dnivas wrote:Just chatted with a friends ex who lives in Mainz, close to Frankfurt..........
A few points. I don't claim to be an expert on Germany or German affairs but having traveled there a few times these are my views:
Against Turks who came in as guest workers and now are the single largest group of "foreigners", although most are now 2nd and 3rd generation citizens, the complaint is that they live in ghettos and the older people still refuse to learn German. The Germans expect that anyone who will be accepted as a refugee in Germany and allowed to stay there via being given asylum will assimilate and learning to speak German and live among the larger German population is part of that process.
As far as Ukranian refugees are concerned, the expectation is that they will return to Ukraine and so they do not need to learn German, since they are being treated as refugees i.e. somebody who seeks temporary protection/shelter and then goes back to where they came from. Most Africans are deemed to be economic migrants, since they have come through other safe countries outside the EU before entering the EU and then once in the EU traveling to Germany because it's welfare policies are more generous than those of Spain or Italy that they may have traveled through on their way to Germany. The Syrians did the same thing a few years ago when Merkel in a fit of madness threw open the doors for one brief summer. So the Africans in effect are deemed "guilty" until they prove themselves "innocent" i.e. genuine refugees. The restrictions about not leaving the town etc. are as a result of this guilty until proven innocent situation. Does that mean that there are no genuine African refugees? Of course not, but the individual circumstances where a minority group in Burkina Faso is being persecuted by some other larger group will take time to establish because of lack of news/information about a situation which may not be in the news. In contrast thanks to global publicity, everyone is aware of the situation in Ukraine.