Why I’m making my family German (2017)
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
"Former German citizens who between 30 January 1933 and 8 May 1945 were deprived of their citizenship on political, racial or religious grounds, and their descendants, shall on application have their citizenship restored. They shall be deemed never to have been deprived of their citizenship if they have established their domicile in Germany after 8 May 1945 and have not expressed a contrary intention."
So, if you were denaturalized, you aren't automatically a German citizen again, because that would obviously be insulting to those who were persecuted, fled Germany, and never wanted to have anything to do with Germany ever again.
If you apply for citizenship, it will be granted. If you live in Germany again, the reasoning above doesn't hold anymore, and you are spared the formality of a full application for citizenship.
The article is in fact loaded and a little misrepresentative, implying that somehow UK citizens won't have any rights to reside or work in the UK which is not fair.
I'm not a citizen of any European country and I've lived and worked in Europe without a whole lot of trouble.
Obviously, there's nuance to these issues, always lost in the fog of 'word wars'.
I'm assuming that one of those is a typo? But if you think EU citizens will be entirely safe and comfortable in the UK after a hypothetical Brexit, you've not been paying attention to the "hostile environment" and the deportation of actual Brits in the Windrush fiasco.
It's a little populist and inflammatory to suggest that the UK is a 'hostile environment' for EU citizens.
Literally millions of EU citizens and other naturalized immigrants from EU countries - and others around the world, live in UK, and they don't 'live in fear'.
There are obviously many ambiguities, and people caught up in immigration snafus.
Neither of these issues are new.
As treaties are realigned (and they have been forever and will continue to evolve), citizenship status will be adjust, but neither the UK or the EU are going to start mass deportations.
And to indicate an individual getting caught up in the system as evidence of much is not fair; have you considered the problems right now in Germany, Poland, Greece, Italy? Just to start the list?
Sadly, even the most modern nations have loopholes in their systems and outcomes are not always just, but overall, most modern nations have lawful, well regulated and reasonable policies, for the most part.
The intention was to make the system as unreasonable as possible in order to reduce overall immigration numbers.
> have you considered the problems right now in Germany, Poland, Greece, Italy?
Which problems are you referring to?
I share her happiness and enthusiasm, and commend her for acting on her beliefs. But this quote from the very end of the article is what many Brits believed to be the truth, up until Brexit. One important lesson here - nothing is forever. A wave of xenophobia and nationalism is sweeping the world and separatism is back in fashion. Freedom is under threat.
You are absolutely right and I wasn't trying to equate the two. To be clear - I will not label leave voters as xenophobes or nationalists, and I don't dispute the legitimacy of voting "leave". My concrete point was: having a German passport is not necessarily a guarantee of all the freedoms she's seeking for herself and her children.
With Brexit, a "race to the bottom" and bonfire of EU work regulations is more likely.
They successfully applied for political asylum in the US.
Germany is hardly a bastion of freedom some may think.
Regarding the case of home schooling, the German position is that the state is required legally to ensure equal opportunity education for everyone. Parents therefore are legally required to send their kids to (public/approved/registered) schools.
While debatable, I‘d vote that‘s a good thing, as it ensures a minimum level of education for every kids.
There aren't many definitions of freedom that include state control of your children.
> I‘d vote that‘s a good thing, as it ensures a minimum level of education for every kids.
Whether that's good or bad depends on what that "minimum level of education" is. I know nothing of German schools, but in the US, public schools can (at least in some places) provide a "minimum level of education" that is much more "minimum" than it is "education". It also can be very unsafe.
It also depends on what the "education" is. Imagine that it's 1940 in Germany, or 1970 in East Germany. You have to send your children to public school so that they can receive their education. But the education in question is going to include a fair amount of indoctrination. When you can't opt your children out of being indoctrinated, it's pretty clear that you're not free.
Note well: I'm not claiming that current German education is indoctrination. What I am claiming is that totalitarian regimes make the same argument, and in their case, it is clear that mandatory public education is part of the totalitarian control. So the argument that this gives "opportunity to everyone" is at least suspect, because it may be the "opportunity" to be controlled and indoctrinated.
There are some: freedom from violence in the family, freedom from mistreatment, child labor, indoctrination, ...
