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Ok, apology accepted.

 Steve steveson wrote:
Take a pole of americans and I can bet you would get the same result. They would probably claim the same about down town Detroit. The answer is no. There are no “no-go” areas.

Eh kindda. Downtown Detroit no you shouldnt have problems, but there are/were areas in Detroit youd be a fool to hang around in during certain times of day. Im talking treating red lights like they are yield signs and not stopping if at all possible but thats typically during the night hours. For the most part Detroit is a gak hole that is over blown for how bad it is.

Flint gets the same rap too, I remember having a laugh at a southern truck driver getting freaked out for having to stay the night in Flint. He asked me if it was really as bad as he heard and I started talking about how bad the roads are. He shot me a weird look and said "naw man Im talking being robbed and murdered and stuff" It took a minute to sink in and then I just laughed.

I hope you reminded him to make sure he bought some bottled water.

I know parts of Houston and LA where your life ain't worth spit if you go there. And of course my backyard. Thank you for starring in another episode of "when wiener dogs attack!'

d-usa wrote:

 Kroem wrote:
It was weird when I went to Frankfurt. You think of it as a rich, trendy city but the main train station was full of crack heads and immigrants and right next to the red light district!

Certainly not a no-go area, but enough to make most middle class people distinctly uncomfortable I'd warrant!

Sounds like a regular Hauptbahnhof to me!

Can confirm the same for Munich, well not crack heads but many Turkish immigrants, a bit of red light district, some gambling, hotels (and there used to be many specialist computer/tech stores). It's not dangerous, just a few more homeless people at nightl But you just walk two blocks further and it looks different. It also changed somewhat, here's a google maps view of it:
https://www.google.de/maps/place/Hauptbahnhof/@48.1391545,11.5611895,3a,75y,180.67h,79.83t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sUenYIyqIapU3Atur_Jvdxw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!4m5!3m4!1s0x479e75f995df495b:0x1e311873244f7cbd!8m2!3d48.1402042!4d11.5606774

That's how my old Hauptbahnhof in Nuernberg was. Small collection of winos roaming the station, faint odor of pee in the tunnels leading to the tracks, collection of Assi's near the entrance leading down to the subway, homeless people sleeping in the halls of the subway near the Salvation Army office.

And then a couple hundred normal folks, tourists, businessman just doing their thing.

Haha 'assi' is a new bit of vocab for me, thank god for Leo.de

It must be a common thing then, I wouldn't have minded but some of them were begging quite aggressively and I look like a soft mark!

If I remember right, some of the professional beggars are from Eastern Europe and are part of begging groups. I wouldn't be surprised if they have a handler that collects from them each day, like a begging pimp.

 d-usa wrote:
If I remember right, some of the professional beggars are from Eastern Europe and are part of begging groups. I wouldn't be surprised if they have a handler that collects from them each day, like a begging pimp.

I've experienced professional child beggars in Calcutta, India, also being quite aggressive. In contrast, at least in Northern Germany I've so far not run into any beggar actively dragging on my arm and running after me for a dozen meters. You might be right that some of 'em might still be professionals, though.

And yes, train stations, Hauptbahnhöfe, tend to attract a certain clientele, especially at night, but so far I've also not run into any bad situations, the suspicious elements still usually keep to themselves. Hamburg and Lübeck up north, where I'm from, are a bit notorious for the drug trading near their train stations, and they have ramped up police presence there in the last years, usually teams of two, actually carrying batons and pistols, which is not necessarily always the case in Germany; recently even MP5 submachine guns on larger train stations after recent terror attacks in Europe or during large football matches. So - these train stations look shady, sometimes feel shady, but the normal passer-by or tourist still hasn't much to fear apart from possible beggars and maybe the odd pickpocket, and police presence is UP, not down. Certainly not a no-go area.

