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Arriving in Berlin – A map made by refugees

72 points by chippy 11y ago

chippy 11y ago
The project about page is here: http://arriving-in-berlin.de/ http://arriving-in-berlin.de/
- comrh 11y ago
  This has the arabic and persian(I think?) versions. It confused me why it would be in english at first.
  - detaro 11y ago
    English is probably the best "common source" that things are translated from/to
gloves 11y ago
I love this idea, and hope the refugees settling have a happier life in Germany.
chaghan 11y ago
What about the millions of eastern / central europeans that have lower wages and worse quality of life and have been denied to work in german markets when the countries have been allowed to join the EU ? I guess nobody cares. Oh nobody cares either about people that are educated and can't get working visa because EU bureaucracy. Thanks Germany.
- __m 11y ago
  worse than getting killed by a bomb?
  - jonesb6 11y ago
    I'd be curious to see the percentage of migrants/refugees that are coming from war-torn regions such as Syria. My understanding is that many come from North Africa or elsewhere. Granted violence is also very high in these areas and the economic situation can be nearly as detrimental to quality of life.
    - XzetaU8 11y ago
      http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/2995521/6996925/3-18092015-BP-EN.pdf/b0377f79-f06d-4263-aa5b-cc9b4f6a838f http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/2995521/6996925/3-180...
    - matt4077 11y ago
      I volunteer in a refugee center. Right now about 70% of the people arriving are from Syria. Most others are from Iraq and Afghanistan. If you look at statistics, remember that they often lag behind and currently show a large percentage of refugees from Albania, although that wave happened early in the year and has largely passed.
  - chaghan 11y ago
    Nope I did not mean to say it like that. Nonetheles these countries I have been talking about are not the one that should carry the burden of the decisions made by western powers. These countries are economically enslaved by Germany and while your average syrian immigrant gets 1500euros and food and housing your average eastern european pensioner has to live from 400e pension. And the costs of living are not that much lower.
    - korisnik 11y ago
      >and while your average syrian immigrant gets 1500euros That's nowhere close to reality. Firstly, an "immigrant" will not get anything. They will get deported if they're not deemed a refugee. Most asylum seekers actually don't get asylum. Secondly, if they end up getting refugee status/asylum, then they will receive about 300-400 euros a month (that's somewhere between 330 to 440 USD a month for the international crowd in here).
- deleted 11y ago
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- detaro 11y ago
  a) apples and oranges b) As far as I know none of these intra-EU restrictions are still active (not that much of the numbers changed after their end, so they probably were really pointless)
- pluma 11y ago
  Provoke someone into bombing you for months and we'll re-consider. You're welcome. Germany.
  - chaghan 11y ago
    You have bombed,enslaved and robbed our nations for more than a decade. Please re-consider now.
- aikah 11y ago
  > I guess nobody cares. Oh nobody cares either about people that are educated and can't get working visa because EU bureaucracy. This. The elephant in the room. It is insanely difficult to migrate legally to most European countries. I would say something else to the people that encourage others to basically enter Europe illegally to go to Germany. There are people, in refugee camps, in Lebanon or Turkey, that want to follow the law and apply for asylum while staying in these camps( because that's how it is supposed to work at first place, applying for asylum in the first safe country). What about them ? So people who break the law and cross multiple European countries illegally are welcome, but those who want to respect refugee laws by staying in camps until their status is cleared will be rejected because too many coming to Europe already and all sits are taken? That doesn't sound fair at all. This whole debacle is hypocrite on so many level, I will never support anyone who agree with it. You're not helping those who are in greatest need to be helped ( women,children, it's obvious they are not the majority of the people walking across Europe right now).
  - Shivetya 11y ago
    Well this is the problem any country with a large illegal immigrant population faces. Far too many in the political establishment don't want to be perceived as mean spirited and deport or block the illegals yet the unintended consequence is that those who seek legal immigration are harmed as are those who already are either citizens and recent immigrants as the pool of assistance monies and goods is diminished. This is also a result of the current view to not interfere enough to fix the situation these illegal and legal immigrants face at home. Nation building has fallen out of favor and the result in anarchy is many parts of the world. Violence goes unchecked and with lax to no enforcement people risk their lives to get somewhere else and will try to get where the best support system exists.
