I heard rumours that this law is basically to put a thorn in the eye of Turkish immigrants minus what the EU does not allow. Is there any truth in this?
Yes, and Turkey moved to nullify this by creating a system in which if you are otherwise a valid Turkish citizen that has to give up because of a requirement from a foreign country like this, you can get on a special status in which you cannot vote, but have all the other privileges of Turkish citizenship. That status is not citizenship in theory, but practically you have everything as usual, and can participate in the Turkish social security, retirement, health system and all else. It’s called the blue card.
I think the main difference is that Turkey does not require you to relinquish your Turkish citizenship if you get another, while India does. In a way TRs system is entirely to help out with an issue a foreign country creates, while India’s is primarily an attempt to recover from an own goal — assuming you believe people having multiple citizenships is a good thing.
It got really awkward when the large minority of turkish Germans living in Germany with turkish citizenry overwhelmingly voted for Erdogan in the last elections. I'd really wish Germany was able to adopt an immigrant culture similar to the US, but the current situation is a semi-failure, but neither side of the political spectrum seems to be able to implement good policies to solve the issues.
First import uneducated Turkish workers for unskilled jobs so they will work for cheap, and then discriminate against educated workers because you think it's being Turkish (rather than education) that makes the previously-arrived workers have trouble integrating. So Germany and Europe in general keeps getting more Erdogan voters while others just don't want to deal with racism and immigrate to other places like US or Canada.
If you really want to fix this, you have change the main demographic of Turkish immigrants, probably by offering a clear immigration path to students who come to Europe for graduate programs or such.
WOuld you care to expand on that? I'm curious what in particular about the US immigrant culture you would like to see adopted, and what about the current German system prevents that culture from developing.
Sadly I can't find good polls on some of the things I want to talk about, so this has a bit of an anecdotal note. But I've been living in a majority turkish subdistrict for most of my life, and have many german-turkish friends, as well as friends and family teaching in schools with many turkish and arab descendant kids. But first some facts: "People with a migration background", which includes their children and children's children even if they were born here, make up 21% of the population. Half of these hold german citizenship. 40% of all kids have a migrant background. 12.5% of people with a migrant background are so called Spätaussiedler, ethnic germans who migrated to Germany after WWII.[1]
Attidudes of Germans at large towards immigration are very mixed: 71% think that it leads to higher strain on the welfare state, 69% think it leads to conflicts with "the natives", 63% think it leads to problems in schools. At the same time, 67% think that it makes life in Germany more interesting, and 64% think immigration is important to combat the effects of our quickly aging population.[2]
Now on to what I think is the biggest failure, which is now very hard to correct: Many second or third generation immigrants still don't feel like they are "real" germans. There's still a strong class divide, which in urban areas also leads to segregated communities. They are underrepresented in politics (except for the Spätaussiedler) and white collar jobs, and there is whitespread employment discrimination, especially against people of turkish, arab and african descent.[3] While the current government declared a "welcome culture" in 2015 during the refugee crisis, in the heads of the majority of the population, there's still a very clear picture of how a "real german" looks and acts. - While close to half of the population admits that "Islam is a part of german culture now", they will still ask Ahmed "where he is really from", and rather hire Oscar over him.
This also partially explains why Erdogan is so popular among turkish Germans: They feel disrespected here, so the vision (delusion) of Erdogan making Turkey into this powerful and strong state is very appealing to them.
I do think things are getting slightly better, but there's a long way to go, and there's also risks of things turning really sour: Anti-democratic ideology is relatively widespread among the muslim minority, in contrast to the rest of the population, their level of religiousness stays about the same, the current money policy of the ECB leads to an enormous rise in living cost in urban areas, and the divide between rich and poor in Germany is increasing.
@markdown: +9000 for this answer! I agree: It is very thoughtful.
I re-read this part a few times:
<<
Attidudes of Germans at large towards immigration are very mixed: 71% think that it leads to higher strain on the welfare state, 69% think it leads to conflicts with "the natives", 63% think it leads to problems in schools. At the same time, 67% think that it makes life in Germany more interesting, and 64% think immigration is important to combat the effects of our quickly aging population.[2]
>>
At first blush, I think "Oh come on people, pick one side or the other!" Then I think again: Each one can be independently true. Taken as a whole, these opinions appear conflicted. This is the reality of large scale immigration: It is complex is any society.
When I think about immigration, I try to separate high-income/-education/-skill from the low- counterpart. Germany should be doing everything possible to attract the high side. It's a great place to raise a family.
Thank you for taking the time to explain your point of view.
I suppose this is just the unavoidable result of too many immigrants arriving around the same time. And when they have their own communities, they have no reason to integrate into the host culture.
Has Germany done anything to reduce the number of new immigrants coming in?
Also, I assume there is a special exception for Jewish families of German descent who were unfairly stripped of their nationality during the National Socialist period (early 1940s). There is a programme to help people re-gain their citizenship. I've read a few long-form jounalism articles (in English) about people who don't speak German
and are not German residents applying under this programme.
Pretty much anyone whose citizenship was revoked by the Nazi government, or descendants of those victims who would have had citizenship today had it not been for the Nazi government, can apply to have the citizenship reinstated. Numerically it's likely mostly Jewish families in Israel and the US, but it applies to all of the Nazis' German victims.