There are some reports though that the federal police - whose responsibility the German train traffic safety is - have a bit of an issue in dealing with undocumented/tolerated refugees, because the usual approach of fines and a slightly delayed court hearing for larger infractions does not work when the suspect neither has a clear name nor a clear adress and most probably not a bank account. In some cases, police have admitted to sending troublemakers (shouting, harassing shop workers, ignoring house bans on shops and restaurants) on one train station simply by train to another train station because they had no concept of how deal with them otherwise. That is a bit of a problem in my eyes, because it achieves jack squat and news about "processing" like this will probably spread among low-level criminals like wildfire, knowing they don't have much to fear.

 feeder wrote:
Something to consider is the fact that, after a while, these areas that have been settled by a particular immigrant population become celebrated. My city is proud of it's claim to Canada's oldest Chinatown, and it's a featured heavily as part of our tourism. Similar Chinatowns and Little Italys exist across North America.

One day in the future every city will have an "Arabtown" with patronising faux Arabian pillars and locals swamped by a morass of tourists.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
How do you know that? There is no guarantee that current waves of immigrants will be integrated just as effectively as past waves of immigrants. The factors in play today are entirely different. The cultural and religious values of Muslims are different to the migrants who came from British Commonwealth countries. British culture was different back in the 1950's compared to today, and we already had a shared culture thanks to the influence of the British Empire on the Commonwealth countries that a lot of people originated from.

Because those immigrants have migrated to many countries other than Britain. There's nothing unique in Britain and the Commonwealth that makes migration work better. And we know it will work this time because it is already working. Rates of inter-marriage are on the rise, and already ahead of previous rates in prior immigration waves.

"But this time is different" rarely works out. And it never works out when all the supposedly new concerns are the exact same concerns shown every other time.


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 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
Again...you don't know that. The conditions today are different to the conditions of past generations. There is no guarantee that future immigrants will integrate.

All I'm saying is...don't be complacent.

Sure, successful integration needs effective policy (or at least the absence of bad policy). But you know what hurts integration more than negative policy? A hostile host population.

 d-usa wrote:
That's how my old Hauptbahnhof in Nuernberg was. Small collection of winos roaming the station, faint odor of pee in the tunnels leading to the tracks, collection of Assi's near the entrance leading down to the subway, homeless people sleeping in the halls of the subway near the Salvation Army office.

And then a couple hundred normal folks, tourists, businessman just doing their thing.

As a current Nuernberg resident and daily commuter by train, can confirm, tunnels still smell like pee, sex shops and drunks still everywhere, as well as the ubiquitous lesser spotted punk. But aside from that, Nuernberg is one of the quietest, most peaceful cities I've ever lived in. Never get any trouble. That's not to say bad things don't sometimes happen - a couple of homeless people have been murdered in the last year, and the window prostitution at Frauentormauer is pretty disconcerting for someone not used to legalized prostitution, but I live right in the Altstadt and have not had any problems whatsoever. We have a refugee shelter near the school where I work and we never have any problems either.

Again, not to say there are not problems, and not to say some of those problems are not concentrated in some migrant or ethnic groups. But Germany is a remarkably orderly and safe country.

 sebster wrote:
A hostile host population.

Still, with everything that's going on, host population is several degrees of magnitude more welcoming than back in the day.

You won't see nativist gangs slagging it on with Irish and Italian gangs out in the streets.

It can tell you the example of Latin gangs in Madrid, at the height of low-skilled immigration almost doubled the murder rate. Now 15 days later gang membership is down over 50% and the murder rate is 1/3 than it was at the height of the gang problem. Now the media is again up in arms about gang murders growing but that's because in 2016 there were just 3 in the whole Madrid region.

 Da Boss wrote:
Again, not to say there are not problems, and not to say some of those problems are not concentrated in some migrant or ethnic groups. But Germany is a remarkably orderly and safe country.

I wonder if any of the noted German trouble spots would have a murder rate equal to the US national average?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

jouso wrote:
Still, with everything that's going on, host population is several degrees of magnitude more welcoming than back in the day.

Oh definitely. I mean more improvement is always better and will help encourage integration, but you're right that we shouldn't lose track how, on the whole, we are so much more welcoming than ever before. My father-in-law is a Croatian migrant, he was telling us the other day that he borrowed from other immigrant families to buy his first home, because the banks wouldn't lend to him. He would later help lend money to other immigrant families so they could buy their own homes. It was a common practice. This was in the 1970s.

Obviously, comparisons are difficult because of different legal definitions. But the murder rate per million in the US is five times that in Germany, and there are more than double the number of rapes (though of course, rape statistics are hard to parse due to different legal standards and reporting rates.)

