state, but it’s also a massive indictment upon those individuals.
That’s the whole problem though – that they don’t think of themselves as German. A man cannot serve two masters. Surely by making Germany your permanent home, you are choosing for Germany. No two-way bets.
[quote=“GuyInTaiwan”]That is a massive indictment upon the German state, but it’s also a massive indictment upon those individuals.
That’s the whole problem though – that they don’t think of themselves as German. A man cannot serve two masters. Surely by making Germany your permanent home, you are choosing for Germany. No two-way bets.[/quote]
Well shit. Does that mean I have to give up Canadian citizenship so long as I live in Taiwan? Or my wife her Taiwanese citizenship should we decide to settle back in Canada?
People serve multiple masters in all things. Only fanatics are fully dedicated to the service of one.
It does if it’s keeping you ignorant of the language, and thus, unemployed/unemployable, and thus, a drain on welfare. I assume none of those are the cases with you though, so in your or your wife’s case, I’d say no.
The German welfare state, and the incentives it creates, is central to this problem. However, given that the German welfare state is not likely to go away tomorrow, I think it’s reasonable for the German state (effectively, the German populace at large) to demand that if you want the possibility of collecting welfare during bad times, there has to be a high probability of you being employable during good times and generally contributing. In other words, there have to be strings attached to the handouts. Why is that so unreasonable?
If you want a true laissez-faire system where there isn’t a massive welfare teat, then by all means, integration doesn’t mean a damned thing.
[quote=“Jaboney”]
Well shit. Does that mean I have to give up Canadian citizenship so long as I live in Taiwan? Or my wife her Taiwanese citizenship should we decide to settle back in Canada?
People serve multiple masters in all things. Only fanatics are fully dedicated to the service of one.[/quote]
The only flaw with your analogy is that you chose to move to Taiwan or your wife would choose to move to Canada. The argument Mr. Kolat is putting forward is for those born in Germany to still retain their Turkish citizenship. I don’t understand how dual citizenship would promote integration into German society, which is his argument. I would think it be even more divisive, setting Turks up as the “other” because they hold a 2nd citizenship. It doesn’t address their cause for their lack of integration, only making it worse.
A comparable situation might be if two Germans moved to the US, set up residency and had a child. Their child would be considered American by being born on US territorial soil. The US government would see the the child as a US citizen but the German government could choose to recognize dual citizenship. If the Turkish government wants to recognize dual citizenship they can. Germany can also choose not to recognize dual citizenship and instead recognize the individual as a citizen or as a non-citizen (foreign passport holder).
[quote=“GuyInTaiwan”]
Yet my observations of people in the four Muslim nations I have been to (Egypt, Turkey, Malaysia and Indonesia, in that order) is that they seem to have an inordinate amount of time to sit around and drink tea, play backgammon or go to the mosque[/quote]
It could easily be argued that those with time to drink tea, play backgammon and go to the mosque have got a much better work/life balance than those that spend every waking hour working, as is often the case in Taiwan. Based solely on the observation you make here, the people in the Muslim nations you’ve been to have a much better quality of life and the rest of us should probably be aspiring to that, instead of criticizing it.
cfimages: Indeed, you’re quite correct in that sense (which I will get to shortly). I did say there are drawbacks to the way the Taiwanese do things, and I’m pretty critical of a whole lot of aspects of how Taiwan operates (especially its education system). That said, greater prosperity is not to be scoffed at (not that I think you’re scoffing at it). It certainly has its benefits. Many Taiwanese seem to be able to travel abroad, even for relatively short periods of time. I don’t think that’s the case for the equivalent percentages of Turks. Life expectancy and other such measures are also better in Taiwan, which aside from other things, is probably a function of prosperity/development.
You might be surprised to learn that of all the countries I have visited, Turkey was probably my favourite, though holidaying somewhere and working there are two different matters. I had heard great things before I went there, and I was expecting that to be hyperbole, but I was absolutely blown away by the place. Turkish hospitality is second to none, and it’s an amazing country with a wealth of landscapes and an incredible history and culture, though I still think a lot of people there were really lazy and didn’t help themselves, and it’s not on a par with Taiwan in terms of development. If I had to choose over Taiwan or Turkey to live in, Taiwan would be better for my current situation in life simply because of how much I can earn and save here. In Turkey, as an English teacher (which I looked into and was offered a position for), you live well compared to most locals, but you don’t really move forward. If I were an average local, I think my prospects would probably be better as a Taiwanese than a Turk. If I were older and relatively comfortable, Taiwan wouldn’t even be in the hunt. If I were super-rich, well, it probably wouldn’t make such a difference either way.
