Your understanding of Germany is not quite correct, though the framework has been in flux for a number of years now. In part, because of how ineptly many of the challenges have been handled.

If you can prove that your parents/grandparents were ethnic German, you can become a German citizen. Which is why in my region, Russian is often heard among teenagers, because a lot of Aussiedler live here. Their citzenship had nothing to do with 'place of birth or geographic accident,' nor does it have anything with if they 'want to live there they damn well comply with German standards.' In another words, in the name of 'Germanness,' ten of thousands of people who speak no German and have no connection with Germany except that this is the place they were able to escape to after the end of the Soviet Union now live here, often supported by German taxpayers.

Ironically, many of those taxpayers are second or third generation Turkish workers, who in the past had little right to become German citizens, though they were born in Germany, were schooled in Germany, work in Germany, and pay taxes in Germany. In the mid 1990s, something like 110,000 of these Turkish-Germans applied for citizenship - something around 10,000 were approved during that same time. You may draw your own conclusions why such a low percentage of often German schooled and German born Turkish citizens were not fit for German citizenship, especially in light of the fact that according to general German belief, Turkish-Germans have no interest in German citizenship.

I can give a hint, though. It is very hard in Germany to change your name, unlike in the U.S. (If you convert to Islam, you can pretty much forget changing your name, for example.) However, I do know people who have had that happen, without any problem at all - it was when they lost their 'false' Czech name for a proper German one.

Broadly speaking, Germany is not a model for the U.S., and there is little here to emulate - edit - in terms of immigration. What is sad is watching yet another part of the Constitution die, as so many Americans (who themselves are only American citizens generally because they were born in the U.S.) now reject the idea that children born on American soil are American citizens - since that has been the only requirement for determining who is a true American citizen since the founding of the United States. Parentage had nothing to do with it, unless you live outside of the U.S., where it is possible to have a second birth certificate provided by the State Department, proving a child's citizenship to the satisfaction of the United States. (Though technically, they can never become president - just like all the children born overseas of parents serving in the U.S. military.)

As a side note - if my Germany born children do not live in the U.S. as adults (five years, I believe), and in turn have children born outside of the U.S., those children will not be American citizens. American citizenship is based on shared values and was never intended to be hereditary. It is a truly revolutionary idea, and much like the absolute rejection of torture by anyone serving their nation, something which has faded over time. Sic transit gloria.

This is called the "Two Santa Claus" policy in Republican leadership circles. If the Democrats can impose a social security tax to give money to old poor people, the Republicans can give subsidized mortgages to young middle class people so they can buy a house and get in on the mortgage deduction.
Look at where the money goes and try to figure out how poor people can get in on the benefits and subsidys. From the national parks to the ROTC programs, how many welfare mommies or welfare kiddies benefit?
It's been a long, long, time since welfare mostly went to poor people. That was when it was a county function paid for by local taxpayers who would give the local county selectmen what for if they handed out money to undeserving poor, or to any middle class people at all.
Bob Dole talked about finding out that his grandparents were on welfare when he had to sign their welfare application as a county district attorney. No signature, no welfare. Nowadays we have farm subsidies that would have kept them of welfare entirely by making their hardscrabble little dirt farm so valuable that they could have retired to Florida.

I think everyone, even those who should know better, always holds out hope for perpetual motion.

Even if we know it goes against all the laws of nature there is still a part of us that thinks, maybe this time it's different.

Does thermodynamics apply to economics too?

Leanan,

But that report does not say what that "three times" is in reference to. Are they saying that whites got 75% of all subprime mortgages? That seems very unlikely given table 12 which show 52% of mortgages to blacks being subprime versus 40% to Hispanics and 19% to whites. We'd need to know the total number of mortgages granted to blacks, whites, and Hispanics to do the calculations.

I've previously read a Reuters article a couple of months ago that motivated my original statement. But I can't find it again. Here is another source of numbers:

The study, sponsored by Richmond, Va.-based mortgage insurer Genworth Financial, concluded that 48 percent of home loans given to blacks and nearly 42 percent of loans given to Hispanics last year met the government's definition of ``high-cost ``loans. That compares with 18 percent for whites and more than 24 percent for the overall population.

These numbers below combined with those above suggest that whites get less than half of all subprime mortgages. The key sentence: More than half of these new homeowning households are minorities.

The distribution of this added homeownership looks promising as well. More than half of these new homeowning households are minorities. While numbers of white homeowners did advance slightly more than 4 million, blacks gained 1.2 million, Hispanics 1.9 million, and the residual "other" category, including Asians and those reporting other races, 1.6 million. Nearly half of all black and Hispanic households now own their own home. These homeownership rates are still well below those of whites but are catching up. With respect to household income, the data also show homeownership rates increasing on both sides of the income distribution.

So if more than half of new home owners are minorities then that suggests more than half of all new mortgages are to minorities. Some of them are Asian. But if that number is not real large then the overrepresentation of blacks and Hispanics among subprime mortgage holders strongly suggests that my original contention is correct.

ROFLMAO

It can start with a W also, just a question of percentages.