It seems likely to me that if you broke the rate down, they would be very localized and clustered in areas with a lot of gang violence in both countries.

 Da Boss wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
That's how my old Hauptbahnhof in Nuernberg was. Small collection of winos roaming the station, faint odor of pee in the tunnels leading to the tracks, collection of Assi's near the entrance leading down to the subway, homeless people sleeping in the halls of the subway near the Salvation Army office.

And then a couple hundred normal folks, tourists, businessman just doing their thing.

As a current Nuernberg resident and daily commuter by train, can confirm, tunnels still smell like pee, sex shops and drunks still everywhere, as well as the ubiquitous lesser spotted punk. But aside from that, Nuernberg is one of the quietest, most peaceful cities I've ever lived in. Never get any trouble. That's not to say bad things don't sometimes happen - a couple of homeless people have been murdered in the last year, and the window prostitution at Frauentormauer is pretty disconcerting for someone not used to legalized prostitution, but I live right in the Altstadt and have not had any problems whatsoever. We have a refugee shelter near the school where I work and we never have any problems either.

Again, not to say there are not problems, and not to say some of those problems are not concentrated in some migrant or ethnic groups. But Germany is a remarkably orderly and safe country.

I mean, yeah, that kind of stuff exists in pretty much every reasonably sized urban centre on the planet, right? Even back in my hometown of Edinburgh, which is stereotypically considered a pretty posh university town(people from other parts of Scotland *cough weegies cough* who buy into that stereotype manage to totally ignore the more deprived areas of the city) has homeless folk and reeking alleys and, at least when I was one, big groups of "alternative" younger people hanging around parts of the city.

Outside of gated communities there's probably a part of every city that would turn your average comfortable middle-class person into a jumpy eyes-down quickwalker who later recounts tales of their "near miss" with a "foreign looking" beggar to their friends as if they were recalling their time as a war correspondent or something, it's bizarre some people are taking that kind of hyperbolic pearl-clutching as being evidence of "no-go zones" and that kind of nonsense.

I though we all ready had a thread on conspiracy theories?

That's just a rumour.

 Yodhrin wrote:

Outside of gated communities there's probably a part of every city that would turn your average comfortable middle-class person into a jumpy eyes-down quickwalker who later recounts tales of their "near miss" with a "foreign looking" beggar to their friends as if they were recalling their time as a war correspondent or something, it's bizarre some people are taking that kind of hyperbolic pearl-clutching as being evidence of "no-go zones" and that kind of nonsense.

I only heard of no-go zones from US right wing media (and internet loons who want to somehow show evidence that muslim immigrants are destroying our way of life) but I also never knew that gated communities exist. Maybe it's because I'm not from the wealthy upper class (financially speaking) but that's also something that US media taught me. I think stuff like gated communities has recently (like a decade or two?) started appearing over here (or I'm now just cognisant of it?). The most similar stuff I knew of was expensive apartment complexes that had a reception area with somebody sitting next to the door to collect bigger packages.

 Da Boss wrote:
Obviously, comparisons are difficult because of different legal definitions. But the murder rate per million in the US is five times that in Germany, and there are more than double the number of rapes (though of course, rape statistics are hard to parse due to different legal standards and reporting rates.)

It seems likely to me that if you broke the rate down, they would be very localized and clustered in areas with a lot of gang violence in both countries.

The different legal definitions don't change the numbers that much, they're +/- a few percent, when one rate is 500% of the other. Nor is gang violence that much of a factor, it only represents a small share of total murders. But that's all off topic, on a subject that's been debated endlessly.

I was just making an observation really, that we define no-go areas as places with much higher rates of crime, and treat these as problems that must be addressed with strong police action and only talked about with very serious furrowed brows. But to put those no-go zones in perspective, even if the murder rate was 3 times the national average, it would still less than the average across the whole of another prosperous, lawful nation.

Just a bit of context, is all.

This morning there was an article by a non-jewish Israeli who decided to walk through Berlin's streets with a Kippa on his head, because somebody told him you can't do that in Germany without getting harassed. According to him, it didn't take that long before three young men shouted at him and his friend, and when he told them to stop it he got beaten with a belt. The attackers were shouting "Jahudi", arabic for Jew.