Reading what people from Germany have wrote, it seems clear to me that the problem is Germany gave welfare money not just to immigrants, but then allowed those on welfare to support their family members to come as well. If any country has a policy that says “Come here and we’ll financially support you” then what kind of people do such policies attract? We can blame the immigrants for being lazy, but what did Germany expect to attract with such policies? If they wanted PhD’s then perhaps giving grants for research would have been better than saying “Come here with no plan and we’ll support you.” Why would anyone expect, given that the policy attracted people with no ambition and no plan, that such people will change? It doesn’t make sense. They know there is a problem with their policies and they need to change them to reflect the types of people they want to attract.
If this is the case, and I have not misunderstood what people have wrote, then saying “multiculturalism has failed” kind of misses the point. Multiculturalism hasn’t failed-supporting anyone financially because of German “white guilt” has failed. Perhaps better stated, multiculturalism will fail if we let people in who have no ambition to do anything except get on welfare.
[quote=“lbksig”]Here’s a Spiegel article from 2009 where they reference a recent study that found that 2/3rds of immigrant children can’t read adequately at the end of their 4th year in school.[/quote]If 2/3rds of immigrant children cannot read at the end of fourth year, that shows a HUGE problem with the education system. WTF are teachers doing that allow for such numbers? Sad, that is.
[quote=“suiyuan31”]Reading what people from Germany have wrote, it seems clear to me that the problem is Germany gave welfare money not just to immigrants, but then allowed those on welfare to support their family members to come as well. If any country has a policy that says “Come here and we’ll financially support you” then what kind of people do such policies attract? We can blame the immigrants for being lazy, but what did Germany expect to attract with such policies? If they wanted PhD’s then perhaps giving grants for research would have been better than saying “Come here with no plan and we’ll support you.” Why would anyone expect, given that the policy attracted people with no ambition and no plan, that such people will change? It doesn’t make sense. They know there is a problem with their policies and they need to change them to reflect the types of people they want to attract.
If this is the case, and I have not misunderstood what people have wrote, then saying “multiculturalism has failed” kind of misses the point. Multiculturalism hasn’t failed-supporting anyone financially because of German “white guilt” has failed. Perhaps better stated, multiculturalism will fail if we let people in who have no ambition to do anything except get on welfare.[/quote]
Good post. Canada allows immigrants to bring in family members as well. There was a small backlash against this for the very reason Germany is experiencing: unskilled labor coming in and getting welfare benefits. So, since we didn’t bury our heads in the sand, but had a genuine multi-cultural policy that could be altered when necessary, the policy was changed. You can still bring in family members but the restrictions are tighter.
Not just to pick on welfare bums, but Canada tried opening its doors to immigrants with money who were willing to invest. Huge numbers of Hong Kongers and Taiwanese got their citizenship this way. But most just used the policy to get citizenship, move families here, but kept their businesses overseas (investments were usually bogus or operations moved back overseas as soon as citizenship was obtained).
So this policy was fine tuned as well. Immigration is always been fined tuned in Canada to deal with problems and changes in the number and type of potential immigrants.
suiyuan: Except if welfare were the lion’s share of the problem, you’d expect equal rates of other ethnic groups (both immigrant and non-immigrant) to be on welfare. Why is Germany able to attract lazy Turks, but not lazy other Europeans or East Asians, in the same proportions? Why are Germans themselves not on welfare in equal proportions?
Likewise, if people are provided with access to state education and some groups are able to come out just fine from that, but others aren’t, then what does that say about the two groups?
