Very commendable what he is doing! Although, it is worth pointing out that even without any war conflicts, if the U.S or Canada opened their borders, then 90% of the people's in the middle east and the African continent would likely be happy to immigrate.
One might argue that the US at least is a main driver of many of the conflicts in the area, if not by direct invasions and infrastructure destruction then by support to local dictators and puppet governments.
I do not know about "we". I am not a fan of any murderer myself. This area has been marked for "free use" by several foreign forces over the years. The thing is, there is no free use, you have to pay eventually one way or another.
The US was a huge fan of Saddam, they provided him with a lot of weapons to fight Iran and to gas the Kurds. They were also quite happy with Assad when they were sending people there from the war on terror to be tortured after 9/11. Assad even warned the U.S. about a plot to blow up a US destroyer. Relations deteriorated after Bush went after Iraq again for no reason.
Is this real life or Metal Gear Solid 4? When I read HN I'm half expecting to hear about how war has changed. ID tagged soldiers carry ID tagged guns. The armchair analysts guarding HN's comment boxes should spend their efforts worrying about ID tagged pull requests. This is yet another example of when a programmer site jumps the shark.
PS: programmers are good at programming. Not at all things thinking-related. Which this community shows countless times again.
Yes, let's open US borders without any screening or perhaps more importantly any idea how to pay for entitlements and the cost of sustaining them. We're seeing how well that worked for Germany. In fact, these liberal policies have further strengthened the extreme right in Germany. Next up, after Merkel is the German brexit or Trump equivalent.
It is amazing what can be achieved when people are looked at as people, not numbers. A refreshing story to break the immigrants-are-devils vs immigrants-are-angels fight.
What's really uplifting to me about this article is that it points out Canada has decades of policies that are open to immigrants and refugees. Those refugees pay it forward to the next generation of immigrants in a virtuous cycle. One of my Torontonian friends recently posted about hearing "an old Chinese man speaking German in an Italian restaurant owned by Vietnamese refugees," or something like that, and it just seems like a diverse haven of different peoples.
Of course. We (Canada) were built by immigrants. My family's been here a few generations, but nevertheless were immigrants (from circa 1920), from western and eastern Europe. We also have Asian immigrants from several waves of migration, and of course more modern migration waves.
Maybe because of the fact we have 2 official languages, are so spread out with various ethnic enclaves, our immigrant roots show a little more. Our culture has never been close to homogeneous.
I'm not from Toronto but I am Canadian but I heard a great show on CBC radio about something similar. I think it may have been Montreal.
The show described amazing combinations of cultures Inuit-Korean or Greek-Jamaican or Mexican-Tibetan plus the mix of religions and food too.
Wild stuff. It's pretty much common place in central Canada big cities it's just really getting rolling here in my region. Chinese, Lebanese (100 year history here), Russians, the usual Scottish Irish British Dutch Native.
You also had Mayor Ford not long ago, though. It's just that you still have a critical mass of first-generation immigrants from poor countries; as soon as that declines naturally (because of density ceilings), you will see more and more of the problems you see in Australia and US cropping up. Don't rest on your laurels, you are a young country.
It's not about time only, it's about developing a critical mass of people who are detached enough from their migrant roots that they get to claim "nativity", hence drawing a line.
Man spends $1.5M to make his country less safe. Brings families into a culture that they will not integrate into (statistically Muslims are the worst at integrating [1]). Ultimately leading to their marginalisation and making them ripe targets for radicalisation.
Normally when people say “statistically” and provide a citation you expect it to go to an actual factual source, and not more of the author’s own opinions and assertions.
We've banned this account. Ideological rants and religious flamewars are poisons that destroy what this site stands for, and no one is welcome to post like this here.
Please stop creating accounts to break the site guidelines with. Doing that eventually gets your main account banned as well.
I believe that the UN should make a Convention on the Rights of the Refugee.
Right now countries just pick and choose what to do with refugees in conflicts that, often, they helped exacerbate.
If this convention existed back in the early 20th century then many Jews would have been saved from the Holocaust, there would be no stateless Palestinians today, and so forth.