The president of the German Jewish Central Committee recently released a surprising statement, openly addressing the fact that the recent influx of migrants and refugees from North Africa and the middle east also brought a noticeable rise in incidents involving openly antisemitic behaviour, be it harassment like above, the symbolic burning of Israeli flags or even beatings and brawls in schools based on religion of the children. The American Jewish Committee (AJC) even ordered and analysed a study (planned during a NEBA - network for research and combatting of antisemitism - conference) trying to determine the amount of antisemitism specifically found in recent migrants and refugees. This is a noticeable issue, because while Germany of course has its own share of home-grown antisemitic idiots (usually glorifying a certain area of our past...), they have been mostly removed from making their "voice heard" as openly as some of these last incidents.

This kind of fits the discussion about whether or not there are no-go zones in Germany, and while I still argue that the FOX-defined areas without any police protection and impromptu sharia courts simply do not exist, this is certainly something fitting the point on areas where people do not feel very comfortable going.
And like sebster put it distinctly, if I may borrow the phrase, there are issues that need to be openly discussed in a polite and objective manner, because neither completely sweeping the recent changes in antisemitism especially in larger cities under the rug nor simply painting all refugees as troublemakers who should've rather "stayed home" will help in finding solutions for these issues.

My kid has brown immigrant friends and their parents are just the same as her white friends except they have an accent and one of them wears the headscarf. They volunteer and tell jokes and complain about the weather like everyone else.

You're aware of the fact that Canada lets in only the cream, yes? People who can read and write, probably have a university level education and are actually fit to work in your society?
One of the major pull factors for immigration from Africa and Arabia to Germany is the social system. If you happen to breathe, you've got the right to be alimented by the state at least for a while if you made it over the border. People cleverly discard their papers once they're in so they can't be sent back as no country wants them back. So even if you're poor here by our standards, it's still loads better than what you could achieve at home if you're an analphabet. The last wave currently costs about 50 Billion Euros a year, I don't think the system will be able to carry on like that once the economy dips.
Then the question is what the politicians will do. As Milton Friedman said: You can have a social state or open borders. At the moment we have both because business is good, but I wonder where it will go.

As to no-go zones: not really. There are some streets that police only enters in force, mainly in cities with high numbers of Libanese immigrants (we don't have that many of those, but the ones we have tend to be part of criminal clans that have headcounts in the thousands) and some Turkish dominated quarters (in a nearby city a while ago a family banded together and beat up a bunch of police because they didn't accept a parking ticket, as it was "in their street"), but I guess you have this everywhere in some way or other.

If I remember right, some of the professional beggars are from Eastern Europe and are part of begging groups. I wouldn't be surprised if they have a handler that collects from them each day, like a begging pimp.

Probably most of them, it's been quite a while that I've seen a "native" beggar beyond the one or two that have always been there. Most are Romanian and Bulgarian Gypsies nowadays.

XuQishi wrote:
You're aware of the fact that Canada lets in only the cream, yes?

Immigration programs for Germany and Canada are fairly similar. The bulk of immigration come through skilled worker programs, student programs, or family reunification. Then there's also a much smaller amount coming in through refugee programs. Germany has had a much bigger refugee intake lately, but prior to that Germany's refugee intake was a lot smaller.

People who can read and write, probably have a university level education and are actually fit to work in your society?

That describes the majority of the intake in both Germany and Canada, and just about every other country as well.

Then the question is what the politicians will do. As Milton Friedman said: You can have a social state or open borders.

Milton Friedman was a strident supporter of completely open borders. That quote, in context, is actually an argument against the welfare state. He's saying one of the problems of a welfare state is you don't get the wonderful open borders that libertarians like him dream of.

It works in the abstract, like a lot of stuff Friedman said. In reality it doesn't make much sense at all, because there's nothing saying hat a person granted any kind of VISA gets automatic and complete access to every part of the welfare system. Outside of refugees, no country I'm aware of allows full access to benefits for new migrants.

Immigration programs for Germany and Canada are fairly similar. The bulk of immigration come through skilled worker programs, student programs, or family reunification.

