yuli: It creates misplaced loyalties or a conflict of interest, or it diverts attention or resources. There are clauses in some employment contracts that state that employees cannot have side jobs without permission of the employer. Presumably, it’s so that they’re not spending their time and energy at work focussing on other jobs, or even that they’re not working themselves into the ground with a second job and not having enough energy in their first. As to how that relates to citizenship or the discussion of multi-culturalism and integration, if someone thinks they have an outside national identity as well as an inside national identity, that creates a conflict of interest or diverts attention. It might be one thing for someone to claim that’s irrelevant if they’re not drawing more from the German state than they are putting into it, but it seems to really be biting the hand that feeds them in the case of people on welfare in such instances. If the German state is good enough for a handout, it’s good enough for some loyalty and an attempt to integrate. If it’s not good enough for some loyalty and an attempt to integrate, fine, but then don’t expect a handout, or even to be respected by the broader community who try to contribute something.
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? 
[/quote]
Well, in 1999 I had a Turkish colleague who gave up his Turkish citizenship to get the German one. He explained to me jokingly all he had to do was to fill in a second form afterward at the Turkish embassy to re-gain his Turkish citizenship and so he ended up with both.
Later however the German gov found out about this little trick and many provinces (states) took away the German citizenship from some of those people who used this tricky procedure. Some even got deported as they did not have any stay-permit with their German passport gone. 
Later on the law was changed that those foreign kids who were born in Germany (and I guess have lived their mostly) can choose their nationality when they are 18. However double is not possible.
So at least a while back Turkish people could relinquish their Turkish citizenship and nowadays the Turkish kids born in Germany can choose.
[quote=“GuyInTaiwan”]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.
[/quote]
Yes, that is correct!
Hm… someone else already pointed out that your “success” is simply a matter of perspective: it is equally possible that people who take it easy (especially when they live in hot places) are better adjusted and happier.
That’s what i’d call “ghettoizing someone”.
Most of the Turks who came to Germany came from poor, rural areas of Turkey - a recipe for disaster, since those people’s culture is not compatible with a culture where females and males have equal rights and where successful academic education is a requirement for success in society. But these people cannot be faulted for not doing what they did not know to do and were not enabled to do. I suspect most Germans thought/ hoped that those people would go away one day, but the kids who grew up there don’t know any other place to call home, even if Germany has been a bad home for them. Telling them now to “go back” makes no sense - and like many other countries, Germany is now stuck with a problem that cannot be solved. But it may solve itself: people of Turkish descent appear to have considerably higher birthrate than people whose ancestors have lived in Germany for a ling time. In 200 years from now, Germany’s national language will be Turkish. :roflmao:
Of course not - his own culture was nor German, never mind what his parents wanted to believe.
That’s my point.
They were probably hardly able to. And that’s why i wrote before that they should not have been invited to live in Germany in the first place. You really have to wonder: it does not take a genius to realize that knowing the language is the absolutely most basic requirement for any child to “make it” anywhere in the world - so what on earth were/are the Germans thinking?
And, back to Merkel, it looks like Turks (Muslims) are a convenient scapegoat - and…
:discodance: 
[quote=“bob_honest”][…] foreign kids who were born in Germany (and I guess have lived their mostly) can choose their nationality when they are 18. However double is not possible.
So at least a while back Turkish people could relinquish their Turkish citizenship and nowadays the Turkish kids born in Germany can choose.[/quote]
Indeed. Unfortunately it took a long time to get Turkey to allow that, and it only happened when a different (new and certainly not “Christian Democratic”) German government, one really interested in pursuing this matter rather than just paying lip service, met a Turkey wanting to join the EU and thus more willing to negotiate. What i am criticizing is that this choice should have been available a whole generation earlier but wasn’t - thus Merkel has nobody to blame but her own party associates.
Do you speak from first-hand experience? OK, ok - this is just a rhetorical question. I mean, i don’t want to curtail your right to speculate.
