Exactly. When I moved to Germany, I couldn't speak more than a couple of words. I could say please and thank you, hello and good bye, I could, essentially, be polite. I also started to learn the language.

It just became very obvious, very quickly, that, if I wanted to live and work in Germany (or France, or Italy etc.), if I didn't learn the language, then I would be stuck doing cash-in-hand work cleaning houses and offices or, being English, I could possibly find a job at a large multi-national, for those coming from non-English speaking countries, that isn't usually an option.

If you look at the diversity of backgrounds and cultures of the promis in Germany, you will see a lot of foreigners who "made good". They have learnt the language, in some cases, they have learnt the language better than many natives and use that knowledge to work in comedy and make fun of Germans and of their own origins.

But there are also tens of thousands who can't get work etc. because they won't learn the language. These are the people Merkel wants to embrace. She wants them to feel like they belong, whether they speak German or not, when they arrive.

Personally, having lived in Germany for nearly a decade, I can't see how they will ever be able to integrate themselves into the community, if they can't communicate.

i agree but that/this should have never become public only done behind the scenes would this have worked, being open and up front on this subject just does not work or sit well with the general population

also here in the UK we face a very similar problem and i believe it is done by design rather then changing to a new way of life ...

or maybe i am just a troll or a racist
your choice you choose ...

You are answering your own question. You automatically have to be infringing somebody's freedom if you are telling them when they can and cannot enjoy it. It's implicit in the statement "at home or with friends" that you are expecting them to use a different language under other circumstances. And what is the point of saying "when they arrive" if it isn't to imply a big "but soon"?

This whole thing is dumb, people are trying to talk the talk of obligations and expectations but ignore the fact that some sanction is implied by this. If you say someone must to do something, which Merkel clearly is, then it means very little until you admit there is an or else. So I ask you, learn German, or else what? There is of course no actual sanction that can apply. Merkel is just rabble rousing.

It isn't viable to demand integration from people, and before slagging off multiculturalism, I would suggest looking at the recent, highly blemished record of the largest country in the EU that does not have such a policy: France, home to Europe's largest race riots so far this century, also if I'm not mistaken the largest racial ghettos in Western Europe. This is because government policy on the subject of integration is simply meaningless. New populations will integrate themselves into society according to a range of variables including how easy it is to adjust, how welcoming their neighbours are, what opportunities exist, and so on. Some idiot ordering them to integrate is just pointless.

It is not about freedom. They can use their native language whenever they want "at home" was just a flippant example. But to be understood by the general populace, to be able to work, to go out to a pub or club, you need to speak the language, at least a bit of it. How will you order a meal or a drink, how will you understand when they tell you how much the meal cost? How will you be able to fill out the forms for social security? It is something basic that you have to take into account, when moving to a new country, that you will need to learn their language, in order to live there. In fact, learning the language gives you more freedom to do more things...


No, she isn't. Which part of "Anyone who visits our country must not immediately speak German" is not saying they must learn German, at least not on day one. The or else is that they won't fit in, they won't be able to communicate with their neighbours, with shop keepers, with potential employers...


She is "slagging off", well point out rather than slagging off, that 30 years of trying to enforce some sort of multi-culturalism on the population hasn't worked and now is the time to look at better ways of doing that. Which is one of the reasons that the Turkish leader is on board and spoke out to the Turkish people living in Germany...

Multiculturalisam has been there for the immigrants to embrace for 3 decades, but a lot of them have isolated themselves away from the rest of society.

So, someone at the top isn't happy with the progress of a bottom up process, so it's time to switch to a top down one. Boo hoo, it won't work, you can't force people to mix and integrate if they don't want to do it.

As for the pragmatic argument based on how much better life is if you speak the local lingo, what's the value of this argument meant to be? I'm accepting that life is better that way, I'm in favour of integration. But some people seem happy to live their lives without these benefits, what's the problem with that? It's their life and it's their choice?

You can only complain if their decision not to learn your language hurts you in some way.

As for the rest of it, it remains vacuous rabble rousing bull-poopy. Merkel doesn't have a policy to go with her rhetoric nor will she ever have one. She is posturing to placate the right.

Placate the right? She say people don't need to speak German to be welcome and that is pandering to the right?

As Rusty pointed out, the BBC turned Merkel's comments on their head and reported the opposite of what she said.

I'm confused...

Multiculturalism is where you allow immigrants to integrate at their own pace and assume that they will contribute as much to the host country's culture as they take from it. Merkel says this has "failed, utterly failed". And "the demand for integration is one of our key asks to come".

But apparently you are saying she really said multiculturalism has "succeeded, everything is lovely" and the BBC is misrepresenting her by directly attributing true quotes to her.

There's plenty of difference between saying it's ok for people not to speak German the day they arrive, and it's ok for them to not learn it at all if they don't want to. it seems to me that you are misrepresenting her remarks for your own ends, exactly as you claim the BBC has.

It is the British media (inc. the BBC) who have misrepresented what Merkel said (probably not by intent). The whole speech sounded so very different in German to how it was translated into English.

Multiculturalism and "MultiKulti" are two very different things - Merkel referred to the latter. Your definition of the former is correct. "MultiKulti", however, is a long-standing government policy based primarily on the assumption that the immigrants would eventually go home.

Consequently there has been, for example, scant access to free German language resources - the assumption being that the government shouldn't pay for people who are leaving soon anyway. Anybody who was bothered about learning German would, it was was assumed, be willing to pay for it. Also, there is a societal problem in Germany that because of the legacy of the division of state, the Germans are still struggling to find a collective national identity. It's very easy to forget just how young Germany is - the modern state is only twenty years old. There are still massive divisions between East and West - the East being particularly polarised because of things like the high unemployment rate and the leeching of their youth to the West. By assuming the foreigners would go home anyway, there was no need to absorb any of their foreign culture into the very young, already fragile German culture. The foreigners were then, and are now, considered to be something close to tourists.

What Merkel was saying was that the foreigners aren't going home and that Germany needs to totally change its policies. If you stop assuming that the "foreigners" will go home, and start to think of them as "Germans" it radically alters how you provide for them. Furthermore she was also, in a very German way, admonishing Germans for not integrating with the foreigners - a subtlety easily missed if one isn't used to living with Germans

Truthfully the translation was very sensationalist and the reporting has been woeful. [If what has been reported was actually the case, I would be among the first to react - my wife being German and me wanting to move there. However I hope you can believe me (and Dave) when we say that the UK reporting bears little or no resemblance to what actually happened. I got lucky purely because I saw it in German first]

Hope this helps to clear things up a little.

[Edited to add sentences in brackets]

Oh I see, so the previous German policy was a hopeless parody of multiculturalism where immigrant communities are regarded as rootless and their cultural input is not sought? That seems unusually lazy for the Hun.

I hope they don't intend to drift to the extremes of French policies in the matter though. Opportunities to integrate are a good thing, but demanding excessive compromise from one's guests causes alienation.

Pretty much, yes.


Indeed.

There is some simmering resentment that is being exploited by the NPD (the German BNP). This is what Merkel, Wulff et al. are desperately trying to prevent.