SPIEGEL Interview with Economics Minister Rösler: “I Used to Dream I Was a Vietnamese Prince”

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Comment: Below is a very interesting interview with Vietnamese-born German Economics Minister Philipp Rösler on Spiegel Online. Rösler was brought up in a German family when he was nine months old. Rösler is for many immigrants and Germans of immigrant descent a role model.

The economic minister also questions indirectly Angela Merkel’s claim in October that multiculturalism has failed.  Spiegel asked him if Germany’s policies towards immigrants have been too indulgent with those who refuse to integrate. “My belief is that our policies have offered too little, in terms of language courses for example,” he said. “Punishment shouldn’t be our first response.”

Another interesting point Rösler made was on Muslims living in Germany. “There are around 4 million Muslims in the country and they to help to shape it, so yes, it’s also correct to say that Islam belongs in Germany.”

He had good advice for those that ridicule immigrants and minorities.  “How is someone supposed to become part of society when he or she is told from the beginning, “You’re not really a part of us?”

In my opinion, the last statement, “You’re not really a part of us,” is what exposes the true nature of the anti-immigration beast of parties like the Perussuomalaiset. 

How are people supposed to integrate and embrace our culture if these groups are constantly building walls around Finland?

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German Economics Minister Philipp Rösler, who was adopted into a German family from Vietnam at a young age, insists that he never had problems because of his background. He spoke with SPIEGEL about integration, discrimination and what it means to be German.

Read whole story.

Some past and present reflections of life in Finland

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By Enrique Tessieri

In 1984, a groups of foreign students published a critical book of life in Finland called Strange days – the experience of foreign students in Finland. Some claim that the content of a good book can withstand the unrelenting hand of time. How would the reflections of being a foreigner in Finland sound if we read Strange Days today?

The front cover of Strange Days published in 1984. The drawing shows former Aliens' Office head Eila Kännö inspecting a black person applying for a residence permit. The drawing is by Rabbah Boussuira..

Those who moved to Finland in the 1980s or earlier can appreciate that matters have improved a lot from those times thanks to EU membership and new laws like the Constitution (1999), Nationality Law (2003) and Non-Discrimination Act (2004).  Even though there is no mention that we are a multicultural society in these laws, they do show greater sensibility to minorities and acceptance of cultural diversity.

Finland passed its first Aliens Act in 1983, or about 65 years after the country gained independence in 1917. Finland did not have immigrants at the time since foreigners were officially called aliens (muukalaisia).

Below are a few quotes picked from Strange Days published 26 years ago. Are they still valid? You be the judge:

The game of cultural politics remains heavily skewed against the “ulkomaalainen” (literally “from outside the country and in a deeper sense, from outside the world). Finnish culture is tight-knit, to be in Finnish society is vastly different from being inside Finnish borders among Finns. Quite appropriately, outsiders are administered by the Ministry of the Interior. Foreigners who live peacefully for many years here are usually outstanding individuals, and only gradually do they begin to grasp how literally the meaning of outstanding has been taken: they are required to stand outside, both in the abstract sense of social and cultural participation and often in concrete matters like housing and admission to restaurants. Greg Moore and Adrián Soto, pp. 5-6

How many times I have listened as my dark-skinned friends tell of the Finns’ awkward, insulting and violent behavior towards them. Almost every time I walk through the streets with one of my more “foreign” looking companions, some Finn figures out a way, more of less grossly, to emphasize our otherness, our foreigness. Therefore, the fact that I have white skin has definitely helped me survive here; however, my disillusion has definitely grown since I became aware of this. Steve Huxley, p. 9

But if you look deeper into Finnish society you will find a type of covert racism which is waiting to lash out as soon as the size of the foreign and minority population increases. Enrique Tessieri, p. 12

Even though Finland's immigrant population has grown by ten times since 1984, when Strange Days was published, the ongoing one-sided debate on immigrants makes this drawing still valid by Rabbah Boussuira.

