It could be a worrisome number. Except that @Peter_Brulls assertion is fake news
According to Focus Magazine, not known as a particular fan of immigrants, 276 399 of the over 4Mill Harz 4 recipients are Turkish nationals. Which by no stretch of the imagination constitute every 5th. Of the 1.8 Million foreign Harz 4 recipients 500 000 are Syrian and 100 000 Iraqi. There are another 60 000 from Afghanistan and the rest are mostly from EU countries with very long traditions of importing labour to Germany i.e. Italy and Poland.
And no, 276 399 Turkish Harz 4 recipients do not constitute 20% of the estimated 3 Mill people with Turkish descent. And yes it seems quite logical that 600 000 newly arrived Syrian and Iraqi refugees are in need of Harz 4 and are not yet able to financially support themselves–they have been in the country for merely a year.
And another thing: Given the kind of hard physical labour Turkish people were brought to carry out in Germany: rubbish collection / construction / factory work it is unsurprising that many of them are in a physical state where they need benefits.
@Peter_Brulls please don’t spread fake news. Especially not if you are so uninterested in fact that you can’t even be bothered to use google or read / listen to Focus.
Again, why comment on something that you know nothing about and are so uninterested in, as not to even bother reading the bbs comment thread?
@anon61221983 has, in detail pointed out that social changes in the US were achieved through protest the courts merely catching up with things as public pressure mounted. Desegregation didn’t happen in the courts. It happened because people were protesting and often killed in the process of fighting for a more just society.
Sure, that’s entirely true. Black Americans were the architects of their own liberation. But my point was also that if it had been put to a popular vote in the 1950s or early 1960s, it would have gone nowhere. I believe in democratic practices, but I also believe that building up structures that can protect us from our own worst impulses is a great idea.
How about you simplify the citizenship process even further in that case? A one question quiz, given to the neighbors/coworkers/whoever they interact with: “Do you believe x should qualify for citizenship?”
That would be adequate for the citizen participation aspect, but there also needs to be a standards-based assessment of knowledge of the nation-state’s core values, government processes, history, and language. As far as the U.S. goes, a lot of native-born citizens (including the current POTUS) are ignorant on all those counts.
That’s why I’m not necessarily for requiring that on the test actually. It seems hypocritical to require others to memorize trivia that most natural born citizens can’t answer. I can’t vouch for everyone, but “I’m able to understand them in conversation” would probably be a criteria I’d think of if I were asked if a neighbor seems like a fully integrated citizen.
As a naturalised citizen of the U.S. myself, I disagree. And the standardised test isn’t really “trivia”, it’s mostly foundational stuff that used to be taught in middle-school civics and history classes (that a prospective citizen may not have learned at that age in his birth country).
I agree that it’s important stuff that people should know. At least the very basics (having not taken a citizenship test myself I can’t comment on how trivial it goes, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there was like ‘how many folds are in a properly folded standard size flag when being stored’ or something from what I’ve heard.)
It just strikes me as hypocritical to require knowledge which the average voter probably couldn’t answer as what amounts to a voting exam. I could see a better argument for the test actually being used as that, but historical reasons mean we’re not exactly big on tests you need to take before you’re allowed to vote
Not at all. The most difficult question for me was “how many Representatives currently sit in Congress,” and that was just something I had to memorise. It was all middle-school and grade-school civics and history of the sort that was still taught in most public K-12 schools before approx. 1980.
Thanks for delivering the stats which I could not be bothered to look for myself. I suspected as much…
To give them some dubious credit, I assumed they were exaggerating the Armutsbericht (via Wikipedia, most likely), stating that a person of Turkish descent has a much higher risk of poverty.
Thanks again for the link - the FOCUS isn’t exactly the locus to look for pro-immigrant propaganda, to say the least.
Seemed totally reasonable to me actually, 20/20. The only iffy thing was that I had to remember what happened on 9/11. I can see how that might edge on trivia were it less significant but considering that it’s the event that basically on its own weight has defined US foreign policy for 3/4ths of my lifetime I’ll allow it.
I had a friend who was stateless for a year. He is of Indian descent (Asian, not Native American), was born in Kenya to two Britons from London who were there in Nairobi for work for many years and had not been back to the UK in practically forever. He was not registered as a citizen of the UK or Kenya, but was considered a “resident” as the child of British non-citizens living in Kenya, like a green card in the USA. After graduating high school, he needed a passport and got one from Kenya before his 18th birthday, without becoming a Kenyan citizen, so that he could travel.
He attended college in the UK and then medical school. Meanwhile, The Kenya Citizenship and Immigration Act of 2011 happened. Upon returning to visit his parents, the Kenyans confiscated his passport and told him he needed to apply for citizenship.
From the Kenya Citizenship act of 2011:
Stateless persons.
15. (1) A person who does not have an enforceable
claim to the citizenship of any recognized state and has been
living in Kenya for a continuous period since 12th December,
1963, shall be deemed to have been lawfully resident and
may, on application, in the prescribed manner be eligible to
be registered as a citizen of Kenya if that person—
(a) has adequate knowledge of Kiswahili or a local
dialect;
(b) has not been convicted of an offence and sentenced
to imprisonment for a term of three years or longer;
c) intends upon registration as a citizen to continue to
permanently reside in Kenya or to maintain a close
and continuing association with Kenya; and
16 No. 12 Kenya Citizenship and Immigration
(d) the person understands the rights and duties of a
citizen.
(2) Applications under this section shall be made within a
period of five years from the date of commencement of this
Act and may by notice in the gazette be extended by the
Cabinet Secretary for an additional period of three years.
He did not meet the new criteria for citizenship, I believe mainly because of item C, and so he was stateless for well over a year, awaiting a ruling or some way to get his passport back so he could leave. He did, eventually. I met him in the USA. But he told me this long tale of being stateless for a year. Now, I believe he is a dual citizen of the UK and Kenya, and resides in London.
Super nice guy. You’d never know he was such an asshole. Just kidding.
It was taught then for me anyway… then the problem being is for the most part nobody has ever tested me on it since so what I remember now at least for the more fiddly detail bits of it isn’t much.
Nor by citizens of France, or any of the other nations we’ve been trying to work with to construct governments yet more respectful of human dignity for the last couple hundred years. To varying success, is a necessary caveat.
Still plenty of work to be done, I’ll remain glad that my citizenship where I was born and raised isn’t based on my neighbors opinions on where i do my shopping. I’d think of that as backwards and indefensible.
