* I didn't speak the language when I moved here. I do now, but I still have a heavy accent that immediately tells everyone I wasn't born here.
* People still casually discriminate against me. I apply with a (fake) German name to apartments. Obviously I use my real name when I meet them and sign the documents, but it has helped me get the foot in the door many times before.
* I did go to school in Germany, and those are the the only Germans I'm friends with. I've made friends with other immigrants, but German society is much harder to break into.
* I can't vote in elections (which is fair, to be clear).
* While I understand German culture now, I don't understand it like a German does. It's kind of hard to quantify the impact of this but while I can understand what's expected of me and why people act in certain ways, it still feels like doing a dance rather than a mutual shared understanding.
All that said.. I feel pretty at place here. Living somewhere for a long time tends to do that. But you still never get over the feeling that you're some guy living in a place, rather than being of that place. It's more of a 50/50.. sometimes you feel as if you've always been there, and sometimes as if you just came that day.
The discrimination is a different issue and depends by many factors.
It's true that you can't vote in national elections but you can vote on local elections[0].
Usually you need just 5 years(on most EU countries)to get the citizenship to able to have this remaining right vote on national elections.
Now my question to you is: are you still an immigrant after you get the citizenship? What's different?
[0] "Every citizen of the Union has the right to vote and to stand as a candidate at municipal elections in the EU country in which he or she resides under the same conditions as nationals of that country."
To me it seems that you are putting yourself in a box. If you legally have the same rights you are no longer an immigrant. You are "one of them".
Based on your rationale you can end-up with race discrimination and nazi stuff. (e.g even if you are born in the same country your parents were immigrants so you are still a kind of non-native and so on).
The cultural issue goes both ways. The wave of immigration may make the natives feel discriminated as well. That doesn't make them "immigrants".
> If you legally have the same rights you are no longer an immigrant. You are "one of them".
Almost the same rights but not quite. You are also confining this issue to a purely legal standpoint -- my ability to travel the EU freely does not mean that I am Italian, for example.
edit: after rereading your comment, perhaps this passage refers to after I hypothetically take my citizenship. To answer that, I would consider myself then both German and an immigrant.
The point is, I do not identify as German, and Germans do not think I am German. I am influenced by German culture of course, having lived here long enough, but I am not strongly enough influenced to call myself German. I have younger siblings who are born here and have no memories of our family's homeland. I think of them as German, since they are in every way so -- they speak German, have German mannerisms and ideas, and do not understand a single bit of the culture of where I was born. They do not have German citizenship, but that doesn't matter at all since it's just who they are.
I think in the end it's about who you want to be. You could become german by thinking like a german, eating like a german but speaking like a german but that may require considerable effort. What means to be german also changes as more immigrants are arriving.
That aside my point is that it's wrong to put an immigrant on a visa to Germany on equal footing with an EU citizen. The former "may be deported" at any time for various reasons while the later has *all the rights german people have.
Discrimination happens even between different regions, the most common being in the U.S(i.e souther accents). There is also race discrimination even for "native" people. That doesn't make all the black, yellow people immigrants from Africa, Asia etc.
* I didn't speak the language when I moved here. I do now, but I still have a heavy accent that immediately tells everyone I wasn't born here.
* People still casually discriminate against me. I apply with a (fake) German name to apartments. Obviously I use my real name when I meet them and sign the documents, but it has helped me get the foot in the door many times before.
* I did go to school in Germany, and those are the the only Germans I'm friends with. I've made friends with other immigrants, but German society is much harder to break into.
* I can't vote in elections (which is fair, to be clear).
* While I understand German culture now, I don't understand it like a German does. It's kind of hard to quantify the impact of this but while I can understand what's expected of me and why people act in certain ways, it still feels like doing a dance rather than a mutual shared understanding.
All that said.. I feel pretty at place here. Living somewhere for a long time tends to do that. But you still never get over the feeling that you're some guy living in a place, rather than being of that place. It's more of a 50/50.. sometimes you feel as if you've always been there, and sometimes as if you just came that day.