…most of their history Finns have been dominated by foreigners. First the Swedes came over in the twelfth century and more or less bullied the Finns into accepting Christianity and fighting their wars against the Russians for them. Then the Russians took over and did more or less the same thing until 1917, when Finland ducked out the back door and declared independence while the Russians were distracted by revolution at home. The Finns had their own civil war in 1918 and one issue was whether the country should be run by foreigners in the future or the Finns themselves. The Finns compromised on democracy and independence, leaving foreign kings and international revolution to others. Ahti Tolvanen, p. 35

We Finns are not taught to express ourselves orally. Teachers have insurmountable problems in making their students speak. This is due in part to fear of exposing oneself to criticism. Thus, shyness, a strong faith in authorities, and the feeling of personal insignificance, result in emptiness in the head and an inability to speak after the long, silent years of infancy. Children should not receive too much attention, you know, as this would only spoil them and make them too self-confident. The best is to subdue it (i.e. the child) as thoroughly as you can, then it will eventually turn out to be a respectable, humble citizen. Maaria Seppänen, p. 47

Right-wing populist parties want Europeans to live in their news blackout

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By Enrique Tessieri

The job of autocratic regimes is still made easy today thanks to faulty technology and infrastructure. If a military regime usurped power from a democratically elected government, it can literally “turn off the lights” and keep the population in a news and information blackout.

While some may claim that this could never happen in Europe, where access to information is supposed to be our inalienable right, news and information blackouts do take place in many parts of the world. Some countries where this occurs are Myanmar, Turkmenistan, North Korea and in remote areas  where basic infrastructure like electricity and telephone services are not available.

Even if we live in Europe in the dead center of the information highway (an old term but still valid), some of us strangely prefer to treat news in the same way as countries like Syria, Cuba, Saudi Arabia or China.

Things have got so bad in these nations that many of their inhabitants have learned to trust those who have placed their civil rights in cold storage and be   highly suspicious of those who are trying to regain them.

Just because we live in Europe and have access to information doesn’t mean that we are not in danger of falling into the same trap as countries like Belarus, China or Vietnam. Wikileaks is a good example that this problem exists in countries that claim to be open and democratic.

But who are these groups in Europe that want to  switch off the information and news lights?

They are none other than right-wing populist parties. We all know their names: Sweden Democrats, Jobbik, Perussuomalaiset, Danish People’s Party, National Front of France, Lega Nord, Slovak National Party, British National Party to name a few.

Certainly switching off the news and information lights would be impossible in Europe in the same way as Cuba. However, there are many ways to skin the news and information cat. On of the most effective ways is with the help of rhetoric, populism and nationalism used by these parties, which are anti-EU, anti-immigration, anti-minority and anti-Islam.

Let’s take for instance the anti-immigration “switch.” If we accept the arguments of these parties who picture immigrants as social-welfare shoppers, rapists, criminals etc, our fear shuts down our reasoning and ability to register news and information that is well-balanced and objective. We end up living in a self-imposed news and information blackout thanks to our fear.

What these right-wing populist parties haven’t told you, however, is that we are the only ones who have the power to turn on or off that crucial switch.

Our civil rights have to be defended everyday.

Iltalehti: Perussuomalainen eduskunta-avustaja levitti törkeää vitsiä

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Comment: Here is another example of how the PS cannot put a lid on their own racism. Tabloid Iltalehti reports that PS MP Juho Eerola’s aide, Ulla Pyysalo, posted a racist joke about Green Party MP Jani Toivola, who is black and gay.

Here is MP Toivola’s reaction to the “joke” on the Green Pary website. 

These types of “jokes” by people close to Eerola shouldn’t come as a suprise since the MP from Kotka belongs to the far right wing of the PS. If Eerola were Hungarian, Swedish or Danish, he’d find his ideological home in parties like Jobbik, Sweden Democrats or the Danish People’s Party.

A member of the Nazi-spirited Suomen Sisu, Eerola has praised in the past Benito Mussolini’s economic model. If he is really that lured by a corporativist model, he should take some time to study Juan Domingo Perón’s economic model for Argentina during the 1940s and 1950s.

Eerola, like his PS anti-immigration cronies, are responsible for inciting some Finns to adopt even more hardline and unrealistic positions when it comes to immigration.

Pyysalo regrets what she said on Ilatlehti: “It was dumb, I didn’t want to insult Toivola personally.” 

