re: #166 MandyManners

Sorry, HTML malfunction (I still code by hand half the time):

I am stupefied that Germany denies citizenship to those who helped rebuild its economy following WW2. I’d never heard of that. To me, that’s slavery in the political sense.

Well, it’s gotten easier for people to naturalize themselves there, much to Germany’s credit. But the basis of the law, jus sanguinis (literally “law of blood”, i.e. your parents’ ethnicity makes you German, not being born there) is still in place, so (correct me if I’m wrong, Gegenkritik!) there are literally millions of guest-worker descendants born, bred and educated in Germany who speak no other language than German and have no ties to their ancestral countries, who yet are not citizens.

Is this worse than the French and American jus natalis (“law of soil”), under which if you’re so much as born in a plane over US territory, you’re an American? You decide…

I’m sure there are those among the xenophobes and Rassisten who are overjoyed that, theoretically, all these people could be stripped of their residence permits and deported overnight. France, to the great distress of Le Pen and Hugh Fitzgerald, doesn’t have that option. Nor do we.

Not saying it’s likely to happen in present-day Germany. But it could.

Of course, a fascist regime in France could simply change the law, too.

Certain people are eager for exactly that to happen.