this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2024
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I have a feeling this largely depends on where you live. In areas where there's a large concentration of immigrants and integration fails is where you can encounter unfortunate events. Just a little anecdote: a local bar that is known for being very left (punks and Antifa regularly hang out here, everyone openly smoked weed even 20 years ago when it still was illegal in Germany) had an influx of sexual abuse caused by immigrants. They even had to hire a bouncer at one point to stop this from happening. The swimming pools have pictograms showing what you're not allowed to do to women, etc. My wife voluntarily teaches immigrants German, and she's like super left. But she has to admit that there is a huge difference between the Ukrainians and Afghans for example. While the former is eager to learn the language so they can contribute to society, the latter is not interested most of the time and they're fine with receiving benefits and living off that. This all happens in a town with less than 100k population. Now imagine what a shitshow it is in Berlin?
All of this happens because of shitty societal practices that aren't compatible to the society here. It is a problem and shouldn't be disregarded.
I'm all for immigrants. I have an colleague at work who fled with his mother from Syria. He learned the language, studied and now works as a process engineer in our company. A fantastic person and I bet there's plenty more of these people. The problem is, we're also gaining a lot of shitty people... And we have enough shitty people among the Germans! Integration practices need to improve! Sending them back into a country at war isn't an option.
All I can say is that I live in Berlin right now and everything is fine. I know Ukrainians who speak fuck all German, I know Syrians who I’d never believe they’re not born here because their German is perfect. I also know it the other way around. But the point is anecdotes like these usually come from people living in small towns / villages and it seems to be because people aren’t used to the diversity and they get most of their information from the media.
In the 70s/80s the inner cities of places like Berlin, Cologne & Hamburg were full of drugs, pimps and gang violence. No one wanted to live there, they literally called Cologne Chicago am Rhein. Needless to say the pimps & gang were all ethnic Germans.
In the 90s Kottbusser Tor was one of the no go zones where you were likely to be robbed if you weren’t from the Kiez. Had to know people. Now it’s a tourist hotspot and there’s nothing comparable to what it was like back in the day. That’s btw not just my feeling but crime statistics point in the same direction. Just one example out of many. If you didn’t grow up in this mess you have no idea how safe it is in 2024, no matter what the media or politics tell you.
I actually grew up in Amsterdam in the 90s. Diversity works really well there in my opinion. In my classroom alone we had 16 different nationalies. It all boils down to integration. Germany is shit at integration. My brother has lived in Berlin all his life. Violence has gone up since the massive immigration waves. And sorry to say this but a lot of the immigrants have problems with their behavior towards women. Why would pictograms in swimmingpools need to be put up, showing not to grope women because of their swimwear?
I myself don't think the immigration is the huge problem everyone makes it out to be. But Germany barely does a thing and allows them to group together, making integration difficult. Other countries ar better at this. My wife came in contact with many immigrants and there definitely is a pattern. This has nothing to do with race and everything to do with societal norms.
I don’t know what to say to your whole thing about pictures in swimming pool and immigrants. I‘ve been to all the big clubs in Berlin and they also have all kinds of tolerance statements in their party descriptions and on the walls inside the clubs that also talk about no means no and that you can’t grope anyone. The party audience is mostly white and mostly from western countries, yet this is there. Do I now conclude that all white westerners have a problem with harassing people? That’s just ridiculous.
I’ve lived in the Netherlands btw and it seemed very popular among locals to trash German cars, break their windows, slash their tires, spray shit like „Germans out“ on cars or walls. Do I now conclude that Dutch people are all racist? Again that would be ridiculous.
My point is, your opinions are based on diffuse feelings and not on actual data („crime is getting worse“) or logical conclusions („there are posters in swimming pools, therefore immigrants harrass women“).
I actually saw the harassment with my own eyes in that bar I was talking about. It was a huge shock because that bar was only ever visited by the most open minded people you could meet. The posters I'm talking about were put up after sexual harassment took place. This is not a feeling, things have happened. Just not as crazy as the Nazis would like. But ignoring these problems and just not doing anything about it is a good recipe for setting things up to get worse. All I want is that people get integrated a bit better. I'd never send them back to the hell holes they came from. They fled wars for a reason.
I'm very happy for you that you have so much positive to say about what you have encountered! I also know many friends who've never had trouble with immigrants and refugees. But when you let in a huge amount of people, there's bound to be a gigantic portion of asshats among them. I'd say a comparable percentage to the German shitheads.
Edit: yeah, we had our car's windows broken and radio stolen too. My Dutch teacher actually said terrible things about the Germans right in front of me and he very well knew that my family comes from Germany. But my classmates had my back, reported him to to the principal and he was fired on the spot. The classmates in question were from Ghana, Surinam, the UK, China and the Netherlands. It felt great being surrounded by people from all over the world as if it were the most normal thing ever. And it was normal. Largely also because they were integrated very well (us Germans too btw).