• blahsay@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Oh you’re actually German? It’s been while since I was last there but it is less a race issue from what Germans mentioned- the issue with the Syrians was than a culture problem. Hard-line Islamic society meets liberal west was always going to be rough. Like having to ignore the paedophilia laws when they arrived with child brides…messy situation.

    I’m definitely not saying the Syrians didn’t deserve sanctuary. However perhaps a country with a vaguely similar culture and language might have been better for them too? It’s a sensitive subject but surely you think every group of refugees can’t end up taking the train the Germany?

    What’s your idea for the next wave? The one after, and so on?

    • roboto
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      5 months ago

      Yeah I’m German and imo it’s totally xenophobia and with darker looking people a race issue, that’s why I said that they use the same rhetoric against Syrians and Ukrainians that they used against German refugees back in the day and against Spanish, Italian, Polish, Turkish people in the 60s/70s and against Russians and Yugoslavian people in the 90s.

      I actually have some Syrian friends because I helped them in 2015 when the influx was peaking, and many of them are honestly just normal people who came here to work, go to school or study, party, check out Tinder and stuff. There were also some crazies that I stayed far away from but that doesn’t surprise me if people seek shelter from a warzone.

      I think especially the more conservative type of people were a bit shocked by some aspects of German society and they tended to stick rather to themselves but they’re also the kind of people who wanted to start working immediately because in a conservative family the man has to provide. Some are also just lazy and don’t want to do anything but not more than my German friends from what I saw.

      Syrian, Lebanese, Palestinian society are for middle eastern standards pretty liberal and especially Syria is very diverse in terms of ethnicity and religion from what I understood, so they’re not like Saudi Arabia or Taliban kind of horribly conservative. So stuff like wearing Burqas, or child marriage as horrible as it is is rather some racist stereotype than a problem that would hinder us from integrating refugees and benefiting from their labor. I think there were some cases where the bride and groom were teenagers and it was clashing with German law but iirc the media made it seem far worse than it was.

      Sidenote they also told me that in Lebanon and sometimes Jordan they got treated like shit by the locals, so by now I’m pretty convinced that people are just xenophobic by default.

      I personally would be happy about more refugees, because it’s the right thing to do and it has the positive side effect that they’re often willing to do shitty jobs that us Germans won’t do. I would have tons of examples for this apart from the bus. Stuff like old school German baking tradition is rapidly disappearing because no German is willing to get up at 4am anymore to have bread ready at 6am. If you need an electrician or other handyman it’s basically impossible because their books are filled for months ahead and they won’t come for small shit.

      There’s a crazy labor shortage in low paying jobs and people are increasingly not willing to come to Germany because of all the racism, there was recently an article about Philippino nurses rather going to Saudi Arabia lol. So yeah, it’s frustrating.