25 March 2011 Patrick Bahners, editor-in-chief of the arts and culture pages of the conservative FAZ, has published a book about the hysteric German debate around Islam. In this article, the reviewer of “Die Panikmacher” (“The Alarmists”) finds that Bahners shrewdly dismantles the arguments of prominent Islam critics like Thilo Sarrazin, Henryk M. Broder and…
February 22 2011 The Netherlands’ anti-fraud agency (FIOD) has completed a study of 500 bakeries with owners of non-western origin, and found instances of irregular bookkeeping, illegal employment, tax fraud, or hygiene issues in many of the Turkish bakeries investigated. The tax authority began the investigation last fall together with the justice ministry and welfare…
Misunderstandings frequently arise between migrants and specialist staff in government agencies and in schools. The new job of language and integration mediator is intended to provide a long-term solution to this problem. The youth welfare office contacts the family of a pupil with a behavioural disorder, a woman is diagnosed as having breast cancer, a…
4 December 2010 The German media are inclined to present people from an immigrant background mostly as school failures, petty criminals, welfare recipients, Islamists or thugs. But the current annual report compiled by the Committee of Experts on Integration and Immigration gives surprisingly good marks when it comes to integration in Germany.
September 8 2010 The SVB (national insurance agency) in the Dutch city of Utrecht is offering Turkish and Moroccan immigrants an explanation- in their native languages -of the welfare payments for which they can apply, together with a free haircut. The program engaging “welfare hair-dressers” and targeting elderly immigrants is being test run in Utrecht…
