Penguin wrote:What are your views about immigration (in particular, German immigration)?
If you are German (or live near Germany) please indicate this, it'll allow me to have an up-to-date view to talk about.
Kia Ora !
Hi Penguin,
this is Powdermaster-x from germany. Coincidentally I joined [Fun] for evermore yesterday evening searching a not to empty server. Playing there was, as the name is supposed to indicate, a lot of Fun
. If I remember correctly, I've seen your name while playing, too. Nevertheless I visited the Fun homepage and this forum and therefore of course your thread. As I've said, I'm from germany, and would like to share my 'impressions' of german immigration with you. I hope this isn't too late - you haven't mentioned a date for your 'oral' (btw. this sounds a little bit strange 'in german ears', for 'oral' intends a special kind of intercourse).
But btt:
You have to know and consider, that immigration is a very political topic in germany. Not at least because of our history. In my opinion, there have been made a lot of failures, when establishing an immigration policy. That was like follows: nearly everybody is allowed to come into the country, i. e. for political asylum as well as economic reasons, even criminals. Generally all people are given 'backup' when needed, mostly in terms of social welfare. (Sorry - I'm not very familiar with some correct terms, and I'm not very used to write english). Ok, there is a lot of governmental accomodation. Which would be OK, if there is any demand for integration, which is de facto not (at least at the moment). This results into a two way immigration: those willing to accept the domestic way of living and those who don't. The best example is the language. In Germany there are thousands of immigrants, who can't speak german. Nobody forces them to do, although everybody knows that language is the key for immigration. This is a point of immigration, which isn't so crucial (in this degree) in UK or France IMHO, because most of the immigrants are comming from former colonies etc. and are able to speak or at least understand rudimentarily the common language, isn't it ?
And this results in so called Subkulturen (subcultures) and Ghettoisierung (you hopefully guess what I mean). Which results in less integration. Because you mustn't integrate into something, if there is no need to. IMHO integration is the key point of an efficient immigration.
As I've said there two ways of immigration/integration: often people wanting to integrate are educated (e. g. with univesity degrees) like some of our (i. e. my family) best friends from Iran are (both are architects). The others are often uneducated (Not dumb, of course). And this leads to a Teufelskreis (vicious circle): they don't know better and aren't forced to and get even paid for so why should they integrate ? Why should their kids integrate or learn German and so on ... and THIS is the main reason for the lower acceptance you've mentioned.
Penguin, these are only a few aspects, of course. And this is my point of view (don't forget - there are a lot of others - both more liberal and more restricted !) If you've more questions or want to get deeper into a special aspect please write a PM. If you want me to, I can write in german then.
Regards
Powdermaster