- korisnik 11y ago
  >What about the millions of eastern / central europeans Have you forgotten about the Yugoslav wars? About half a million of refugees went to Western Europe (mostly Germany and Sweden) in just a couple of years.
- winter_blue 11y ago
  > have been denied to work in german markets That is illegal and a violation of treaty obligations on Germany's part if the countries you're talking about are part of the European Union (EU), or the European Economic Area (EEA). See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_movement_for_workers_in_the_European_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_movement_for_worker... You don't need a work visa or any sort of permission from the German government to reside and work in Germany, if you are a EU citizen or a citizen of an EEA member. It is a right.
  - detaro 11y ago
    There were laws restricting that during a temporary period after countries joining, but I think they all faded out in 2011 or so, without much changing afterwards.
- dang 11y ago
  The combination of "what about related controversy X" with inflammatory language ("Thanks Germany") is guaranteed to produce a political flamewar. Please don't do that here. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10452885 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10452885 and marked it off-topic.
  - hugh4 11y ago
    The posting of this article was guaranteed to produce a political flamewar.
    - dang 11y ago
      That doesn't excuse the commenters who made it so.
      - hugh4 11y ago
        Does it excuse the mods who let it through? If you allow politically contentious articles, you're going to get politically charged discussion. Articles representing a left-wing worldview are let through and right-wingers are blamed for "starting flame wars" when they interject something that shows their own worldview. HN should either commit to open discussion or declare itself officially a no-dissent-allowed Safe Space.
        dang 11y ago
        That description is false. More importantly, you have no standing to argue about what's appropriate on HN when you post dreck like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10453898 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10453898 in violation of the site's rules. I've asked you before to stop doing this. Please follow the rules from now on.
- tonomics 11y ago
  You raise an interesting point, but the refugee 'crisis' is not driven by rationality, history, culture or even morality. It's a sad, numb and nihilistic political game.
  - sabertoothed 11y ago
    Why is that? I am German - and I support the acceptance of refugees because of rationality, history, culture and especially morality.
    - michaelbuddy 11y ago
      You morally accept them but can't functionally accept them. And morals have this downside of interfering with others in an unfair and dangerous ways. Sweden and rapes for a clear example.
    - vidarh 11y ago
      I also support receiving them, but it is a political game. It would have made more sense to help a much larger number closer to home in countries where we could help far more people for the same amounts of money and while putting them at less risk. The problem is that a lot of the people talking about helping them closer to home have no intention of doing so - it's an excuse not to spend money at all. It is suddenly important to help them nearer to home now, when the problem is not "contained" anymore. Having them come to the wealthier EU countries helps drive home the seriousness of the crisis in a completely different way. Most people in Europe seems to have had no understanding of how many people need help, and have had an easy time writing these crises of as something happening far away. That's why this is a political game. On both sides.
- lispm 11y ago
  Germany was struggling with the reunification, having added 20 Million people from a collapsed country, the German Democratic Republic. That was difficult enough. Currently there are no special labor restrictions for EU citizens in Germany.
  - pluma 11y ago
    It's easy to forget that the German re-unification wasn't simply two countries merging together. The reason East Germany was merged into West Germany was that it was effectively defunct. East Germany had mostly sustained itself by forbidding people from leaving the country (under threat of death), forcefully keeping its citizens in line (via ubiquitous surveillance and extortion) and frequently selling captives ("traitors" and "collaborators") to its next-door neighbour. Heck, the entire country had been ransacked before it was even created. While the US and its closer allies limited themselves to seizing high-tech and research after WW2, the Soviets transferred a large part of the industry and factories out of Germany as reparations.
