Eurabia follies: Germany 'tolerated' asylum seekers can stay- France: Ends EU visa checks for Algerians

Submitted by Ben van de Polder (United States), Nov 19, 2006 at 01:25

Little known factoid:

In 1964 the German government gave a motorcycle as a 'reward' to their millioneth guest worker immigrant .

1964—Armando Rodriguez, a Portuguese man celebrated as the millionth Guest Worker, receives a motorcycle as a present from the West German Government

http://german.berkeley.edu/mg/Chronology.php

Anno 2006 and the Germans announced that they will now make it easier for foreigners to get permanent residence - with married couples who were in the country for six years and single ones for 8 years having a chance to apply for German nationality thus ensuring that the married ones also have children who will presumably get German citizenship automatically.

The new law, which grants "tolerated" foreigners the legal right to abide in Germany, should go into effect immediately, said Günter Beckstein, Bavaria's state minister of the interior and chairman of this week's interior affairs conference in Nuremberg.

Some ten percent of the nearly 200,000 "tolerated foreigners" in Germany will be able to profit from the new legislation, according to Lower Saxony's Interior Minister Uwe Schünemann.

Most of them come from the war-torn countries of Afghanistan, Iraq and Kosovo. Their applications for asylum have been denied, but the government does not deport them due to humanitarian reasons. http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2241219,00.html

For their part the French have announced that they will no longer require visas checks with other EU countries for Algerians 'to make amends for colonialism' which means the Algerians can now colonise France instead. The decision was hailed by an Algerian english paper.

http://www.magharebia.com/cocoon/awi/xhtml1/en_GB/features/awi/features/2006/11/16/feature-01

French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy's visit to Algeria resulted in the discontinuation of the pre-consultation with Schengen countries before Algerians are granted French visas. This is the latest step in the warming of French-Algerian relations since they were damaged in 2005 by part of a French law extolling the effects of colonialism on North Africa.

In a 'cosmetic' move to fight Islamic extremism the Dutch have decided to ban the burka and all full face coverings in public. (including helmets with visors so as not to make the Muslims feel singled out). The move is touted as a public security measure- but facts are that very few women out of the 1 million plus Muslims in Holland wear the burka, and that it is unlikely that anyone planning an attack would wear one since it draws to much attention. In the meantime more the 150 Muslims with known terrorist ties are walking the streets, and more then 120,000 potential Jihadis were noted by the security services, while politicians like Geert Wilders cannot go anywhere without a phalanx of bodyguards. The ban is being decried by some left wing parties as discrimination.

http://www.nos.nl/nosjournaal/artikelen/2006/11/17/171106_boerka_verbod.html

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