Actually no. Our Blue Card program (like the Green Card) was and is a major flop, we do not get qualified workers from outside the EU. The reason for that is that people who're already sitting on the luggage and have something to offer do not come here. Most of them speak English and in the Anglo-Saxon world skilled labor commands much higher wages at lower taxation than in Germany (actually, only Belgium is worse in that regard). Also you don't generally have to pay a crapload of money for a welfare system that you don't need. This makes countries like the US and Canada much more interesting for people who possess useful skills, while the open access to welfare draws mostly nonachievers. The migration balance in terms of highly educated people in Germany is actually slightly negative, we're more on the brain-drain side of things for the reasons above: it's not much fun to work here and it feels like a rip-off. If it weren't for social ties, my wife and I would emigrate, too. I don't care if I have to pay for my healthcare, I have to do that here anyway (and not nothing, we spent about 20 grand last year on that, I kid you not. And that was without ever needing anthing for the dentist, I dread the moment when that crap starts, my dad's carrying a Mercedes in his mouth), 140.000 USD sounds a lot better than 50.000 Euros (that's the average salary for what my wife does in the US vs. Germany), particularly if you keep in mind that you get to keep about 30K of those 50K. PhD level, too. The average salary in my line of work is about twice as high in the US, so while I'm not on a doctorate level, this would still be a load of extra cash. So yeah, as soon as the parents die, we intend to change over to the US subsidiaries of our respective companies, everything else is madness. I'm also kind of sick of paying through the nose for stuff I don't want or need. We're working class kids and worked hard to get to where we're now. There's no sign on any school that says: "Getting something out of this is forbidden for poor people".

That quote, in context, is actually an argument against the welfare state. He's saying one of the problems of a welfare state is you don't get the wonderful open borders that libertarians like him dream of.

It's still true the other way round, though. If you have 15 million people paying for something, you can't have billions of people theoretically entitled to the benefits of that system. That cannot work.

 Witzkatz wrote:
This morning there was an article by a non-jewish Israeli who decided to walk through Berlin's streets with a Kippa on his head, because somebody told him you can't do that in Germany without getting harassed. According to him, it didn't take that long before three young men shouted at him and his friend, and when he told them to stop it he got beaten with a belt. The attackers were shouting "Jahudi", arabic for Jew.

The president of the German Jewish Central Committee recently released a surprising statement, openly addressing the fact that the recent influx of migrants and refugees from North Africa and the middle east also brought a noticeable rise in incidents involving openly antisemitic behaviour, be it harassment like above, the symbolic burning of Israeli flags or even beatings and brawls in schools based on religion of the children. The American Jewish Committee (AJC) even ordered and analysed a study (planned during a NEBA - network for research and combatting of antisemitism - conference) trying to determine the amount of antisemitism specifically found in recent migrants and refugees. This is a noticeable issue, because while Germany of course has its own share of home-grown antisemitic idiots (usually glorifying a certain area of our past...), they have been mostly removed from making their "voice heard" as openly as some of these last incidents.

This kind of fits the discussion about whether or not there are no-go zones in Germany, and while I still argue that the FOX-defined areas without any police protection and impromptu sharia courts simply do not exist, this is certainly something fitting the point on areas where people do not feel very comfortable going.
And like sebster put it distinctly, if I may borrow the phrase, there are issues that need to be openly discussed in a polite and objective manner, because neither completely sweeping the recent changes in antisemitism especially in larger cities under the rug nor simply painting all refugees as troublemakers who should've rather "stayed home" will help in finding solutions for these issues.

You know, I saw this story and the video too, and thought about this thread, but figured if I said anything, it would be called an isolated event. But there has been a rise of anti-semetic crimes not just in Germany, but apparently Europe. A lot of arabs hate Israel, and it seems only natural they would bring their hatred along with them when they resettle.

So I guess for some people, there might be no-go areas (meaning an obvious Jewish person walking down the neighborhood filled with refugees. I am sure its no different than me walking down a street in the 'hood. There is a gak-hole taco stand I go to that makes the most amazing carnitas. Like mind-blowing. Most of you wouldn't set foot in the place as its pretty filthy. I am surprised I do. But whenever I am in there, all the hispanics look at me like I just stepped out of a UFO. And this is a form of natural segregation that I expect to happen in a lot of places with refugees. I certainly haven't had any real issues (while the owner likes me, one of the ladies who works there seems to dislike me for no reason), but the fact there are only what looks like migrant families going there, and then me, the only white guy, kind of says something.