    - lispm 11y ago
      > It's easy to forget that the German re-unification wasn't simply two countries merging together. It's not. The Bundesrepublik Deutschland took over what was once the GDR. > While the US and its closer allies limited themselves to seizing high-tech and research after WW2, the Soviets transferred a large part of the industry and factories out of Germany as reparations. The US and its allies transferred as much as the soviet union from Germany - though from a larger zone. The US soon wanted their part of Germany as a future ally against the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union needed the German factories/etc., because they suffered large scale destruction in the western parts. Germany destroyed large parts of the USSR infrastructure where it could.
      - pluma 11y ago
        > It's not. The Bundesrepublik Deutschland took over what was once the GDR. Exactly. The GDR was dissolved, the FRG simply swallowed the remnants. > The US and its allies transferred as much as the soviet union from Germany - though from a larger zone. I'm not arguing the morality of it -- Nazi Germany had wreaked havoc in the USSR (and some Germans were surprised to see how well the soldiers treated them considering how badly the Soviets had been treated by Germany). But the industry of East Germany was demolished to a far greater extent than that of West Germany. I'm well aware of the plans for West Germany that were discussed prior to the decision to grow it into an ally (rather than to de-industrialize it beyond insignificance). My point is simply this: while West Germany had become an economic powerhouse deeply integrated into European and international economics, East Germany's economy was largely a farce. By the time the borders were opened, the country was heading for disaster. What's more, after the reunification most of what little industry East Germany had moved to the West. It took a ton of state funding to get the east of Germany to where it is now and it's still largely defined by large-scale unemployment and an ageing population (because the young adults always seek greener pastures). In other words: yes, Germany is a powerful economy. But East Germany was nothing like that and naturalizing all East Germans as citizens and even exchanging their devalued currency at ridiculous rates was an enormous expense.
- Brakenshire 11y ago
  I really don't know what you're referring to. How have Eastern/Central EU migrants been denied access to German labour markets?
briandear 11y ago
Interesting. Farsi is not a major language in Syria; more people speak Kurdish than Farsi. Perhaps, and this is just a theory, that some of the refugees aren't actually coming from the Syrian civil war, but are instead attempting to simply take advantage of the largesse of the EU? If these refugees were actual refugees, they'd be in camps along the Turkish border and not applying for (and receiving) long term residency. The concept of refugee is that they go home after the hostilities. In this case, almost zero chance of that happening. It's shameful when adult men flee while many leave behind their wife and children. The women and kids ought to be the ones treated as refugees. The rest of them are simply cowards unwilling to fight for their own country.
- programmernews3 11y ago
  Have a look at the pictures - it is full of chancers from all over the world. Even the "children" often turn out to be adults. In this study, 260 of the 309 people investigated were over 18: http://www.iofos.eu/Journals/JFOS%20sup1_Nov12/IDEALS%209-123.pdf http://www.iofos.eu/Journals/JFOS%20sup1_Nov12/IDEALS%209-12...
dudul 11y ago
Here is what people in Germany say about immigration in a recent survey: http://www.atlantico.fr/sites/atlantico.fr/files/u9698/2015/10/screen_shot_2015-10-23_at_2.18.20_pm.png http://www.atlantico.fr/sites/atlantico.fr/files/u9698/2015/... http://www.atlantico.fr/sites/atlantico.fr/files/u9698/2015/10/screen_shot_2015-10-23_at_2.40.59_pm.png http://www.atlantico.fr/sites/atlantico.fr/files/u9698/2015/...
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sccxy 11y ago
I'm living in one of poor EU countries. I earn less money than they pay for refugees. Our pensioners get less money than these 'refugees' with Armani clothing...
- Cenk 11y ago
  — What refugees wear does not matter. Even if they all wore genuine Armani clothing, what are they supposed to do? Sell all their clothes and buy cheaper brands before they flee? Your idea that a person who doesn’t look destitute or poor enough should not be regarded as a refugee shows how little you understand what a refugee is. The people fleeing to Europe are from all kinds of backgrounds, including workers, the middle class and highly skilled professionals. When a war breaks out and a city is destroyed, the middle class doesn’t stay behind. They sell their houses, cars and anything else they can and spend upwards of $10K to make it to somewhere safe. — I’m sure refugees in your country get less money than pensioners, just as they do in Germany. Are you saying that Germany should give refugees less money than any pensioner in the EU gets?