[quote=“GuyInTaiwan”]suiyuan: Except if welfare were the lion’s share of the problem, you’d expect equal rates of other ethnic groups (both immigrant and non-immigrant) to be on welfare. Why is Germany able to attract lazy Turks, but not lazy other Europeans or East Asians, in the same proportions? Why are Germans themselves not on welfare in equal proportions?[/quote]Why are you asking me these questions? I based what I said on the information the German posters provided…and was open to them correcting me if I misunderstood what they meant-so ask them. And backing up what you say about who is on welfare and the numbers of immigrants from different countries might be best done with some sort of stats, just to avoid the appearance that you are talking out of your bum.[quote]Likewise, if people are provided with access to state education and some groups are able to come out just fine from that, but others aren’t, then what does that say about the two groups?[/quote]One theory might be that if teachers in Germany hold the prejudices you have about Turks in their country, they probably are not taking them seriously and treating them equally to the other kids. I’m sure you already have a xenophobic response prepared like the one you posted on the first page, so instead of acting like you are interested in my responses, why not come out with it? Why don’t you just come out and say that Turkish children are intellectually inferior…that’s what you are getting at, isn’t it?
suiyuan: Why don’t you stop being so bloody rude and debate like an adult? There are plenty of people in this thread – indeed on this forum – with whom I disagree strongly (and actually, some of cfimages posts have given me a lot of food for thought), but I’ve actually refrained on several occasions so far from making really cheap remarks in response to your cheap remarks because I don’t think that would lead anywhere helpful. Everyone takes the piss on occasion, and I have no problem with that. However, you’ve been extremely disingenuous in many of your replies to me, and I’ve actually seen you take this approach with other posters in other threads. Others have provided links and statistics in this thread, for what it’s worth, so I’ll refer you to those.
I have not claimed that Turkish children are intellectually inferior, although that’s a nebulus term. Do you mean in the sense of someone being able to outperform someone else in some intellectual pursuit? Or do you mean in some sort of genetic way? How about you show some of the rigour you demand from me?
Stop putting words in my mouth and grow up. Are you really certain that I’m not actually asking serious questions and won’t consider serious answers, or is it easier for you to just say I’m inarticulate and you don’t understand my analogies rather than apply some effort and attempt to do so? You have shown yourself to be no less bigoted or closed-minded than I have in this thread.
[quote=“GuyInTaiwan”]suiyuan: Why don’t you stop being so bloody rude and debate like an adult?[/quote]Pardon me if you see this as a cheap shot, but because you start from the premise that there is inherently something wrong with Muslims or their culture, there is no debate to be had. I gave you the benefit of the doubt with your first post, but you have since continued to make xenophobic arguments that you try to dress up as rational thought. When given evidence that your premise is too simple or too black and white, you modify it. In this thread alone, you have went from stereotyping 1) all Muslims; 2) all Muslim except those in Malaysia/Indonesia 3)Muslims in the four countries you have been to 4) Muslims without oil in their countries, etc. You have set up parameters that are ridiculous (number of nobel prizes, for example) to establish the worth of an entire religion and several countries. I don’t debate with people who start from here-what’s the point, really? Hadn’t I already said this?[quote=“me”]I’m not going to entertain anything you’ve said to this point as serious-no more than I would entertain the idea that black people, Jewish people, or any other group is collectively unproductive.[/quote][quote]Everyone takes the piss on occasion, and I have no problem with that. However, you’ve been extremely disingenuous in many of your replies to me, and I’ve actually seen you take this approach with other posters in other threads…You have shown yourself to be no less bigoted or closed-minded than I have in this thread.[/quote]I’m always disengenuous when people start from a bigoted approach-it’s a bad habit of mine, I must admit. Once people show me that they are willing to argue at length the inferiority of certain group based on something as insignificant as their religion, my mind closes to most of what they have to say. You can keep dressing up your xenophobia, but don’t expect me to act like it isn’t there lurking under what you are posting when you make no attempt to hide it.
It’s nothing personal-I’m sure you’re a nice guy. My experience here in Taiwan has shown me that there are lots of people with deep-seated prejudices who are still nice people-I can only assume you’re one of them and haven’t shown me anything to the contrary. You and I may agree 100% on Hess, but when you continuously argue from a stereotypical point of view in this thread, I find no common ground from which to discuss this with you.
Edit: Others, on the other hand, have posted some insightful information-situations in Germany I was not aware of. I like reading the facts around what is going on in Germany and the background of how this all came to be. I’m especially happy to see that no one else is using stereotypes to explain it-all other posts have been very insightful as to the complex causes for this, so I hope more keeps coming.
