Quote:
BERLIN (AFP) – Germany's attempt to create a multi-cultural society has failed completely, Chancellor Angela Merkel said at the weekend, calling on the country's immigrants to learn German and adopt Christian values.
Merkel weighed in for the first time in a blistering debate sparked by a central bank board member saying the country was being made "more stupid" by poorly educated and unproductive Muslim migrants.
"Multikulti", the concept that "we are now living side by side and are happy about it," does not work, Merkel told a meeting of younger members of her conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party at Potsdam near Berlin.
"This approach has failed, totally," she said, adding that immigrants should integrate and adopt Germany's culture and values.
"We feel tied to Christian values. Those who don't accept them don't have a place here," said the chancellor.
"Subsidising immigrants" isn't sufficient, Germany has the right to "make demands" on them, she added, such as mastering the language of Goethe and abandoning practices such as forced marriages.
Merkel spoke a week after talks with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in which they pledged to do more to improve the often poor integration record of Germany's 2.5-million-strong Turkish community.
Turkish President Abdullah Gul, in a weekend interview, also urged the Turkish community living in Germany to master the language of their adopted country.
"When one doesn't speak the language of the country in which one lives that doesn't serve anyone, neither the person concerned, the country, nor the society," the Turkish president told the Suedeutsche Zeitung.
"That is why I tell them at every opportunity that they should learn German, and speak it fluently and without an accent. That should start at nurseries."
German President Christian Wulff was due for a five-day visit to Turkey and talks with the country's leaders on Monday.
The immigration debate has at times threatened to split Merkel's conservative party, and she made noises to both wings of the debate.
While saying that the government needed to encourage the training of Muslim clerics in Germany, Merkel said "Islam is part of Germany", echoeing the recent comments of Wulff, a liberal voice in the party.
Horst Seehofer, the leader of the CDU's Bavarian sister party, CSU, who represents the right-wing, recently said Germany did not "need more immigrants from different cultures like the Turks and Arabs" who are "more difficult" to integrate.
While warning against "immigration that weighs down on our social system", Merkel said Germany needed specialists from overseas to keep the pace of its economic development.
According to the head of the German chamber of commerce and industry, Hans Heinrich Driftmann, Germany is in urgent need of about 400,000 engineers and qualified workers, whose lack is knocking about one percent off the country's growth rate.
The integration of Muslims has been a hot button issue since August when a member of Germany's central bank sparked outrage by saying the country was being made "more stupid" by poorly educated and unproductive Muslim migrants with headscarves.
The banker, Thilo Sarrazin, has since resigned but his book on the subject -- "Germany Does Itself In" -- has flown off the shelves, and polls showed considerable sympathy for some of his views.
A recent study by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation think tank showed around one-third of Germans feel the country is being "over-run by foreigners" and the same percentage feel foreigners should be sent home when jobs are scarce.
Nearly 60 percent of the 2,411 people polled thought the around four million Muslims in Germany should have their religious practices "significantly curbed."
Far-right attitudes are found not only at the extremes of German society, but "to a worrying degree at the centre of society," the think tank said in its report.
"Hardly eight weeks have passed since publication of Sarrazin's theory of decline, and the longer the debate continues to a lower level it falls," the weekly Der Spiegel commented Sunday.
Love Jesus and assimilate or GTFO.|||Considering current Euro trends, I think "Love Allah (plus his prophet) and submit or GTFO" might be more appropriate. ("Islam" literally means submission)
It seems like a different debate than we have in the U.S., where we sometimes tell native Spanish-speakers to learn English. Illegal immigration is a big deal, but it pales in comparison to the societal change a large Muslim influx brings.