- raverbashing 11y ago
  I can understand the sentiment However, for those who want to work in Berlin (or somewhere else) can apply for a German Blue Card (usually you apply for jobs hen the company gets you one), shouldn't be too hard
  - nikolak 11y ago
    I'm from a European, but not an EU member country, and I got offered a senior software developer job in Germany. I applied for a 12 month work visa, even signed a statement that I will return when it expires, and it got denied. So yes in theory it's "easy", but in practice it isn't always like that. (To be fair you're talking about Blue Card which I didn't apply for because I've heard it's bit harder to get since it's usually issued for period longer than 12 months)
    - raverbashing 11y ago
      It's easy as in "much easier than an H1B" but sometimes there are issues getting one, yes (might be the company's fault as well).
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Fluid_Mechanics 11y ago
[Sigh] Before parts of the comment section turn into a flame war, I'd like to ask that those with inflammatory opinions at least attempt to stay politically neutral here. I'd rather not know about the contentious political positions some of my technical peers have. Please save any sweeping generalizations for Twitter/Facebook/Reddit :).
distances 11y ago
This is a bit offtopic, but Berlin is really beautifully mapped in OSM. In places the details are more than what I would have ever thought of, for example the individual pillars of the Holocaust Memorial: http://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/arriving-in-berlin-a-map-made-by-refugees-english-_42855#18/52.51381/13.37946 http://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/arriving-in-berlin-a-map...
- johansch 11y ago
  For that one there should be altitude mapping.
- zo1 11y ago
  Adding details to OSM is actually very relaxing. I do it to unwind and kill time sometimes. The job is never done, however, and there is always room for more detail.
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    Can OSM accept 3D laser scanner/cloud point data?
    - maxerickson 11y ago
      Not really. You could jam it into the data model, but it isn't meant to be a clearinghouse for arbitrary data sets where an update is making another sensor pass. A simple rubric is whether someone standing in the street can reasonably improve the data there, another is to what extent each individual piece of data is interesting in isolation. That doesn't mean you can't do interesting things with such data: http://chris-osm.blogspot.com/2015/09/extracting-building-heights-from-lidar.html http://chris-osm.blogspot.com/2015/09/extracting-building-he... (I realize that someone could reasonably fix some error in some lidar data, but I think the most likely outcome of storing such data in the OSM database is that the cumulative edits would frustrate anyone looking to use the data, to the extent that they would go to the source)
      - 11y ago
mtw 11y ago
Nice! Was this done during the Berline refugee hackathon?
- detaro 11y ago
  I don't think so, at least it seems to be completely managed by the two organisations running it & I didn't see it mentioned in context of the hackathon. It also doesn't use a custom-made interface, but is using the uMap service: http://umap.openstreetmap.fr http://umap.openstreetmap.fr (So the biggest need probably is data, not code)
dudul 11y ago
The only good thing about this "refugees crisis" is that it could finally cause the implosion and the end of the EU. This corrupted blob in which representatives are barely elected has to go away.
- hugh4 11y ago
  And its replacement by what? The Caliphate? Oh, fabulous.
  - dudul 11y ago
    What was there before? Sovereign countries composed of people sharing the same history, culture, values and lifestyle. Just because all these countries are geographically close doesn't mean that they should merge into one single entity.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  And replaced by what? A more divided Europe? I know UE is not the United Federation of Planets, but at least it is a step towards it.
  - dudul 11y ago
    What was wrong with sovereign nations? A step towards what? This is the big scam of the 21st century. People think that big blobs are stronger than smaller, more focused and cohesive entities. Smaller countries all over the world are doing just fine.
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      A step towards unified global government, one day, hopefully. You don't need sovereign nations to reap benefits of distribution, and some things are really better centralized (I'd agree that centralization may be the big scam of the 20th century - decentralization is the scam of 21st. People somehow forget that decentralized usually means very wasteful.). UE is an example of a "blob" that is not much more focused or cohesive than individual nations were, but it seems at least like a step in the right direction.