As it is, I find it frustrating that the question isn't dealt with seriously: "why do so few Arab countries give asylum and citizenship to Arab refugees?" Lebanon did it, with Syrian refugees. Jordan did it with Palestinian refugees. But by and large, Arab countries don't help fellow Arab refugees.
What makes you Arab? Speaking Arabic and sharing a common culture. Russia would have taken in Russian refugees. It is one of their "five points". They even annexed Crimea and gave everyone there Russian citizenship.
Speaking the same language means you can integrate into societ FAR more quickly, get a job and support your family. It is also better for the country as skilled workers can become productive faster.
But it seems that international pressure must be applied to make Arab countries take in Arab refugees at a far greater rate than European countries with totally different culture.
“I didn’t want to be 80 years old and know that I did nothing during the greatest humanitarian crisis of my time.”
As an American citizen who publicly supported both gulf wars and contributes disproportionally to climate change, the above is an understatement of how I feel about the Syrian crisis.
Somewhat related, we have cities in the U.S. that are depressed in part because of population decline. An influx of immigrants could be mutually beneficial. The City of Detroit, for example, has no budget or incentive to demolish condemned homes because the cost of demolition exceeds the vacant land value. A refugee could be granted two homes on the promise they demolish one home. Perhaps one livable home can be constructed from reclaimed materials of the two.
Last I checked, it cost $10k to demolish a small home and a barely livable COD home costs around $5k. Receiving $10k in property for delivering a $10k service doesn't seem like a handout.
Granted refugees require support and resources beyond housing but this inspirational article on Jim Estill and his team of volunteers offer much encouragement in this regard.
Each new home owner could demolish an adjacent home and turn it into a vegetable garden. Not so familiar with the Middle East but I know that migrants from Europe and Asia are often very keen home gardeners.
Nice to read this among all the xenophobic nonsense.
A lot of people have this notion that welcoming (muslim) immigrants is like asking for terrorism, that they take away jobs, that they don't integrate well into society and they are out to convert everyone to Islam or something like that.
I don't know what makes believe these crazy ideas, but the media certainly doesn't help, painting every terrorist attack as something to do with immigration policy or muslims. Social media plays a major role in spreading all these wrong stories. Unfortunately the vast majority of internet users get their news from social media platforms, where emotional appeal of a story trumps facts, which is something fake news writers have exploited to great success.
I have no idea how people can support policies which actively want to stop helping immigrants. It's a humanitarian crisis and we need to do everything to help people who are suffering. As simple as that.
I think part of it is the supposed belief statistics of certain regions. Like, 93% of some region may believe homosexuals should be executed and 70% that women should not be allowed to leave the house without a man, etc. (I'm making those numbers up, but I don't think they're far off from real areas of the world.) This really conflicts with the social norms in other countries.
Some interesting statistics can be found here, though the video is pretty one-sided: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSPvnFDDQHk (From a real Muslim woman, not just a concern troll.)
Of course this doesn't mean immigrants should not be accepted with humanitarian rights and love like anyone else.
You people need to learn how to work a damn search engine. At this point, there are many widely read sources for this information and it's largely an accepted fact among those who aren't actively denying it. This is like some genius coming along and saying "citation needed" every time someone remarks "the middle class is shrinking".
The reason i wrote citation needed was that it was clearly wrong. It's likely based on this pew research survey from 2013[0]. At no point does it suggest homosexuals should be executed.
Note that the US also polled with 33% recipients disagreeing with "should society accept homosexuality".
Had you considered that maybe that's not the only research ever done on the topic?
In fact, it isn't, and there are other polls and studies looking into opinions on topics such as execution of homosexuals. Again, a single search engine query could solve this mystery for you.
"Nice to read this among all the xenophobic nonsense.
A lot of people have this notion that welcoming (muslim) immigrants is like asking for terrorism, that they take away jobs, that they don't integrate well into society and they are out to convert everyone to Islam or something like that."
I don't care for parts of that comment. There are a lot of people in Canada that need help, and the notion that many people hold that you should help your countrymen before others, while somewhat heartless, absolutely is not "crazy" or necessarily xenophobic.