The tabloid asked if she considers herself a racist. “I don’t know. It depends how you define racism.”

How you define racism? What about a racist joke on Facebook?! The excuses by the PS on how to make their racism more acceptable takes stranger forms by the day. 

When contacted, Toivola expressed dismay at what Eerola’s aide had written on Facebook. 

One of the matters that far-right PS MPs like Eerola are trying to do in Finland is make something unacceptable like racism acceptable. At the forefront of this shift in values is nobody else but the PS.

Are you surprised?

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Linda Pelkonen

Kansanedustaja Juho Eerolan (ps) avustaja Ulla Pyysalo julkaisi rasistisen vitsin Facebook-profiilissaan sunnuntaina. Kirjoituksessa vitsailtiin Jani Toivolan ihonväristä ja seksuaalisesta suuntautumisesta.

Read whole story.

La Nación (Argentina): La escuela es donde más se discrimina

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Comment:  A poll by Unicef Argentina (in Spanish) of 13-18-year-old adolescents revealed that discrimination is a problem at Argentinean schools. According to the poll, four out of ten adolescents were discriminated at some point and seven out of ten directly.

Skin color and obesity were cited as the main reasons for being discriminated. That was followed by nationality. Sixty-five percent of the adolescents polled said Bolivians were the most discriminated national group in Argentina.

Even if Argentina was populated in the nineteenth and early twentieth century by European immigrants, discrimination against non-Europeans was the rule. Apart from their belongings and hopes, immigrants brought their prejudices as well. It took, however, a ruthless military dictatorship that ruled the country in 1976-83, and the rise of democracy to awaken the people slowly to this social ill.

Some of the most discriminated persons in Argentina are the poor, Amerindian groups as well as Bolivians.

In the 2011 population census,  Bolivians were the second biggest group (233,464) living in Argentina after Paraguayans (325,046). A total of 1.531 million people born in foreign countries were registered in the 2001 population census out of a total population of 36.260 million.

While 4.2 million European immigrants moved to then sparsely populated Argentina during 1881-1914, higher birth rates among mestizo groups compared with Argentineans of European backgrounds has allowed the former group to grow in size.

While discrimination and racism are serious problems in Argentina, it is a positive matter that the government has taken steps to make the country more inclusive irrespective of one’s background. Argentina became the first Latin American country in 2010 to approve same-sex marriages.

Here is a link to the government’s National Plan Against Discrimination.

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Cynthia Palacios

Siete de cada diez adolescentes argentinos fueron testigos de alguna forma de discriminación, y cuatro de cada diez la sufrieron en carne propia. El escenario: la escuela, en primer lugar, en forma abrumadora, y en segundo lugar, la calle. Así lo revela una encuesta realizada entre 900 chicos de siete provincias, divulgada ayer por Unicef Argentina.

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guardian.co.uk: International migration: where do people go and where from?

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Comment:  Below is an interesting story on the Guardian with a link to the original OECD report on global immigration and emigration. According to the OECD report, the most popular destination for immigrants was the United States.  The country with the highest amount of per-capita emigrants was Romania.

The figures are from 2008-09, a period when global markets slipped into deep recession triggered by the Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy.

Compared with preliminary figures for 2010, migration to Finland totalled 24,600, which is 7.9% lower than in the previous year (26,700). Compared with 2008, migration to Finland fell by 8%.

Irrespective of the global downturn, migration movements have not fallen as much as some would expect. This is partly due to demographic trends (aging workforce) in OECD courties. Moreover, humanitarian migration is less affected by economic downturns.

An editorial in the OECD report gives special mention to the rise of right-wing populist parties in Europe.  It lists the following recommendations on how to deter this trend:

First, it is important to get the facts out in the public domain. Migration, both legal and irregular, cannot be considered to be out-of-control and governments have shown that slowly but surely, they can improve its management.

Second, labour migration management needs to be reinforced by a broadening of co-operation between OECD countries and origin countries, as well as between governments and employers. The latter need to respect the rules and recruit legally from abroad, rather than illegally off-the-street, if they cannot easily fill a job vacancy.

