FOCUS 1
FOCUS 1 – Geography and Demographics
and also find a place to work. This is absolutely great and offers many possibilities for a country like Germany where there are not enough young people to balance the rising number of senior citizens. —Melanie Yes! Immigrants have moved to, from, and across Germany since before Germany even existed. There has been a popular narrative among conservatives in Germany for decades that our country isn’t an immigrant nation, but this is historically wrong. Germany has seen immigration and emigration for centuries, and while there of course have been and continue to be challenges that come with it, Germany has tremendously benefited from immigrants moving to our country and becoming citizens. And it isn’t just the economic benefit bringing in much needed workers, either. Our cuisine, our language, really our entire culture has grown stronger, and quite frankly more interesting over the past couple decades.
getting bigger. They are not as pleased with their own status, and therefore they are less willing to share and help refugees integrate. —Annemarie Germany is already an immigrant nation. Germany is among the top 3-5 countries in the world that take in the most immigrants annually. —Lenz Considering that the first Homosapiens appeared on the African continent, every country is an immigrant country if you trace the origins of its citizens back far enough. In the history of human kind, large groups of people have left their home turf for a multitude of push and pull factors. Looking at the recent increase in immigration to Germany, it really is a small phenomenon when compared to movements of other groups of humans throughout the centuries. —Annika
—Torben I think there are only three other countries in the world that have as many neighboring countries as Germany (nine!). So, whenever there was a war in Europe, Germany was likely to be affected by it. I can remember that in my little village, in my childhood, we had refugees from East Germany and Russia. Then, after a while, I had an Italian classmate. Then, a Turkish restaurant opened in my neighborhood. I lived oversee in my twenties, and when I came back, many Kurdish people had arrived, and later on people arrived from Albania and Slovenia. People worry more now because the refugees are coming from further away. Their culture is more different to ours, their religion too. I have colleagues who teach in classes with 12 nationalities, but that is an exception. So yes, there is a challenge of common values, and it only adds to the pressure that many Germans think that the gap between the rich and the poor is
GERMANY IN FOCUS
Germany is not becoming an immigration nation, it has always been one. Before Germany even existed there were hundreds of different tribes which were unified to what we now know as Germans. After the Second World War, Germany was flooded with war refugees, which then faced the same problems as refugees face nowadays. Then came guest workers, who stayed and manifested Germany as we know it today. —John Germany has been accepting large numbers of immigrants since the 1950’s. The strong economic upswing after World War II, can be in many parts attributed to the people from all over Europe who moved to Germany and decided to stay. The right to asylum is part of Germany’s Basic Law.
A Transatlantic Outreach Program Instructional text for secondary educators
—Benni
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