> the vast majority of internet users get their news from social media platforms, where emotional appeal of a story trumps facts, which is something fake news writers have exploited to great success
Indeed.
By the way, I thought this was a great, heartwarming, inspirational story and would like to see more like it, but saying anyone who disagrees with this approach is necessarily a racist or xenophobe, is incorrect.
>the notion that many people hold that you should help your countrymen before others, while somewhat heartless, absolutely is not "crazy" or necessarily xenophobic.
No, it's not crazy or xenophobic. But it's interesting, because from a philosophical standpoint: what difference does it make? Why should you really help someone who lives down the street from you over someone 10 miles away? Why someone 30 miles away over someone 300 miles away? Because circumstance led you to randomly live near them?
Of course, the real answer is that it's hard to take in more people without externalities (like more splitting of funding, etc.). But the notion of helping your countrymen before non-countrymen on principle seems foolish and insular to me. People have feelings and desires whether they're born in the US or Canada or Iraq.
> helping your countrymen before non-countrymen on principle seems foolish and insular to me
is a bit insular =).
If you travel a bit around the world, having pride in your country, or camaraderie with your countrymen isn't that unusual a viewpoint. In fact, your view-point is a bit unusual (although that doesn't necessarily make it wrong). Many people will put their own country/tribe/family before strangers.
I'm probably the other side of the coin to you. To me, the next step is treating your country as nothing more than a business-transaction - I pay taxes, you give me services. I don't like that viewpoint.
Having a sense of civic pride - in a shared culture of history with those around you - can lead to many selfless things, and binds people together. Of course, taken too far, you get jingoism - but to my mind, there is a happy middle-ground.
I'm aware my position is the uncommon one, but that's irrelevant to the discussion.
>To me, the next step is treating your country as nothing more than a business-transaction - I pay taxes, you give me services. I don't like that viewpoint.
I guess that's my ideal world. I think that's where we're all inevitably moving, though it'll be slow.
> Why should you really help someone who lives down the street from you over someone 10 miles away? Why someone 30 miles away over someone 300 miles away? Because circumstance led you to randomly live near them?
Maybe because you've been through hardships together, maybe your neighbors ancestors owe yours a tremendous debt of gratitude, numerous reasons that I doubt refugees from most anywhere in the world would find difficult to understand.
Also, this thing called war used to affect us in the west, where the comfortable living of the last 70 odd years seems to have completely wiped any memories from the earlier difficult periods from our collective consciousness. The very idea of forming tightly knit bonds with your neighbors, and saving in times of plenty for the inevitable times of hardship that lie down the road, is now considered not just passe, but foolish.
>Maybe because you've been through hardships together
Maybe, but that's a special exception. Usually this is not the case.
>maybe your neighbors ancestors owe yours a tremendous debt of gratitude
Who cares about ancestors? If my ancestor was a murderer, do I have to honor his legacy? I couldn't care less what my ancestors did, unless I've interacted with them while they were still alive.
As for war: that's the one big exception. Of course nationalism is required during war. But the West is not currently in a state of war.
> Why should you _really_ help someone who lives down the street from you over someone 10 miles away? Why someone 30 miles away over someone 300 miles away?
Because it's more efficient. Because you're more likely to be able to effectively communicate and interact with a neighbor than with someone from across the world. Because of self-interest: helping your neighbor is in part helping yourself.
Like, I grew up here, but the extreme individualism in America seems weird and unhealthy to me. People instinctually work for their family, friends, and tribe first, and we should harness that instinct for good rather than trying to just suppress it.
The efficiency argument goes both ways. Certainly it's hard to get anything done when you don't know the language or the culture. On the other hand, GiveWell has spent years researching how to do the most good per charity dollar, and their top recommendations are in Africa. It's estimated (with large error bars) that a few thousand dollars can save a life there by funding bednets to prevent malaria. It's hard to do anything comparable in the US.
So if your idea of charity is selflessly giving money, local is not the place to look. But it's rather abstract and you don't build relationships that way.
But you are right, charity doesn't have to purely selfless; it can also be about building the local community.