I'll quote a wall-of-text reply from that article. This is not a full endorsement, but it's an interesting perspective:
Spoiler
Quote:
I am a German currently living in San Francisco. While I admire the typical American openness and dynamic, I do not want my own country to change its face every 20 years like the US does. There is no titular culture in SF anymore, just some pseudo-Asian, pseudo-Russian and pseudo-Latin culture. Knowing some Latin American countries, I can tell this here is not authentic, as most immigrants only represent the poorest social class of their home country. Almost nobody in Germany opposes Iranian doctors or Indian IT-workers. We oppose lazy bums who dislike our culture, our way of life, our language. We have our share of non-typical-German looking MoP, a Vietnamese-looking minister of health, our soccer team has 50% ethnical-looking players. We are not against other people. But I do not want my country to look like Mumbai, Diyarbakir or Accra. I can travel to those places, but my country shall remind me of the Germany of my childhood. In places around Berlin and Duisburg, it looks like Anatolia, not even Istanbul!!! It is filthy in those areas, ugly shacks instead of our cute traditionel architectureAnd I do not need Americans to tell me 1) that we are racists 2) how we shall manage our country. I do not openly critisize you for gang-problems in California, ugly public transportation and dirty streets. In the US, I behave according to your values, I even stick with your PC and am great in legendary American smalltalk. To compare Germany of 2010 with the ****-regime is s outrageous and dumb. You lack travel experiences if you truly believe that. Do I compare you with Colonel Custer or the KKK? In my travels to 30 US states I enjoy the true-American ones the most. Why? Not because they are white! Because these are friendly, helpful people, always up for a nice chat and with a feeling of community and being proud of their country. Those in Los Angeles f.ex Armenians, Iranians, Mexicans., they just want your opportunities and your wealth, they give a sh** for your culture. Do you see them at charities like the white Americans? I don`t. They also lack the traditional American generosity. As a studied ethnologists who speaks 6 languages and has traveled around 60 countries, I love diversity. But the real one, not some pseudo-multi-kulti mishmash. Okay, now please call me a ****, please. Welcome clich�.|||She needs to make up her mind, last week she was bashing Wilders, this week she's copying his political viewpoints almost word for word.|||And that's why the United States has the First Amendment. And that's why the US is the US, and Germany is Germany.
And if any right wing Christians don't like to live side by side with Muslims, they are more than welcome to move to Germany.
Oh wait! That ain't gonna help nothing.|||I cannot tell you how nice it is to live in a country that's mandated to have no state religion. My stance on religion is hardly obscure, and even I would worry over people thinking others' religion should be forcibly curbed.|||I love the way this issue is warped from "multikulti is a destructive concept" to "Germans are racist, fascist religius zealots!" As if you could even fill a traditional church in Germany
I remember the roots of this conflict. Back in the Cold War, Germany wanted to imitate the Statue of Liberty idea, so they had a open door policy on immigration. Then the Wall came down, and you suddenly had ever greater waves of economic immigrants wanting to help themselves to extremely generous German welfare. They would live off Germany's largess until their immigration case was heard in court. They'd be returned to their home country, whereupon they'd come back in and reapply!
Refusal to assimilate and contribute to the general welfare is the 800lb. gorilla in the socialist nanny-room. It was a significant issue in the USSR, is ultra-offensive in China (literally assimilate or die), and will never be resolved without blood being spilt (cough-France-cough). The COMINTERN understood that such a system not only must expand, but cannot abide such holdouts. Too bad American Political Correctness won't allow for honesty of Merkel's degree.|||Quote:
And that's why the United States has the First Amendment. And that's why the US is the US, and Germany is Germany.
Hmm all of the first amendment rights are mentioned in the German constitution as well.|||Dr. Sowell has a nice article about it.|||A German judge (in 2007) ruled that the Quran allowed for domestic abuse. Me likey this multiculturalism thingy.|||I am not going to comment on the religion side of things, but do think immigrants who come to another country (any) need to be ready to abide by new laws and to become part of the new culture (i.e. learning the language, values, etc.).
I see immigration as a problem even more so in this case than with the US, because Germany is such a small country in contrast (and I would think more homogeneous); which imo may quite easily give off the feeling to some locals that German identity is being threatened; I know it would for me; especially if the immigrant group were not making progress in becoming more of a part culturally.
Immigration imo is adopting a new culture as your own. It is not isolating your own culture in the lands of a new one.
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