Anyways, I wouldn't be surprised if the issues go beyond antisemitism. Its just the natural tendencies of people hanging out with other people they have in common, like language and customs. But if the economy buckles, and unemployment becomes a serious issue, there will be a lot of problems. And I think naturally some people will blame the immigrants for the higher crime rate.

So I do see issues like this happening, its just that I didn't think they would happen so soon. Which is why I started this thread.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

XuQishi wrote:
Actually no. Our Blue Card program (like the Green Card) was and is a major flop, we do not get qualified workers from outside the EU. The reason for that is that people who're already sitting on the luggage and have something to offer do not come here. Most of them speak English and in the Anglo-Saxon world skilled labor commands much higher wages at lower taxation than in Germany (actually, only Belgium is worse in that regard). Also you don't generally have to pay a crapload of money for a welfare system that you don't need. This makes countries like the US and Canada much more interesting for people who possess useful skills, while the open access to welfare draws mostly nonachievers. The migration balance in terms of highly educated people in Germany is actually slightly negative, we're more on the brain-drain side of things for the reasons above: it's not much fun to work here and it feels like a rip-off. If it weren't for social ties, my wife and I would emigrate, too. I don't care if I have to pay for my healthcare, I have to do that here anyway (and not nothing, we spent about 20 grand last year on that, I kid you not. And that was without ever needing anthing for the dentist, I dread the moment when that crap starts, my dad's carrying a Mercedes in his mouth), 140.000 USD sounds a lot better than 50.000 Euros (that's the average salary for what my wife does in the US vs. Germany), particularly if you keep in mind that you get to keep about 30K of those 50K. PhD level, too. The average salary in my line of work is about twice as high in the US, so while I'm not on a doctorate level, this would still be a load of extra cash. So yeah, as soon as the parents die, we intend to change over to the US subsidiaries of our respective companies, everything else is madness. I'm also kind of sick of paying through the nose for stuff I don't want or need. We're working class kids and worked hard to get to where we're now. There's no sign on any school that says: "Getting something out of this is forbidden for poor people".

Wow. You sound like you feel trapped. I had no idea about the wages, All I ever hear is that Germany is a utopia for social programs. Someone living in Germany in another thread mentioned that half of their pay go towards taxes and some kind of pension. I can imagine if has to be frustrating that you don't have more control of what you earn.

KTG17 wrote:

So I guess for some people, there might be no-go areas (meaning an obvious Jewish person walking down the neighborhood filled with refugees. I am sure its no different than me walking down a street in the 'hood. There is a gak-hole taco stand I go to that makes the most amazing carnitas. Like mind-blowing. Most of you wouldn't set foot in the place as its pretty filthy. I am surprised I do. But whenever I am in there, all the hispanics look at me like I just stepped out of a UFO. And this is a form of natural segregation that I expect to happen in a lot of places with refugees. I certainly haven't had any real issues (while the owner likes me, one of the ladies who works there seems to dislike me for no reason), but the fact there are only what looks like migrant families going there, and then me, the only white guy, kind of says something.

I think I already told here the story of a younger me parking a rental dark crown vic behind a home depot somewhere in or around Pomona for a quick bite from a pupusa truck, walking towards them in my then mandatory suit and tie and having half the line in front of me running for their lives thinking I was a cop or the migra. We had quite the laugh afterwards.

You don't see that deer caught of the headlights look in, say, Miami. They're mainstream there.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

KTG17 wrote:

