>>Really ?? I would not trade my homeplace for anything else. I can imagine most of the turks would not either. Turkish culture is very different from the western culture. Those looking for money, career or other opportunity might, but the other 95% just won't.


>Speak for yourself. Not only most of the immigrants in the USA I know would prefer to live in their home country if they could have this level (as Tracy said), but let me ask you: have you ever visited Germany?

Holland is next to germany... what do you think?? Of course I've been in germany. I think you'd have to be carefull with these numbers. They tend to add up second generation turks in their while they actually are german... If like in holland, most of those immigrant came there in the late 60's and 70's. It is kind of an inheritance. They were invited by our government to work here 'temporary' and go back after a while. Of course, most never went back.

>Have you seen any Turkish people there? I've been and have seen entire Turkish neighborhoods. The number of Turks in Germany is around 2 million. I have no doubt many would readily leave Turkey and move to the USA if they could.

Why do you think that? Most turks do not have any sympathy for the US (remember that most of them are muslim and most muslims are not particulary US friendly). Also, why do you think a turk is better of in the USA compared to Germany or any other EU country? Maybe the occasional turk looking for the american dream and wanting to start making a business up there of re-union of family or so, but appart from that I can't see why a turk would emigrate to the US.

A thing that many turks do up here, is in their vacation time, load their car and go back to their homeland to celebrate vacation. Something that would be far more difficult (and expensive) when living in the US.

>See: Turkish Diaspora (close to 5.2 million left the country according to the low estimates). As a reference, the population of Turkey is estimated at 71 million. So already over 7% live outside the country. Over 350,000 live in the Netherlands.

>Just because you would not leave your country does not mean Victor is wrong.

What I'm saying here, that the viewpoint that all people would love to live in the US is seriously flawed. Most citizens of european countries are happy in the country they live. Personally I'd rather live in Canada than in the US, but Europe is favourate to me.

I guess it all has to with economics. For example, there was a restriction for polish people to work in holland. Our government was afraid being flushed with cheap polish workers. However poland economically developped well the last couple of years and now the restriction has been taken away, it seems that not a lot of polish people come to our country because they prefer to stay in poland, even if they can earn a little more up here.

Walter,