Third, integration efforts should be strengthened further. Although most immigrants are well-integrated, it would be false to claim that there are no problems.

Finally, it is important that everybody has a fair chance in society to make their way. Employers should not exclude candidates for employment who are immigrants or children of immigrants because of where they live or how their origin group is perceived.

While all of these points are important points, I give special mention to leadership by government officials, politicians and the local media to challenge urban myths being spread by anti-immigration groups.

Far-reaching words like “acceptance” and “equal opportunities” should form a common part of our daily vocabulary instead of words like “out-of-control immigration” and “immigrants fuel crime and steal our jobs.”

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The US is the top destination for permanent immigrants according to a report published today. The international migration outlook 2011 released by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) highlights the top 25 countries with the highest number of immigrants into OECD countries and also shows where they come from.

Read whole story.

Migrant Tales Poetry: “Good manners”

Posted on by Migrant Tales

GOOD MANNERS

My parents taught me such good manners

I always enter my dreams with three-piece suits

Bow to women and hear wonderful waltzes

And agree with everything you say!

My parents taught me such good manners

That I once thanked my executioner for chopping my head off.

As it rolled down a slope

All I could say was thank you, thank you and THANK YOU!

Luckily some carried pity

In their hearts’ pockets

And asked me if I was a refugee

Or some kind of an immigrant.

I tried my best to assimilate:

Thrum! And a great thrust forward!

Another thrum!

Falling down as a loud thud!

Migrant Tales will begin to publish poetry, photographs, short stories and short plays reflecting the livesof immigrants and minorities in Finland and elsewhere. Please send your contributions to [email protected].

Iltalehti: Kansanedustaja törttöili kännissä – poistettiin ravintolasta

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Comment: Does it need any? Here is the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party MP, Teuvo Hakkarainen, whose racists gaffes  made him infamous in spring. On the campaign trail, Hakkarainen claimed he was a teetotaler but that was evidently a lie. According to the Iltalehti clip, the PS MP is being carried out by two doormen at a bar because he was too drunk to stand on his feet.

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Kansaneduataja Teuvo Hakkarainen sammui pöytään ja hänet jouduttiin poistamaan Mierontie -ravintolasta kahden miehen voimin.

See video clip.

MTV3: Kiuru maahanmuuttajien asumisesta: Kiitos ei keskittymiä!

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Comment:  Minister of housing and communication, Krista Kiuru, a Social Democrat, presses lightly on a raw nerve facing the immigrant community of Finland, according to a story on MTV3.  Taking into account high unemployment among immigrants and public housing policy in Finland, there is very little that Kiuru can do to avoid concentrations of immigrants living in neighborhoods.

Kiuru said that in the story below that some public officials are in favor of immigrant concentrations in neighborhoods because it is an easy way of dealing with the problem.  “It’s not going to happen during my term in office,” she said. “In my opinion, it isn’t a smart thing to do primarily for the reason that many of them (residents of such neighborhoods) are living off income support or are single parents. I don’t want that type of concentration (of people) in a city.  No thank you.”

While Kiuru’s intentions may be noble and are a reflection of our social welfare state and housing policy, is poverty becoming more visible in Finland due to immigrants?  Was it ok in the past to have low-income Finns living in certain neighborhoods of a city since, being white Finns, poverty wasn’t that visible . Visible immigrants have given poverty a more visible and disturbing face.

Do I think Kiuru will succeed at dismantling the concentrations of immigrants or low-income Finns in certain neighborhoods? No, that is a pipe dream. The only effective way would be to improve employment, training opportunities for immigrants and unemployed Finns and their integration into society.

Do you agree?

Interesting fact: Varissuo, located near Turku, has the highest concentration (35% of the total population of 8,881) of immigrants in Finland. Seventy-three percent of the students have an immigrant background.

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Jouni Sipilä

Asunto- ja viestintäministeri Krista Kiuru haluaa pysäyttää sosiaalisen asumisen keskittymisen omille alueilleen.  Kiurun mielestä myös päättäjien keskuudessa esiintyy ajattelua, jonka mukaan esimerkiksi maahanmuuttajille olisi syytä varata omia asuinalueitaan.

Read whole story.