XuQishi wrote:
Actually no. Our Blue Card program (like the Green Card) was and is a major flop, we do not get qualified workers from outside the EU. The reason for that is that people who're already sitting on the luggage and have something to offer do not come here. Most of them speak English and in the Anglo-Saxon world skilled labor commands much higher wages at lower taxation than in Germany (actually, only Belgium is worse in that regard). Also you don't generally have to pay a crapload of money for a welfare system that you don't need. This makes countries like the US and Canada much more interesting for people who possess useful skills, while the open access to welfare draws mostly nonachievers. The migration balance in terms of highly educated people in Germany is actually slightly negative, we're more on the brain-drain side of things for the reasons above: it's not much fun to work here and it feels like a rip-off. If it weren't for social ties, my wife and I would emigrate, too. I don't care if I have to pay for my healthcare, I have to do that here anyway (and not nothing, we spent about 20 grand last year on that, I kid you not. And that was without ever needing anthing for the dentist, I dread the moment when that crap starts, my dad's carrying a Mercedes in his mouth), 140.000 USD sounds a lot better than 50.000 Euros (that's the average salary for what my wife does in the US vs. Germany), particularly if you keep in mind that you get to keep about 30K of those 50K. PhD level, too. The average salary in my line of work is about twice as high in the US, so while I'm not on a doctorate level, this would still be a load of extra cash. So yeah, as soon as the parents die, we intend to change over to the US subsidiaries of our respective companies, everything else is madness. I'm also kind of sick of paying through the nose for stuff I don't want or need. We're working class kids and worked hard to get to where we're now. There's no sign on any school that says: "Getting something out of this is forbidden for poor people".

Wow. You sound like you feel trapped. I had no idea about the wages, All I ever hear is that Germany is a utopia for social programs. Someone living in Germany in another thread mentioned that half of their pay go towards taxes and some kind of pension. I can imagine if has to be frustrating that you don't have more control of what you earn.

OTOH you get what you pay for.

I did a quick math at the time I was offered a permanent posting in the US and the difference didn't even compensate for all the extra care my ASD son needs and that in the US runs at over 50K per year in extra health care and school fees.

I think it would help if we define what a no-go area is supposed to be.

When “no-go area” first became a thing, the definition was “an area full of Muslims, where Sharia law is supreme, and civil authorities refuse to enter to enforce civil laws”.

If that is the definition, then there are none in Germany.

If we want to use the water down the term to mean “areas where people feel uncomfortable or unsafe”, then of course there are areas like that. They have been there for decades long before the last round of refugees came to Germany. We had them there when I was growing up in the 80s and 90s.

But we really should use a racially and emotionally charged term to describe something else.

XuQishi wrote:

My kid has brown immigrant friends and their parents are just the same as her white friends except they have an accent and one of them wears the headscarf. They volunteer and tell jokes and complain about the weather like everyone else.

You're aware of the fact that Canada lets in only the cream, yes? People who can read and write, probably have a university level education and are actually fit to work in your society?

Yeah, that's not completely true. We have refugees. One of the first big conservative panic attacks about Trudeau was when he promised to bring in X thousand (I think it was 20 thousand, but I'm not sure) number of Syrian immigrants. One of them ended up on my street. While the parents speak very little English, they are very friendly and fun to be around. The dad is a labourer. Their kid's English went from 0 to fluent in a matter of months. They are a great addition to my neighbourhood.

Probably most of them, it's been quite a while that I've seen a "native" beggar beyond the one or two that have always been there. Most are Romanian and Bulgarian Gypsies nowadays.

Every single beggar in my town is either white or First Nations. There's even two beggars I see around town that I went to school with.

Someone living in Germany in another thread mentioned that half of their pay go towards taxes and some kind of pension

That's the ballpark, yes. Extra work is extra tasty. I did a side project a while ago, but I stopped doing that when I saw that I got to keep a grand 34% of the gross income of that side project, and well, at the end of the year the taxman decided that we still hadn't done our part yet (we basically bought the country a C-Class Mercedes - we're regular white collar employees, not company owners or so) and asked for yet another 600ish Euros which ate the entire profit of that project, so basically I put in the work for taxes and nothing else. That's motivating. I'm not doing that anymore, it's not worth the loss of free time.

you get what you pay for

Healthcare somewhat, although all the general stuff has to be paid for by yourself. It's why my spectacles have to last, I pay about 1000 Euros per glass plus the frame.

Pension is not great, though. At the current rate I'd have to make it to 98 to get back what I spend on that. Since no man in my family ever made it past 75, I'm not counting on that. If I compare the fees with the projected outcome I'm probably overpaying by 33% (i.e. negative 33% yield). To be honest, I'd rather put that money in stocks and hope for the best, it can hardly be worse.

I can only say: when people talk of the rich Germany, they mean the state, not the people putting in the work. There's a reason why we have the lowest rate of people with houses or apartments that they own in Europe. It's really hard to save up even if your gross salary is quite good.