There is nothing random about where you are born. This is a false premise. It is about as not-random as it is possible to get.
It is not some majestic yet universal coincidence that people have more in common with those who happen to share the same genes, and less so the more divergence exists.
Perhaps random isn't the right word, but it's completely out of your control, will, or knowledge. Just like your eye color.
>It is not some majestic yet universal coincidence that people have more in common with those who happen to share the same genes, and less so the more divergence exists.
It is the definition of a coincidence. The confounding variables being the shared area, culture, and socioeconomic tier in which you're born.
People have pointed out other problems with your comment, but I feel the need to clarify that resistance to integration/assimilation is very real in terms of lifestyle, communities, and ideology. Many of these people retain dangerously Islamist ideas, even if they were born in the West. There has been a lot of research on this, and a U.K. government report addressed the problem in the past few weeks.
> A lot of people have this notion that welcoming (muslim) immigrants is like asking for terrorism, that they take away jobs...
To be fair, he did give a good deal of jobs to these people at his warehouse. Jobs that would have otherwise gone to locals. I know this, because I used to have one of those jobs and still have a number of friends that work there. Whether or not those jobs deserved to be for someone local or not, I can't say, but it's disingenuous to label people xenophobes for having legitimate concerns about how they, and their community, will continue to provide for their loved ones as jobs/livelihoods are given away to people from outside their communities (especially in a region that was hit pretty hard by the auto-industry issues of recent years).
> they don't integrate well into society , I don't know what makes believe these crazy ideas
Probably because there is some truth in there. If you have any Muslim friend just ask them if they believe in freedom of speech and expression, few will say yes then ask them, should making fun of Mohammad be allowed, they will say no.
There is simply no factual basis for this comment.
Every American Muslim I have met believes in the 1st Amendment.
Perhaps more than many Americans, American Muslims are acutely aware of how our laws keep them safe. Reducing these laws would make them more of a target then they already are.
The same goes for anyone. There will be something they don't believe should be made fun of. Eg. For the right, you can't burn the flag. For the left, you can't make comments about race. I'm crudely speaking here but there are examples.
Let me guess: you live somewhere in USA, that took basically 0 refugees (compared to population) and have never been in ghettos that are direct results of this crisis? Sure, they are human beings and they need help, but it's not that simple and it's a trade-off between well-being of local population vs helping others, so finding a balance is hard and not straightforward as "accepting everyone".
"They take away jobs" - are you kidding me? That's one of the most pressing issues with them, they rarely want to work (and usually are not qualified for all but the simplest, lowest paying jobs anyway). They come to Europe for benefits - one of the most common questions asked by "refugees" entering Germany is "When will I get my house and car?"[1] .
About integrating well into society it is well known that Muslims tend to create their own enclaves, whole districts where non-Muslims are afraid to enter, and where unofficial "Shariah police" can beat the crap out of you for buying alcohol, or pork meat. Brussel's Molenbeek is one such example.
I live in Canada, stories like this one make me happy, but there is a huge difference in how the Canadian Government handled this crisis and how Germany did. I have met a couple of Syrian refugees living in Canada and they were indeed from Syria and their lives were indeed in danger before fleeing their home countries, that is why the results are positive. But in Germany the situation is a complete mess, thousands of economic migrants making it harder for real refugees, many which are a security threat. I have seen both sides of the coin and I don't think someone has to be a xenophobe to be against taking refugees and someone doesn't have to be naive to stand outside holding "refugees welcome" signs
It's a lot easier for us in Canada to pick and choose between war-displaced refugees and economic migrants when we have a massive ocean between us and the source of migrants. No one can arrive here without being pre-cleared by the Canadian government. European countries don't have that luxury.
They don't have that luxury and they don't want it. The purpose of taking in refugees is two fold: One, to save their lives (duh), but also to prevent them from radicalizing.
Europe is vacuuming up anyone who wants to join so that they don't stay in the warzone and possibly turn against them.
Refugees (in the sense of what asylum laws see as those deserving help) get special treatment because they flee from a high risk of dying, being unfairly persecuted etc: concrete risks to their basic well-being.
