Ah, I see. I beg your pardon. That’s the first mention of it I’ve found anywhere. Thanks for clarifying.

Your statement seems to be arguing for the existence of a segmented labor market: one where two identically-qualified people, one Turkish and one white German, compete in seperate labor markets. This would generate different employment outcomes, unemployment pressures, wage levels, etc. Kinda the definition of discrimination.

And redistributionary policies could help explain the voting patterns of US blacks and German Turks skewing left. It’s possible - but I believe there are other factors in the US. Blacks are disproportionately represented on the welfare rolls, but whites on the dole outnumber them in absolute numbers. Imagine polling the white, gun-toting, pick-up truck driving, trailer park residents in middle America - lots of them receive food stamps, entitlement payments, etc. Think they vote for Democrats? They vote Republican. These poor welfare-receiving whites probably vote Republican in higher percentage than well-off whites on the coasts.

But I’ve got no data, just impressions.

Economic concerns (redistribution) have some effect, but so do cultural, tribal, political appeals.

(2) Von der Voraussetzung des § 10 Abs. 1 Satz 1 Nr. 4 wird ferner abgesehen, wenn der Ausländer die Staatsangehörigkeit eines anderen Mitgliedstaates der Europäischen Union besitzt und Gegenseitigkeit besteht.

The conditions of §10/1/1/4 are also waived if the foreigner has the citizenship of another member state of the EU and that state allows dual citizenship.
(translation not official)

I don’t think that’s correct that the German dual citizenship restrictions apply only to non-EU citizens. I think they apply to everyone, with very few exceptions. The exceptions seem to be in the few cases where countries do not allow their citizens to forfeit their citizenship and/or make it practically impossible or prohibitively expensive.

Certainly there is no indication in this summary of the German citizenship law that the rules are any differet for EU citizens.

The strict rules against dual citizenship apply only to non-EU citizens. Of course, this is unfair. Yet, citizenship is unfair in itself. Turkey is quite unique in its eagerness to reinstate citizenship to former citizens. In fact there are reports of people being tricked into applying for Turkish citizenship. How true they are I cannot tell. An absolute majority of non-EU residents being Turkish, the law, if enforced, will necessarily hit citizens (or rather no longer citizens) of Turkish descent. This doesn’t mean that there are no civil servants happy to be able to move against Turks. Such sentiments exist.

The restrictions on other EU citizens owning land will, IIRC, expire in six years, along with the right to bar Poles from working in other EU states.

Fair enough.

As for changing the Polish law. Done, sort of. The negotiations on that were tied to freedom of work for Poles. The restrictions on other EU citizens owning land will, IIRC, expire in six years, along with the right to bar Poles from working in other EU states.

No, as I’m saying, if you read the paper you will see that this isn’t the case. Most got in because Spain didn’t require visas. They came as tourists. This ‘blood’ issue mainly affects footballers and is to do with FIFA regulations for community and non-community players. There is a big difference between the Argentinian and Chilean political refugees of the 70s, who were largely of Spanish descent, and the new wave post 2000 which comes from Ecuador, Dominican Republic (largely of African origin), Columbia, Peru and Bolivia. In the main these are from indigenous populations. There was a big wave of Argentina economic migrants following the 2001 economic crisis, but I think this has now largely subsided.

Anyone who is interested in the other - submerged economy - issue. I just found the paper which outlines the methodologies used to derive the numbers:

ftp://ftp.iza.org/dps/dp1431.pdf

Surprising as it may seem all these topics do tie together: globalisation. While the traditional reason for ‘going underground’ has obviously been to avoid taxation and social costs, the increased pressure to do this now comes from the existence of more intense global competition (think China, or more locally Turkey and the transition economies) and the availability of a huge migrant labour pool. So instead of ‘offshoring’ you ‘onshore’ in a secluded place.

“Your comment about Spain is puzzling. Franco (the spiritual ancestor of much of the PP) as I recall was very much in favor of bringing Moroccans into the country. Didn’t he use Moroccan troops heavily in the Spanish civil war?”

I think this is a complicated picture. What you say is true, but Franco didn’t actually limit himself by the need to be coherent. There is a thing here called the ‘folkloric’ or the ‘picaresque’. I think the Franco people were quite happy to have picture-postcard soldiers (like the Brits and the Gurkas), but having them come and live as your neighbour was quite another thing.

