Question:
A lesson in immigration Liberals too stupid to understand?
Answer:
Germany needed workers. Turks needed work.
So starting in 1961, the country invited Turkish ''guest workers" to come do
the dirty jobs that Germans didn't want.
Only 7,000 ''gastarbeiter," as they were called, arrived that first year, a
curiosity in a country where non-European faces were rare. Press flashbulbs
popped. Politicians made speeches of welcome. Ordinary Germans watched,
bemused.
Nobody grasped that the country -- and the continent, because neighboring
nations soon undertook similar experiments -- was on the brink of a
transformation whose effects are still reverberating across Europe.
In Berlin, which today ranks as the largest ''Turkish" city outside Turkey,
falafel stands and kebab joints far outnumber eateries offering schnitzel.
In the Dutch city of Rotterdam, Islamic calls to prayer are as common as
church chimes. In the raw-knuckled housing projects ringing Paris, graffiti
are more likely to be scrawled in Arabic than in the language of Voltaire.
''The idea, originally, was that the foreign workers would stay for as long
as economically necessary, then go home," said Michael Bommes, director of
the Institute for Migration Research at Germany's Osnabrueck University.
''It didn't quite go like that."
As the US Congress wrestles with comprehensive immigration reform, one idea
under discussion is a new program that would allow guest workers to enter
the country, but not necessarily to stay on and become citizens.
In Germany, guest workers -- mostly poorly educated young men who were
issued special visas allowing them entry for one or two years to take
unskilled jobs -- helped the nation to become the third-richest in the
world. The fabulous post-war prosperity of France, the Netherlands, Denmark,
Sweden, and other West European countries was also boosted by immigrant
labor, mainly from Turkey and North Africa.
But more recently, as economic growth has slowed, swelling numbers of Muslim
immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa -- many of them arriving
without any visas, or overstaying their visas and melting into the ethnic
suburbs -- are being blamed for social stresses from urban blight to chaotic
schools.
In the words of the late Swiss writer Max Frisch: ''We wanted workers, we
got people."
Guest workers, unlike ordinary immigrants, were admitted under special jobs
programs, and at least under the original plans, had no prospects of
becoming citizens or permanent residents. Germany, like other European
countries, at first refused even to allow them to bring families, hoping to
discourage them from trying to put down roots. Later, Germany granted work
stays of up to five years, and permitted wives and children to come along.
For decades, there were no efforts to integrate the newcomers. They were
entitled to social benefits, but not citizenship. Their children could
attend schools, but little effort was made to give them language skills. Far
from a melting pot, Europe in the post-World War II era became the realm of
''parallel societies," in which native and immigrant populations occupied
the same countries but shared little common ground.Continued...Page 2 of
3 --
Now, the presence of millions of largely unassimilated newcomers, coupled
with terrorist attacks in London and Madrid, has triggered furious debates
in Europe over national identity and the future of immigration.
France, in an about-face, has decided it no longer wants to admit the
poorest of the poor, just skilled workers who speak fluent French and
respect the ideals of secular democracy. Germany and the Netherlands have
passed new laws that seem intended to thwart immigration from Islamic
lands -- with potential newcomers queried about attitudes toward women's
rights, Jews, and gays.
The only unskilled guest workers still recruited in large numbers are the
migrant harvesters who perform the mostly seasonal stoop labor disdained
even by the jobless in more affluent countries, including Germany and
Britain.
But, in a major shift, even migrant workers these days are mostly recruited
from within Europe -- tens of thousands of Poles, for instance, harvest
Germany's famous white asparagus; pickers from Lithuania and Latvia pluck
strawberries and other crops in Great Britain. Europe's guest worker
programs were mostly scrapped during the recessions of the 1970s, but in a
pattern reflecting the Hispanic flow into the United States, the movement of
Muslims to Europe only accelerated. Those early guest workers routinely
overstayed their one- or two-year permits, or lived from extension to
extension, but faced scant risk of deportation unless they committed serious
crimes.
Many of the first generation of workers bought houses or established small
businesses, although usually confining themselves to immigrant enclaves.
Their German-born children were registered as ''foreigners." They often
spend years or even decades resolving their legal status.
While many European governments failed to seriously pursue integration, many
Muslim immigrants were equally unwilling to shed their own languages and
national identities.
''Neither side really thought hard about issues of citizenship, nationality,
or integration because neither side truly expected the immigrants to stay,"
said Eren Uensal, a Berlin sociologist whose parents emigrated from Turkey
in 1972.
''My mother insisted we were going to stay in Germany just long enough to
earn money for a new sewing machine, to start a tailor shop back home," she
said. ''Now we're into the third generation, and my mother still hasn't
bought her sewing machine. Of course, that's because they made comfortable
lives. No one really wanted to go home."
Legal workers were followed by waves of family members and illegal
immigrants. In the 1960s, a few hundred thousand Muslims lived in Western
Europe. Today, best estimates peg the number at more than 20 million --
including 3 million in Germany, mainly Turks; 5 million in France, mainly
North African Arabs; 1.7 million in Britain; and 900,000 in Holland.
If the immigration controversy in the United States is really about Latinos,
in Europe it's really about Muslims. And America's efforts to crack down on
illegal immigration is spreading alarm among Muslim immigrants.Continued...
SO since this Guest Worker program is Bush's idea he must be pretty stupid
himself huh?
I got a news flash for you, fucknut. The guest worker program is Bush's
idea.
Another idiot who believes it was Liberals who hired all those
immigrants.
Bush is a MORON. And I say that as a life long Republican. Bush is a
FRAUD. He is anti-American.
Can you please explain to the group (and the world) how you got to be
so FUCKING stupid?
I do so love the fact that you are complaining about liberals here,
when in fact your lover Bush is the one that wants this.
And he wants it because it would HELP create a permanent underclass for
all his rich friends.
Tell me, fuckhead, where is the outrage at the COMPANIES that hire the
illegals that come here?
This whole debate is just to help give racists a valid way to express
their hatred of brown people.
They offer nothing to the cause and their Fuhrer is about to make it
worse.
All they want to do is have a reason to yell at poor people.
Bust the companies that hire the illegals and make sure any and all
wage and working condition laws are followed in every state in the
union.
As long as they are ghettoized, the mongrelization of the Europeans
will be kept
at a minimum. Of course, you have to deal with the unrest that comes
from this,
but it's better than turning Germany or France into some kind of hybrid
of Haiti,
or some South American country where the population is an unhealthy mix
of
inferior breeds.
I take pride in being called a traitor by a piece of fascist, racist trash
like yourself.