72 points by chippy 11y ago

chippy 11y ago

The project about page is here: http://arriving-in-berlin.de/ http://arriving-in-berlin.de/

comrh 11y ago
This has the arabic and persian(I think?) versions. It confused me why it would be in english at first.
- detaro 11y ago
  English is probably the best "common source" that things are translated from/to

gloves 11y ago

I love this idea, and hope the refugees settling have a happier life in Germany.

chaghan 11y ago

What about the millions of eastern / central europeans that have lower wages and worse quality of life and have been denied to work in german markets when the countries have been allowed to join the EU ? I guess nobody cares. Oh nobody cares either about people that are educated and can't get working visa because EU bureaucracy. Thanks Germany.

__m 11y ago
worse than getting killed by a bomb?
- jonesb6 11y ago
  I'd be curious to see the percentage of migrants/refugees that are coming from war-torn regions such as Syria. My understanding is that many come from North Africa or elsewhere. Granted violence is also very high in these areas and the economic situation can be nearly as detrimental to quality of life.
  - XzetaU8 11y ago
    http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/2995521/6996925/3-18092015-BP-EN.pdf/b0377f79-f06d-4263-aa5b-cc9b4f6a838f http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/2995521/6996925/3-180...
  - matt4077 11y ago
    I volunteer in a refugee center. Right now about 70% of the people arriving are from Syria. Most others are from Iraq and Afghanistan. If you look at statistics, remember that they often lag behind and currently show a large percentage of refugees from Albania, although that wave happened early in the year and has largely passed.
- chaghan 11y ago
  Nope I did not mean to say it like that. Nonetheles these countries I have been talking about are not the one that should carry the burden of the decisions made by western powers. These countries are economically enslaved by Germany and while your average syrian immigrant gets 1500euros and food and housing your average eastern european pensioner has to live from 400e pension. And the costs of living are not that much lower.
  - korisnik 11y ago
    >and while your average syrian immigrant gets 1500euros That's nowhere close to reality. Firstly, an "immigrant" will not get anything. They will get deported if they're not deemed a refugee. Most asylum seekers actually don't get asylum. Secondly, if they end up getting refugee status/asylum, then they will receive about 300-400 euros a month (that's somewhere between 330 to 440 USD a month for the international crowd in here).
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detaro 11y ago
a) apples and oranges b) As far as I know none of these intra-EU restrictions are still active (not that much of the numbers changed after their end, so they probably were really pointless)
pluma 11y ago
Provoke someone into bombing you for months and we'll re-consider. You're welcome. Germany.
- chaghan 11y ago
  You have bombed,enslaved and robbed our nations for more than a decade. Please re-consider now.
aikah 11y ago
> I guess nobody cares. Oh nobody cares either about people that are educated and can't get working visa because EU bureaucracy. This. The elephant in the room. It is insanely difficult to migrate legally to most European countries. I would say something else to the people that encourage others to basically enter Europe illegally to go to Germany. There are people, in refugee camps, in Lebanon or Turkey, that want to follow the law and apply for asylum while staying in these camps( because that's how it is supposed to work at first place, applying for asylum in the first safe country). What about them ? So people who break the law and cross multiple European countries illegally are welcome, but those who want to respect refugee laws by staying in camps until their status is cleared will be rejected because too many coming to Europe already and all sits are taken? That doesn't sound fair at all. This whole debacle is hypocrite on so many level, I will never support anyone who agree with it. You're not helping those who are in greatest need to be helped ( women,children, it's obvious they are not the majority of the people walking across Europe right now).
- Shivetya 11y ago
  Well this is the problem any country with a large illegal immigrant population faces. Far too many in the political establishment don't want to be perceived as mean spirited and deport or block the illegals yet the unintended consequence is that those who seek legal immigration are harmed as are those who already are either citizens and recent immigrants as the pool of assistance monies and goods is diminished. This is also a result of the current view to not interfere enough to fix the situation these illegal and legal immigrants face at home. Nation building has fallen out of favor and the result in anarchy is many parts of the world. Violence goes unchecked and with lax to no enforcement people risk their lives to get somewhere else and will try to get where the best support system exists.
korisnik 11y ago
>What about the millions of eastern / central europeans Have you forgotten about the Yugoslav wars? About half a million of refugees went to Western Europe (mostly Germany and Sweden) in just a couple of years.
winter_blue 11y ago
> have been denied to work in german markets That is illegal and a violation of treaty obligations on Germany's part if the countries you're talking about are part of the European Union (EU), or the European Economic Area (EEA). See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_movement_for_workers_in_the_European_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_movement_for_worker... You don't need a work visa or any sort of permission from the German government to reside and work in Germany, if you are a EU citizen or a citizen of an EEA member. It is a right.
- detaro 11y ago
  There were laws restricting that during a temporary period after countries joining, but I think they all faded out in 2011 or so, without much changing afterwards.
dang 11y ago
