141–150 of 891 posts
I am the son of a (Cuban) immigrant and a German woman. Once, the police asked me if I spoke German, probably because my hair is dark and my eyes are brown. Germany has a bias against “southerners”—the darker your skin, the worse it is. If your skin is light and your eyes are light-colored, you won’t even be perceived as an immigrant as long as you keep your mouth shut. But if you look southern or Asian, you’ll alway…
German discrimination and racism towards migrant workers and visible minorities is world class. And with Alternative für Deutschland / AfD rising rapidly, this is only going to get much, much worse. https://www.infomigrants.net/en/post/70478/study-finds-racis... https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/germany-...
Germany is a remarkably rural and insular country compared to the Netherlands whose foundational myth comes from bankers and merchants.
Nevertheless, all that ugly history doesn't seem like it's put a damper on their ambitions or status through the 21st century.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Supermarket opening times are definitely not that restrictive (these days, but I don't recall it ever being like you mentioned & I moved to Berlin in 2013). The ones near me are usually open early morning till late evening (8-10pm), monday to saturday.
The way you call 8pm "late evening" confirms GP's experience :)
All this discussion makes me wonder - is there any country an immigrant can move to, and better their lives as well as the locals' life/economy? Assuming the immigrant makes every effort to integrate (learning the language, respecting local people/customs etc). It seems the world is turning hostile to immigration in general - or maybe it is just the impression I get from the media? I don't know for sure.
I know the US gets a lot of flak due to the current administration's policies and actions. Despite that it is still the best country for immigrants with the caveat 'Assuming the immigrant makes every effort to integrate (learning the language, respecting local people/customs etc)'
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, but I think what grates on people with Germany is the "they should know better" aspect of it. People have (or had) expectations of EU countries they don't have of "the harsher places".
Sometimes called the soft bigotry of low expectations
Soft bigotry of low expectation is not open hostility so much as a giving up on a people—-X people are inherently incapable, so just let them be, don’t expect anything from them. As a result of painless low expectation, no one strives, no one offers them opportunities, the people don’t move forward, and the low expectation fuels further low expectation based on poor performance.
Mor maybe you were referring to expectation of other EU countries to be unwelcoming?
Here is my anecdote. I was in Germany recently and met with a South American woman. We briefly talked about our immigrant experiences. She is now a German citizen married to a German man. However, she said she can't identify as a German because nobody made her feel like one. By contrast, when I became an American citizen, my American friends (white and hispanic) insisted that they attend the naturalization ceremony.
Probably because there's no such thing as an US-American ethnicity, but there definitely is at least one or more unique and very distinct ethnicities and cultures for every European country, and simply getting the passport as a foreign adult, does not also buy you into those clubs, you just got a piece of paper, not the culture and belonging the locals with ancestry there have.
It's not something you can learn as an adult living in a big international city with lots of expats and international companies, it's something you get from growing up there surrounded by that culture and ethnic ingroup created by your ancestors.
The equivalent for americans would probably be those whose ancestors were there before the civil war but that's a smaller % of the population today vs the more recent immigrants compared to Europe. Sure, there's as much immigration to Europe as well, per-capita as in the US, but a lot of it is undesired and the native Europeans have various cultural and bureaucratic glass ceilings to keep working class immigrants in the least desirable jobs, while they kept the more desirable governmental, academic and managerial jobs.
Not knocking them for it, they're free to run their societies the way they see fit, but then they also shouldn't be surprised when, unlike in the US, the second or third generation migrants growing up in the ghettos who are full citizens now, decide to blow themselves up, shoot up a cafe or drive a truck through a crowd, because of how unaccepted and held down they feel by the native European society.
The issue I see seems to be on how US and EU treat integration of migrants. In the US you ge equal opportunities and freedom to do whatever you want as long as you don't hurt anyone, while in the EU you get endless strict rules and welfare which not only don't compensate the glass ceilings and isolation, it also pisses off the locals to see their high taxes going to foreigners who don't integrate. The other reason might be that migration to the US is more from Canada and latin america which is culturally similar to the US, while EU migration is mostly from africa and middle east which are very different culturally.
All this discussion makes me wonder - is there any country an immigrant can move to, and better their lives as well as the locals' life/economy? Assuming the immigrant makes every effort to integrate (learning the language, respecting local people/customs etc). It seems the world is turning hostile to immigration in general - or maybe it is just the impression I get from the media? I don't know for sure.
It's a lot of misinformation and funding from too many countries, for a long time.
What's impressive is how much this tension had actually been holding on, which goes to show that education actually plays an important role when dealing with misinformation.
Sadly it was successful in the UK.
Here is my anecdote. I was in Germany recently and met with a South American woman. We briefly talked about our immigrant experiences. She is now a German citizen married to a German man. However, she said she can't identify as a German because nobody made her feel like one. By contrast, when I became an American citizen, my American friends (white and hispanic) insisted that they attend the naturalization ceremony.
My point being, everyone in America is more or less an "immigrant" if you go back enough on their family tree, but the Native Americans.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The issues you see now in Germany are the direct consequence of the Merkel era conservative government and its austerity policy. They really wanted to get the deficit down at all cost. And all cost included any sort of needed maintenance on public infrastructure.
I have zero knowledge on German politics. But I do wonder, if these same problems are plagues many (most) big cities (and even countries) in the west, including very liberal and high spending governments, how can we safely conclude it’s a conservative problem (or a liberal one)?
I did not argue that this is a outcome that can only happen to conservative governments. In fact I am convinced it is a fundamental problem of how politics work: you elect politicians to government for a limited period, so they often try to push off costs for which the ultimate prize will be paid to the next period, in which they may not be in government anymore.
But of course conservative governments tend to be more often part of that dynamic since austerity politics and conservatism often (although, not always) go hand in hand. Often the austerity has a smidgen of corruption as well, where government contracts that then need to be made (urgently! since maintenance was deferred!) often go to the politicians private friends. Free market for thee and not for me.
Another classic is to starve some working government/public institutions budget, only to then point at the mess and explain why this needs to privatized (coincidentally you know exactly the right guy to step in, what a surprise).
I am not saying that it is only conservative polticians that do that, but it tends to be a bit harder to do while e.g. demanding democratic socialist policy and strong public institutions.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Way to mix completely different things. Its like saying: Gender exists hence men are better. No one suggests this kinda thing. Race is not pseudo science. Race is real. White people are meaningfully different from Black people. Its not bad to be different. It doesn't mean one is different from the other. You can't beat racism by claiming race itself is not real!
In what ways are white people meaningfully different from black people?
As the commenter above you already said, this is not a bad thing. People on _hacker_news should be able to understand that being able to define the ==/!= operators on something does not automatically mean that you can define .