But when it comes to reality, i think i’ll listen to people who know what they are talking about. I trust people who HAVE dual citizenship and who tell me that this means flexibility, diversity, opportunities, achievement, commitment and, if anything about “serving”, not about “serving a master” (like what world do you come from?) but “serving humanity”. And it does not take away time and energy from anything like working in two jobs concurrently. BTw, would you also suggest that people should not be allowed to speak several languages, because that creates misplaced loyalties and diverts resources? I thought so… 
Anyway, about Germany not granting citizenship to children of Turkish residents: as a result of the collusion between Turkey, which was making legal claims on the lives of people who did not see themselves as Turks (children of Turkish citizens who were raised abroad and saw themselves as Germans), and Germany, which conveniently denied those young people citizenship by narrow-mindedly sticking to its one-size-fits-all approach, “we don’t allow dual citizenship”, has resulted in much misery and a huge social problem. An exception to that rule would not even have been required, just a slight change to it, to accommodate people who were denied choice: “we don’t permit voluntary dual citizenship”. But for the longest time nothing was done, and i can’t help but think there is some madness behind the German method (no, i didn’t get the word order wrong here).
Yes, the laws were eventually changed, but that does not fix what has been broken it only prevents more breakage.
Anyway, i’ll shut up now (three posts in a row is enough) 
Yuli, indeed Muslims and of those mostly Turkish people will take over Germany starting in 2025 in some areas and quickly spreading to the rest of the country, if things stay like they are now and that is what is starting to worry me.
Well, it basically means the loss of my home country, which hurts even to think about it and so most people conveniently push this though away. Or will something new, but good come from it? A developed 60% Muslim 40% Christian country with some Turkish-German culture? I cannot belive it to be honest, as we do not have the developed people from Ankara or Istambul but rather the backwater people and their grandchildren now.
What worries me is Germans being a people of extremes. We tend to ignore problems, discuss them endlessly, be soft, be lazy and then suddendly switch to the other extreme.
Actually I am worried around 2020 we may suddendly see extreme right-wing parties winning elections and starting to force people to leave. Only leaving will not be practical. That is a scary thought.
Although peaceful and democratic Germany today is lightyears away from that.
yuli: The last quality and happiness of life survey I looked at (unfortunately, I don’t have the link) listed countries in temperate to cold countries (Scandinavia and the Antipodes) as the happiest.
Of course it creates a problem and the problem is plain to see. If people don’t integrate and they receive welfare, then they are a burden on the society because there is no prospect (at least in the short to medium term) of them becoming beneficial to the society. There is a massive problem in accepting the state’s handouts but not trying to become (or actually becoming!) a contributor to the state’s tax base. There is a conflict of interest in trying to maintain an identity in a location where that identity is a complete hindrance to participation as a productive person in that location and relying on handouts. If someone can maintain two identities without it causing this problem, then that’s fantastic, and I have absolutely no problem with that. That has clearly not been the case with many of these people though. Is the German state massively to blame for this? Yes. Double yes. However, individuals and communities need to take responsibility for it also.
For what it’s worth, I have stock in a company run by a guy who was born in Iran, but raised in the U.S. I have no idea whether he is or isn’t a Muslim, and in his case, I don’t care because it’s obviously not hindering his ability to be a productive member of that society, do his job well and increase shareholder value. However, he is very far from indicative of the Muslims I’m talking about in Germany. There, their religion is integral to their identity a lot of the time, and they’re also a massive burden on the state a lot of the time. Correlation does not necessarily imply causation, but there’s a strong case to be made for it in this instance.
[quote=“bob_honest”]What worries me is Germans being a people of extremes. We tend to ignore problems, discuss them endlessly, be soft, be lazy and then suddendly switch to the other extreme.