The same sort of issue arises with Flamenco, which is, after all, rooted in Spain’s gypsy culture. Lola Flores was famously friendly with Franco, while in the popular culture of the era virulent anti-gypsy racism was quite evident.

Now on this:

“Maybe it’s more effort than it is worth to get into the mind of your average PP bigot, but what is it about Equadorans that makes them better than Morrocans? Is this a triumph of religion over racism?”

I’ve been digging around this morning, mainly in connection with the Ceuta and Mellila issue that comes up in Doug Muir’s post. I found this, which I really recommend:

http://www.iesam.csic.es/doctrab2/dt-0506.pdf

Incredibly it is in english, and it is a really good summary of a little known story. You will find this included:

“Without ignoring that part of that process of accumulation of stocks of undocumented migrants was probably the result of the incapability of state agencies to enforce the strict policies of border control formally in place, we should also consider the possibility that over this period Spanish authorities may have tried to combine compliance with strict border control policies for some flows (particularly from Africa), with a relatively more lax attitude in relation to other groups (specifically from Latin America and Eastern Europe), in order to cater for the perceived needs of certain sections of the economy.

The number of Latin American migrants living in Spain multiplied by fourteen between 1997 and 2005, and that of Eastern Europeans by more than twenty, while the number of immigrants coming from the African continent over the same period increased a little bit less than five times. These differences in the growth rate of different immigrant communities were to a large extent the result of border control policies implemented by Spanish authorities. In this vein, Moroccans, traditionally the most numerous group among the foreigners from developing countries became second in the ranking of immigrant communities after the year 2000 (with some 14.2% of the total foreign population). This change in the relative position of North Africans was fundamentally the consequence of a massive arrival of immigrants from Latin America (notably from Ecuador, which became the largest community representing 14.6% of the foreign population, but also from Colombia, Argentina and Bolivia), and Eastern Europe (Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine, etc.).

There is more:

The attitude of the Spanish authorities with respect to the policing of the borders changed substantially in the early 90’s. The 15th of May of 1991, coinciding with the expiration of the 1964 agreement with Morocco, and the 1966 agreement with Tunisia for the mutual suppression of visas, the Spanish government reintroduced the requirement of visas for nationals of countries from North Africa. This change in the policy of visas was again clearly related to the EU, for the closure of the external borders appeared as a precondition for the incorporation of Spain into the Schengen agreement.

That change in the visa policy with North Africa resulted in the need to reinforce the control of the external borders, especially in the cases of Ceuta and Melilla, two Spanish enclaves in the North African coast, and the only land borders between the EU and Morocco. In the following years, and up to the present, Spanish authorities invested considerable amounts of money and resources in trying to build an effective system of border control around those two cities. That system included the building of a road around the perimeter of the enclaves, together with the installation of a double barber-wired fence 3.2 meters high, ditches, turrets, thermal sensors, and infrared cameras supporting the patrolling of the Guardia Civil. Since the end of 1998, the Army was also called in to patrol the border.

For the Spanish authorities, the responsibility of exercising a strict control over those borders derived from the compromise acquired by Spain with its European partners to implement a strict policing of the external border of the Union. This idea of fulfilling a European mission was clearly reflected in the requests by Spanish authorities for the EU to co-finance that policing effort, demand that was responded positively, with the allocation of EU funds to the strengthening of the borders in Ceuta and Melilla.

So what our authors are saying is in fact absolutely incredible. ‘Fortress Ceuta and Melilla’ was built because it could be subsidised with EU money, and gives the impression of Spain holding back the ‘African Hordes’, meanwhile in Barajas airport Madrid they were waving people through as fast as they could.

As I indicate, this is not only racism (although it is ignorant racism, since the majority of the people coming from Ecuador while they are Spanish speaking are from the indigenous population, so really, to be consistent racists they should be opposing them too. I think they are just waking up to this), but is practical efficiency stupidity. The Moroccan population which is coming to Spain has much more in common with the PP social agenda - the family, alchohol etc - than the Ecuadorian population does. Obviously the key factor is that they have a different religion. But this is why I so essentially agree with Mrs T here, I just don’t see how these right-of-centre parties can hope to become serious government parties on a stable basis until they can look at and address their problems in this area.

One last interesting detail, the linked paper has an incredible graph (on page 9 Adobe Acrobat) which shows how the underground economy has been effectively steadily rising (as a % of GDP) in Spain since the late 70s.

Really all this should become a post, maybve one day it will :).