The combination of "what about related controversy X" with inflammatory language ("Thanks Germany") is guaranteed to produce a political flamewar. Please don't do that here. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10452885 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10452885 and marked it off-topic.
- hugh4 11y ago
  The posting of this article was guaranteed to produce a political flamewar.
  - dang 11y ago
    That doesn't excuse the commenters who made it so.
    - hugh4 11y ago
      Does it excuse the mods who let it through? If you allow politically contentious articles, you're going to get politically charged discussion. Articles representing a left-wing worldview are let through and right-wingers are blamed for "starting flame wars" when they interject something that shows their own worldview. HN should either commit to open discussion or declare itself officially a no-dissent-allowed Safe Space.
      - dang 11y ago
        That description is false. More importantly, you have no standing to argue about what's appropriate on HN when you post dreck like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10453898 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10453898 in violation of the site's rules. I've asked you before to stop doing this. Please follow the rules from now on.
tonomics 11y ago
You raise an interesting point, but the refugee 'crisis' is not driven by rationality, history, culture or even morality. It's a sad, numb and nihilistic political game.
- sabertoothed 11y ago
  Why is that? I am German - and I support the acceptance of refugees because of rationality, history, culture and especially morality.
  - michaelbuddy 11y ago
    You morally accept them but can't functionally accept them. And morals have this downside of interfering with others in an unfair and dangerous ways. Sweden and rapes for a clear example.
  - vidarh 11y ago
    I also support receiving them, but it is a political game. It would have made more sense to help a much larger number closer to home in countries where we could help far more people for the same amounts of money and while putting them at less risk. The problem is that a lot of the people talking about helping them closer to home have no intention of doing so - it's an excuse not to spend money at all. It is suddenly important to help them nearer to home now, when the problem is not "contained" anymore. Having them come to the wealthier EU countries helps drive home the seriousness of the crisis in a completely different way. Most people in Europe seems to have had no understanding of how many people need help, and have had an easy time writing these crises of as something happening far away. That's why this is a political game. On both sides.
lispm 11y ago
Germany was struggling with the reunification, having added 20 Million people from a collapsed country, the German Democratic Republic. That was difficult enough. Currently there are no special labor restrictions for EU citizens in Germany.
- pluma 11y ago
  It's easy to forget that the German re-unification wasn't simply two countries merging together. The reason East Germany was merged into West Germany was that it was effectively defunct. East Germany had mostly sustained itself by forbidding people from leaving the country (under threat of death), forcefully keeping its citizens in line (via ubiquitous surveillance and extortion) and frequently selling captives ("traitors" and "collaborators") to its next-door neighbour. Heck, the entire country had been ransacked before it was even created. While the US and its closer allies limited themselves to seizing high-tech and research after WW2, the Soviets transferred a large part of the industry and factories out of Germany as reparations.
  - lispm 11y ago
    > It's easy to forget that the German re-unification wasn't simply two countries merging together. It's not. The Bundesrepublik Deutschland took over what was once the GDR. > While the US and its closer allies limited themselves to seizing high-tech and research after WW2, the Soviets transferred a large part of the industry and factories out of Germany as reparations. The US and its allies transferred as much as the soviet union from Germany - though from a larger zone. The US soon wanted their part of Germany as a future ally against the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union needed the German factories/etc., because they suffered large scale destruction in the western parts. Germany destroyed large parts of the USSR infrastructure where it could.
    - pluma 11y ago
      > It's not. The Bundesrepublik Deutschland took over what was once the GDR. Exactly. The GDR was dissolved, the FRG simply swallowed the remnants. > The US and its allies transferred as much as the soviet union from Germany - though from a larger zone. I'm not arguing the morality of it -- Nazi Germany had wreaked havoc in the USSR (and some Germans were surprised to see how well the soldiers treated them considering how badly the Soviets had been treated by Germany). But the industry of East Germany was demolished to a far greater extent than that of West Germany. I'm well aware of the plans for West Germany that were discussed prior to the decision to grow it into an ally (rather than to de-industrialize it beyond insignificance). My point is simply this: while West Germany had become an economic powerhouse deeply integrated into European and international economics, East Germany's economy was largely a farce. By the time the borders were opened, the country was heading for disaster. What's more, after the reunification most of what little industry East Germany had moved to the West. It took a ton of state funding to get the east of Germany to where it is now and it's still largely defined by large-scale unemployment and an ageing population (because the young adults always seek greener pastures). In other words: yes, Germany is a powerful economy. But East Germany was nothing like that and naturalizing all East Germans as citizens and even exchanging their devalued currency at ridiculous rates was an enormous expense.
Brakenshire 11y ago
I really don't know what you're referring to. How have Eastern/Central EU migrants been denied access to German labour markets?