Actually I am worried around 2020 we may suddendly see extreme right-wing parties winning elections and starting to force people to leave. Only leaving will not be practical. That is a scary thought.[/quote]
This is precisely my worry also, which is what I have stated in other threads, and what I was getting at with my very first post in this thread (where I linked to the story about Ms Merkel). It’s possible to repress all sorts of notions that may appear unpallatable, but at some point, they will re-emerge stronger and more vicious than before. As Europe finds itself collectively sliding down the totem pole of competitiveness on the world stage, if there is continued or worse economic turmoil, at some point, there will be new pogroms. Simple as that. Maybe not now. Maybe not even in ten years. Twenty years, quite possibly. How will the famous Dutch liberalism hold up when secular humanism or Christianity is no longer the dominant world view, for instance? In some ways, it may actually benefit other Western nations such as those in North America or the Antipodes as plenty of skilled, highly-educated Europeans flee for greener pastures, but it will be a great loss to Western civilisation to let the old guard slip away.
I think it’s to do with a deeper malaise in European societies though. What, exactly, is their raison d’etre, other than nihilistic escapism and consumerism, a few weeks on a sunny beach and a brand-name handbag? What is the grand European project (the E.U. of course, but that’s such incredible naval gazing it’s not even funny)? Europeans can’t even be bothered to breed. A society, or societies, that cannot be bothered to breed, has a sense of existential pointlessness about itself because it can’t even be bothered to continue itself beyond itself. Perhaps the cultures that replace European cultures, much like those tribes that swept across Europe in the twilight of the classical age, will produce something more virile and it is only right that the weak and tired be swept away.
[quote=“bob_honest”] That is a scary thought.
Although peaceful and democratic Germany today is lightyears away from that.[/quote]
No, it’s only about 70 years away from that if you go backwards. and about 20 years if you go forwards.
[quote=“urodacus”][quote=“bob_honest”] That is a scary thought.
Although peaceful and democratic Germany today is lightyears away from that.[/quote]No, it’s only about 70 years away from that if you go backwards. and about 20 years if you go forwards.[/quote] 
Now there’s another way of looking at it 
muslimswearingthings.tumblr.com/
A lot of pictures of Muslims wearing things. Pretty interesting, and not scary.
Edit: And there’s two Nobel Prize winners in there.
I thought it meant that the women in that society had achieved economic and social equality with the menfolk and so could at last say fuck you to a mere life as a uterus.
Who is saying they have to have a life as a uterus? I’m very much in favour of family-friendly working arrangements.
Every society until the most modern western ones. You know that. Our birth rates are dropping because that’s what happens when countries become wealthy and modernize. Don’t forget, the birthrate will drop even if every couple have two kids because not every one will survive to adult.hood. So there is not the slightest evidence that the west isn’t breeding because it has lost its existential reason for existence but that it is fulfilling the very goal of the west which is to have a prosperous self-actualizing life.
And for what it’s worth the French managed to substantially raise their birth rate with some simple incentives. Taiwan could do the same. Not forcing women to choose between work and having babies is a start.
But you know all this.
A society or species that fails to replicate itself does have no existential motive. What is the West’s (specifically Europe’s) existential motive? More shopping? More time in front of the idiot box? More time getting drunk on a beach in Thailand?
As for France’s incentives, did you not read my last post where I said I favour family-friendly working arrangements? Many developed countries, if not most, would have fertility rates of greater than replacement levels if they changed their labour practices and their societal attitudes towards children generally. I think we both know that and agree it would be simple, so I don’t know what your point is there.
We need a campaign. Like “Taiwan Up” to increase the number of births.
Deutschland hoch! [No wait, I am sure Goebbels said that once]
Kinder statt Inder! / Children instead of Indians [as strange as it seems, we HAD this one before but it didn’t work, was directed against Indian software programmers]
… ah, must think of something. Possibly involving beer, a blonde and football…
[Edit: Still working on that rime involving "Kinder, Inder, Rinder, Winter, minder and Hinter(n), I can almost feel the slogan on my tongue…]
wow that is hard to topple. IMO each and every sentence of this quote is absurd.