Essentially this is about balancing the freedoms of the parents to raise their children according to their rules against the freedoms of the children to receive a certain kind of education. I am quite happy this is something I do not have to do, as I fear it’s a very delicate decision to make. And I doubt anyone involved takes such a decision lightly.
> When you can't opt your children out of being indoctrinated, it's pretty clear that you're not free.
True, but then indoctrination of your children might be the least of your problems.
> True, but then indoctrination of your children might be the least of your problems.
I have never been in such a position. However, I suspect that I would not regard that as the least of my problems. It would be closer to the worst of them.
I think the recent totalitarian regimes and their education clearly defines how this is not possible. Many of Nobel Prize-winners, army of scientists who raged against the regime or fled are from totalitarian countries.
But even if they didn't rebel, still they could have been a remarkable scientist or just a decent human being.
> While a court order in June 2018 required the Department of Health and Human Services to reunite more than 2,700 children in its custody with their parents, that number is only a "subset" of the overall separations, said Ann Maxwell, an inspector at the HHS inspector general’s office.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-07/number-of...
However:
> We are no longer prisoners of a country whose politicians do not and will not, likely for a generation or more, reflect me in any shape or form.
Given her family's experience with Germany, I find it heartbreakingly naive that she obviously thinks that this will not be the case here, not now and not in 25 or 50 or 75 years.
With multiple citizenship you at least can emigrate somewhere and, while not as integrated as native citizens, at least will never be ejected as unwanted immigrants.
This is all seems improbable, of course, even ridiculous. But I don't think anyone in Germany could've seriously imagined the situation of 1939-45 30 years earlier.
The British can just not comprehend the need for a united Europe in the modern world, where European countries are beset on all sides by many times more powerful rivals (Russia, China and now even the US is turning against us). To think that the little nation-states of Europe can survive and prosper on their own like they did back in the days of Napoleon and Queen Victoria ignores reality for the warm fuzzy feeling of epic fantasy.
The EU's goal is to promote peace an the well-being of its people (Treaty of the European Union, article 3, par. 1). The British either ignore this, or, if they know it, they don't believe it. Therefore, the public conversation about the EU revolves either around irrelevancies, like bendy bananas and fast-track airport lanes, or around issues that most people cannot really connnect with, like the benefits to industry (as if there is anyone left in the UK who believes that what is good for industry is good for everyone).
No wonder the Leave side carried the referendum vote. Their message was simple and to the point: "us versus them" (all of them - the EU, those krauts and frogs and those PIGS countires, Poles, Romanians... everyone). You cannot argue against nationalistic slogans and battle buses with "Brexit is bad for business". Nor with "I want my kids to be able to travel to the EU cheaply and without a visa". A powerful message is needed and it needs to make it clear to everyone what awaits us if we divide up and withdraw each in our little borders.
But, nobody has done that for the British- so, it's all identity, bendy bananas and travel privileges.
I'm a remainer but I think little nation states that are non EU like Switzerland or Singapore survive and prosper quite well.
I admit I don't know that much about the EU - I think of it mostly as an admin for free trade and travel between the countries mostly. Which I quite like.
One of the troubles with the 2016 leave/remain referendum was remain is clear enough but no one really knew what leave would consist of. When you clarify it none of the options are very popular for instance the polls on remain/May's deal are about 60:40 to remain. Even remain/no deal polls about 56-44 towards remain so to leave politicians will have to force it through against the wishes of the majority of the people and of their parliament. Which is kind of a mess.
That has not been true since the Lisbon treaty. Now, it’s an EU-wide government supreme over the EU national governments. In key respects, the EU is even more powerful compared to the EU national governments than the US federal government is compared to the US state governments. For example, the federal government cannot pass laws then force the state governments to enforce them. The EU can.
If the EU stayed on its pre-Brexit track, all the stuff that renders US politics intractable would be coming to the EU faster than anyone would think. You’re already seeing it—for example, with Sweden and Finland having to strengthen gun control to accommodate the sensibilities of the rest of Europe.
But it cannot force the states, specifically, to enforce them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenth_Amendment_to_the_United_...
I don't know enough about Singapore.
Even Hitler didn't dare to invade Switzerland because of these very reasons, while annexing most of the rest of Europe and adding them to the Third Reich, or making them puppet states for Nazi Germany.