XuQishi wrote:
Actually no. Our Blue Card program (like the Green Card) was and is a major flop, we do not get qualified workers from outside the EU. The reason for that is that people who're already sitting on the luggage and have something to offer do not come here.

Germany has about 16 million people who have migrated from outside Europe. Only about 800,000 are refugees, the rest came through skilled migration and education programs.

Most of them speak English and in the Anglo-Saxon world skilled labor commands much higher wages at lower taxation than in Germany (actually, only Belgium is worse in that regard). Also you don't generally have to pay a crapload of money for a welfare system that you don't need. This makes countries like the US and Canada much more interesting for people who possess useful skills, while the open access to welfare draws mostly nonachievers.

Germany spends more on social welfare than for instance the UK, 22% vs 25%. But it's such a marginal difference, on such a marginal matter, that claiming it drives where skilled migrants go is really not worth bothering with. You think a guy finishes his engineering degree in India and then refuses a company sponsorship in Germany, because he wants to hang out and see if England will allow him to pay 3% less in social welfare?

It's still true the other way round, though. If you have 15 million people paying for something, you can't have billions of people theoretically entitled to the benefits of that system. That cannot work.

Only if you assume that anyone migrating would be instantly entitled to access that system from day one and it would never risk their migration status. Which is a ridiculous assumption.

And the fact Friedman intended in the opposite meaning matters. When people name drop someone, they do it because that name adds authority to their argument. So when it turns out Friedman felt the argument for open borders was so strong that he could attack welfare systems for their effect on undermining open borders, that means something. Well, what it actually means is that Friedman was a kook, but that probably is besides the point. What it means in this context is that arguing against open borders because it doesn't integrate with an abstract vision of welfare that reflects no welfare state anywhere is a bad argument from the very beginning.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 KTG17 wrote:
You know, I saw this story and the video too, and thought about this thread, but figured if I said anything, it would be called an isolated event. But there has been a rise of anti-semetic crimes not just in Germany, but apparently Europe. A lot of arabs hate Israel, and it seems only natural they would bring their hatred along with them when they resettle.

Anti-semitism in the Arabic world long predates Israel. Anti-semitism is also pretty strong in other Islamic populations, though not as pronounced, I believe.

And it is a serious issue. One of the frustrating things about the over-focus on terrorism is it effectively shut down all conversation on the much more substantial issues of gender relations and anti-semitism. And those are issues that muslim refugees bring with them when they migrate. Are they more serious issues than say, the high rates of domestic violence among Italian Catholic migrants, or the Catholic/Protetant hostility that came with Irish migrants? Those issues pretty much just disappeared in subsequent generations, but are these issues more serious and less likely to disappear? I don't know, but we shouldn't just not talk about it.

And this is a form of natural segregation that I expect to happen in a lot of places with refugees.

This might feel like a nitpick, but it really isn't - refugees and migrants are not the same thing. Refugees are a tiny share of total migration, and it's very unlikely a large number of hispanic people are going to have many refugees among their numbers, not today anyway.

This might feel like a nitpick, but it really isn't - refugees and migrants are not the same thing. Refugees are a tiny share of total migration, and it's very unlikely a large number of hispanic people are going to have many refugees among their numbers, not today anyway.

Interestingly enough, many German newspapers have started using the term "migrants" for all kinds of refugees and regular migrants, with little asterisks explaining so. Some use the term "Geflüchtete" which means the "fled" people, because somebody argued "refugee" is a pejorative term. What I'm saying is, large media outlets, just as well as some government officials, have really begun blurring the line between refugee and migrants - my cynical assumption is that they do this because they know quite a few of the people coming in as refugees don't entirely fit the historical/official criteria for refugee/asylum seeker, often turning out to be economic migrants.
It's just a side note, but it's one of the weird changes of terms in the public discourse here that ruffles my feathers a bit, maybe because my fiancee is from India, works here on limited contracts and constantly has to worry about the next grant coming and possibilites of deportation - while emotional, heartfelt articles lob economic migrants from African countries into the same bin as genuine refugees from wars, famines (I know a family of Somalis in my city that fled the last big drought there, something I've seen rather few articles about, too), political persecution, etc.