Actually, i haven’t advanced any particular hypothesis about hot latitudes - what i did was point out that the kind of Muslims you judged down could as easily have been Christians, if you had just visited certain other hot countries. And if you want to compare an assumed group A (Christians + Muslims) with an assumed group B (Singaporians, Vietnamese, etc.), go ahead, start a new thread - in this thread your observation makes no sense: Merkel challenged certain people (you surmised that her remarks were aimed at Muslims - and i think you are correct there) by holding up “Christian values”. In that particular context (and in this particular thread) your observation adds nothing of value - that’s all i pointed out (in a roundabout way). (Your observation may well have merit in other contexts, but i am not going there right now…)
I think so, too, but that is an altogether different topic. 
yuli: I would claim that most of the forms of Christianity (notably Catholicism) in hot places haven’t coincided with successful societies either, although as I mentioned, the Mormons seem to have done well for themselves.
A little note how it all started. I remember being in elementary school in Hannover county in the late 70s. There was one Turkish girl in class, several years older than us little kids, almost a teenager already because she kept failing in class and repeated again and again. She did not speak German or only a few words. Teachers blaming her with nasty words, us (stupid little kids) giggling about her.
She wore a 50s style dress, a strange perfume which was not smelling very nicely and lead us kids and probably the teacher nag like “oh how THEY smell”. I remember her standing red-faced in class, the teacher blaming her for being not able to follow class or speak German and us giggling. By her parents wish she was not aloud to take part in sports, sitting with her head scarf on the bench. Because she was not aloud to wear a sports dress.
Must have been hell for her. No program to support her. Not surprising educational careers such as these ended badly.
Later we had a Russian or Polish boy our age who was of German origin. He did not speak German either or hardly, he was hiding in a literal fortress of chairs and unused desks in the back of the class, often poking everyone who came close to him with needles and trying to beat up his classmates. Usually did not work because he was so damned small. Was fast though.
Guess what, teacher always blamed him, nobody to teach him German…
Obviously Germany was not prepared how to deal with foreign kids. And obviously their parents did never speak German to them in their homes.
So, story over, off you go to bed…
bob: Yet the people from Eastern Europe of German descent do end up integrating better. They do end up with higher levels of employment, so presumably they do end up learning German to a satisfactory level at some point.
There’s a problem in Australia that kids from different countries arrive and are put through intensive English learning and then put out into the mainstream educational system. Every year, the academic lists are topped by kids from East Asia and the Indian subcontinent, or those born to parents from those places. Yet people from the Middle East and Turkey underperform the average Australian. This is also true for those born in Australia. When I was studying education, they showed us a graph that showed the correlation between studying certain subjects and performing well in other subjects. Predictably, studying things such as Latin or advanced mathematics correlated well with high academic performance elsewhere. Subjects such as French or German were moderately correlated with academic success. Things like business studies, Turkish and Arabic had strong correlations with poor academic success overall. I don’t remember where Chinese figured on the graph, or even if it was there (I’m sure it was), but I suspect most of the people who study Chinese are not native speakers because if they went home and told their parents they were going to get an easy A+, they’d get a slap in the head and be told to take another mathematics subject instead. If I had kids and moved to Germany (or if I moved to Germany and had some kids), I’d be telling them not to be such tards and just learn some German. Why is that so hard for people to figure out?
I also don’t believe that most teachers would turn away a kid (or the kid’s parents) who was obviously struggling but showed a desire to integrate and learn the language. It’s hard enough to find local kids who take that much of an interest sometimes. At one school I taught at in Australia, I had two exchange students – one German and one Japanese – in my class. While the local white trash were busy plotting how to burn down the school library or knock over old ladies for small change, I was only too happy to have two students who were interested in learning (and boy did they draw the short straw in terms of which school they got sent to).
Turkey’s attitude has been that its citizens cannot choose to relinquish Turkish citizenship. As a consequence children who were born from Turkish parents in Germany and who grew up there, when they turned 18 and wanted to become German citizens, the German government, not allowing dual citizenship, could conveniently (since the government really didn’t want to give them a chance to integrate) deny it to those young people since they were unable to relinquish their Turkish citizenship. The results are very much a home-made German problem, in other words.
What does that have to do with this discussion or the matter of citizenship in general? 