briandear 11y ago

Interesting. Farsi is not a major language in Syria; more people speak Kurdish than Farsi. Perhaps, and this is just a theory, that some of the refugees aren't actually coming from the Syrian civil war, but are instead attempting to simply take advantage of the largesse of the EU? If these refugees were actual refugees, they'd be in camps along the Turkish border and not applying for (and receiving) long term residency. The concept of refugee is that they go home after the hostilities. In this case, almost zero chance of that happening. It's shameful when adult men flee while many leave behind their wife and children. The women and kids ought to be the ones treated as refugees. The rest of them are simply cowards unwilling to fight for their own country.

programmernews3 11y ago
Have a look at the pictures - it is full of chancers from all over the world. Even the "children" often turn out to be adults. In this study, 260 of the 309 people investigated were over 18: http://www.iofos.eu/Journals/JFOS%20sup1_Nov12/IDEALS%209-123.pdf http://www.iofos.eu/Journals/JFOS%20sup1_Nov12/IDEALS%209-12...

dudul 11y ago

Here is what people in Germany say about immigration in a recent survey: http://www.atlantico.fr/sites/atlantico.fr/files/u9698/2015/10/screen_shot_2015-10-23_at_2.18.20_pm.png http://www.atlantico.fr/sites/atlantico.fr/files/u9698/2015/... http://www.atlantico.fr/sites/atlantico.fr/files/u9698/2015/10/screen_shot_2015-10-23_at_2.40.59_pm.png http://www.atlantico.fr/sites/atlantico.fr/files/u9698/2015/...

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sccxy 11y ago

I'm living in one of poor EU countries. I earn less money than they pay for refugees. Our pensioners get less money than these 'refugees' with Armani clothing...

