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FIELD REPORTS
Which for a kind of motivation can people have got to want to emigrate just to the Federal Republic of Germany? At first there are a lot of reasons for chosing another country. German isn´t an universal language, nearly no foreigner is learning German at school. Besides them it will be a little bit difficult to learn the German language. The Federal Republic of Germany is only a small country, the opportunities for development are limited in our overpopulated country. Germany does not play an important part in the world politics too.But the Federal Republic of Germany is still respected to be an economic powerful and rich country, altough the Wirtschaftswunder (the German economic boom in the 1950ths and 1960ths) has been becoming history for a long time. One reason to prefer Germany may be that the German immigration laws are really genereous and offer more social benefits than nearly each other country because of the historical guilt complexes of the Third Reich. Social security is important indeed, but most of the immigrants want to work, they are often more industrious than the Germans. There are really no Germans which open a chippy stand.
During the time I got contact to different immigrants from Turkey, Syria, Togo, Thailand and also from the USA. I don´t want to respect people from other states of the European Union) to be foreign immigrants. Also the Ossis (slang for the inhabitants of the ex GDR, East Germany) shall be ignored in this reflection.
At first you must see that there are only a few people who are fond of leaving their old homeland. They are locking forward for better conditions of living on peace, freedom and prosperity. But what do the immigrants really known about the German reality that they are having such a high opinion about Germany? What kind of image of Germany is propagated abroad?
The lady from Thailand respected Germany to be a land of milk and honey and every German would be rich. She wanted to mary an invalidity persinoneer and wanted an suv consuming about 20 l. of gas as her wedding present, besides them a nice house. But the reality of the 63 m² rent controlled apartment in Wanne - Eickel scared the really pretty young woman away. If she had got a bad braek, she would have joined a call - house later. We have never heard something about her till the time.
I got to know the man from Togo in an African food store. At first he worked at a filling station for the auto care, now he is unemployed and is working black on the side a little bit. Although he is only 23 years old his wife is already been pregnant with their forth child. His old neighbors freezed him out after the birth of his third child. Now he and his family are living somewhere in a larger but ruined pre - war - apartment from bountiful stately child - benefits. A neighbor said, the Africans want to take revenge by their behaviour on us Europeens, because of they had to suffer during the time of the European colonialism. But will this black family have get a chance for a better life? I don´t think so.
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But I´d got most of my contacts to Kurds coming mostly from Syria. At first they were really distanced against me, because some of them regarded me to be a Jew (I don´t know why). But I told them that I would be an atheist and don´t have anything in common with Jewdom. Besides them I informed the Kurds that most of the German were atheists or at least religion would be unconcerned for them. If the Kurds want to life here, they have to come to terms with this situation.
Well, the Kurds of my circle were Moslems indeed, but they were no hardliners. The women normally didn´t wear kerchiefs and they were - after my impression - emancipated. From time to time somy of them ate even pork. At first we were common by our interest in music, movie pictures, theater and art in general.
I told the Kurds from the early beginning my opinion to their religion. "You are allowed to build mosques and to practise your religion in the limits of religious - freedom, but you may not demand for privileges. Otherwise our friendship will be finished." The Kurds appreciated my opinion by all means, they are not responsible for the mistakes of their church today., although they have to suffer because of it. Besides them the Kurds were affable to my demand of birth control at all. It´s a pitty that this good relationship was destroyed by the Islamic church, but my principles have the precedence of private friendships and even of my own family.
I was astonished that the Kurd´s knowledge about Europe in general and Germany in special is really very poor. At school they only got over the Arabic countries at their geography lessons, at best they have something got to know about France during their French lessons, but only one hour per week. In this context I have to notice that I ´m speaking about people with an academic professional instruction comparable to our standards. Now you can imagine what the majority of people lower education know about us; nearly nothing! A world outside of Arabia doesn´t seem to exist for the Arabic leaders.
The only why the Kurds came to Germany is that it´s relatively easy to immigrate to Germany. Even Kurds who have been living here for ten years can often speak only broken German. There is no real interest in their new homeland and in getting to know the western culture. Further than there are a lot of internal problems. No single Turk much less Germans visited manifestations of the Kurds and on the contrary you can notice the same. The Kurds established - similar like the Turks - an own parallel society, which is wholesale separated outwards, because there is really no true interest in contacts at the side of the Kurds and the other social groups.
After the opinion of the Kurds it would be the best thing to get a state of their own in their original homeland where they can live in calm and freedom. The Kurdish territory makes parts of Syria, Turkey, Iran, Irak and the former Sowjet Union. Kurdish people are very patriotic indeed, you could see their national flag with the rising up sun on all of their events. A lot of their kids want to learn Arabic, what can be senseful, because nobody can know how long it will be still fine here...
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The removal from the ultra conservative Utah o the Federal Republic of Germany was a real cultural shock for the clergyman of the Latter - Day - Saint - Church. He had surely imagine the situation here in another way. Germany is well know to be a land of Christian faith and history for many centuries, to be the land of Martin Luther, who changed the world. Even the smallest villages have got big and splendid churches which are all being well repaired. But the appearences are deceiving, because the churches can only survive because they are being financed by the German state, they are not backed up by the population in a sufficient way for a long time. I guessed the clergymen not to surrender, because the old Christian national churches are ruined, but there was still a minority of Germans being interest in religion. That may be a chance for his church...
Our female English teacher from the adult education center , who was born in Michigan, thought that living in Europe would be more free than in the reactionary USA. She had lived in some different European countries and she is feeling fine here. Surely, there are some German features she doesn´t like, for example the "Flurwoche" (you have to clean the stages and corridors of an apartment house by turn with your neighbors). But I think she can stand it...
Thev interest of the Americans to Europe and especially to Germany seems to be modest, but this matter may be a good sign, because the German American relationship wasn´t always free of conflicts. The persecutions of Germans during the First World War remains to be ignored past. Town with German names were normaly renamed at this time, during a lot of Nazi items joined the American language and are still very popular till today. So "GESTAPO" is a very popular term of abuse for the police.