Cenk 11y ago
— What refugees wear does not matter. Even if they all wore genuine Armani clothing, what are they supposed to do? Sell all their clothes and buy cheaper brands before they flee? Your idea that a person who doesn’t look destitute or poor enough should not be regarded as a refugee shows how little you understand what a refugee is. The people fleeing to Europe are from all kinds of backgrounds, including workers, the middle class and highly skilled professionals. When a war breaks out and a city is destroyed, the middle class doesn’t stay behind. They sell their houses, cars and anything else they can and spend upwards of $10K to make it to somewhere safe. — I’m sure refugees in your country get less money than pensioners, just as they do in Germany. Are you saying that Germany should give refugees less money than any pensioner in the EU gets?
raverbashing 11y ago
I can understand the sentiment However, for those who want to work in Berlin (or somewhere else) can apply for a German Blue Card (usually you apply for jobs hen the company gets you one), shouldn't be too hard
- nikolak 11y ago
  I'm from a European, but not an EU member country, and I got offered a senior software developer job in Germany. I applied for a 12 month work visa, even signed a statement that I will return when it expires, and it got denied. So yes in theory it's "easy", but in practice it isn't always like that. (To be fair you're talking about Blue Card which I didn't apply for because I've heard it's bit harder to get since it's usually issued for period longer than 12 months)
  - raverbashing 11y ago
    It's easy as in "much easier than an H1B" but sometimes there are issues getting one, yes (might be the company's fault as well).

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Fluid_Mechanics 11y ago

[Sigh] Before parts of the comment section turn into a flame war, I'd like to ask that those with inflammatory opinions at least attempt to stay politically neutral here. I'd rather not know about the contentious political positions some of my technical peers have. Please save any sweeping generalizations for Twitter/Facebook/Reddit :).

distances 11y ago

This is a bit offtopic, but Berlin is really beautifully mapped in OSM. In places the details are more than what I would have ever thought of, for example the individual pillars of the Holocaust Memorial: http://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/arriving-in-berlin-a-map-made-by-refugees-english-_42855#18/52.51381/13.37946 http://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/arriving-in-berlin-a-map...

johansch 11y ago
For that one there should be altitude mapping.
zo1 11y ago
Adding details to OSM is actually very relaxing. I do it to unwind and kill time sometimes. The job is never done, however, and there is always room for more detail.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  Can OSM accept 3D laser scanner/cloud point data?
  - maxerickson 11y ago
    Not really. You could jam it into the data model, but it isn't meant to be a clearinghouse for arbitrary data sets where an update is making another sensor pass. A simple rubric is whether someone standing in the street can reasonably improve the data there, another is to what extent each individual piece of data is interesting in isolation. That doesn't mean you can't do interesting things with such data: http://chris-osm.blogspot.com/2015/09/extracting-building-heights-from-lidar.html http://chris-osm.blogspot.com/2015/09/extracting-building-he... (I realize that someone could reasonably fix some error in some lidar data, but I think the most likely outcome of storing such data in the OSM database is that the cumulative edits would frustrate anyone looking to use the data, to the extent that they would go to the source)
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mtw 11y ago

Nice! Was this done during the Berline refugee hackathon?

detaro 11y ago
I don't think so, at least it seems to be completely managed by the two organisations running it & I didn't see it mentioned in context of the hackathon. It also doesn't use a custom-made interface, but is using the uMap service: http://umap.openstreetmap.fr http://umap.openstreetmap.fr (So the biggest need probably is data, not code)

dudul 11y ago

The only good thing about this "refugees crisis" is that it could finally cause the implosion and the end of the EU. This corrupted blob in which representatives are barely elected has to go away.

hugh4 11y ago
And its replacement by what? The Caliphate? Oh, fabulous.
- dudul 11y ago
  What was there before? Sovereign countries composed of people sharing the same history, culture, values and lifestyle. Just because all these countries are geographically close doesn't mean that they should merge into one single entity.
TeMPOraL 11y ago
And replaced by what? A more divided Europe? I know UE is not the United Federation of Planets, but at least it is a step towards it.
- dudul 11y ago
  What was wrong with sovereign nations? A step towards what? This is the big scam of the 21st century. People think that big blobs are stronger than smaller, more focused and cohesive entities. Smaller countries all over the world are doing just fine.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    A step towards unified global government, one day, hopefully. You don't need sovereign nations to reap benefits of distribution, and some things are really better centralized (I'd agree that centralization may be the big scam of the 20th century - decentralization is the scam of 21st. People somehow forget that decentralized usually means very wasteful.). UE is an example of a "blob" that is not much more focused or cohesive than individual nations were, but it seems at least like a step in the right direction.