The term Economic migrants is used for those that are not in immediate danger, just in search of a better living situation. If the economic situation in your country is so bad there is widespread starvation you'd qualify as a refugee, if I as a european move to the US because tech jobs there pay better I'd still be an economic migrant.
Asylum is an exception to other immigration rules for those that really need it. If you are not in danger, you should follow the normal rules.
Because immigrants are not refugees. If you want to get a job in a country with better jobs, there are legal means (visas, permissions) to do that and one should use it. Crossing country border illegally is akin to breaking into somebody's house -- just because that person might be richer isn't an excuse. Genuine refugees don't have legal ways to achieve safety in their country, so they are forced to flee.
An illustrative example is how many refugees Sweden received in 2015, 150 000[1]. Sweden has about 1/3 of the number of inhabitants as Canada.
If Canada were to receive a proportionally large number of refugees that would be about 450 000 refugees. In actuality Canada has received about 35 000. An order of magnitude less.
The Canadian refugee system is/was under no where near the amount of stress that the European states are/were.
(Some European countries like Hungary for example have behaved thoroughly Xenophobic during these events and are frankly embarrassing to be associated with)
Sweden is actually an example of how not to handle a refugee crisis. Just yesterday I met my friend who lives in Sweden and was at Malmö at the height of migrant crisis. I won't recite what he said and what is current opinion of common swedes themselves, because I would get downvoted to hell as xenophobic bastard.
Malmö was a clusterfuck before the migration crisis. It's the garbage bin of the country. My feeling is that the crisis (and rioting a few years ago) just gave the locals a justification to talk more openly about the problems there without feeling racist.
Sweden did an amazing job in the last 30 years picking up the mess that the rest of the WHOLE WORLD keeps making. They have been left alone and now they are struggling. Germany is now reaching a similar status. It can't go on like that.
One thing that would likely help is linking seats on the UN Security Council to refugee quotas. You shouldn't be able to decide what goes on without accepting responsibility for picking up your rubbish.
"One thing that would likely help is linking seats on the UN Security Council to refugee quotas. You shouldn't be able to decide what goes on without accepting responsibility for picking up your rubbish."
Great idea, but it will never pass while certain countries possesses and abuses their veto[0] on pretty much any deal that has some impact on real world.
Just last month my lifelong friend moved back to Malmö from Amsterdam and now he is moving out because a hand grenade was thrown into the hallway of their apartment complex.
He is a second-generation immigrant from Egypt, but if he'd talk about his experiences publicly, upper class white pseudo-leftist would drive hours from the overpriced hipster district to attack him and his girlfriend for being "racist uncle toms" and vandalize their apartment.
Your holier-than-thou virtue signaling only serves your narcissism and hurts people who are actually in need of help.
Meanwhile the six wealthy Gulf countries - Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain - have offered to receive exactly zero Syrian refugees. Saudi Arabia has however funded 200 mosques for construction in Germany.
Did the refugees go directly from Syria to Canada? If not, wouldn't their status have changed from 'real refugees' to 'economic migrants' when they left the country where their lives were not in danger?
Canada takes it's refugees directly from UN camps, as does the UK. They are well-vetted, they are definitely refugees, and they come as families.
The flood of people into Europe was less than 1/4 Syrians, and those that were were mostly young males and not too many families.
Merkel made a huge mistake by opening the borders.
Disastrous.
It would have been more humane, safe, and cheaper to pluck refugees from the UN camps.
German government could have paid Lufthansa 400 Euros per flight, flown them in from Lebanon right to the spots in Germany. Processed them ahead of time, got them lined up with housing etc. etc..
Instead, many died in transit, it cause political chaos - and terrorists got into the country: the incident this weekend was by a Tunisian, denied status but 'allowed to stay' (meaning he will never leave). No doubt he's angry - as will the 100's of thousands of Tunisians, Pakistanis and others who will not be given status, but 'allowed to stay' and therefore live in a grey zone.
I believe most Syrians, Iraqis and Afghanis will be given status, the rest, not.
I was just wondering the other day, why none of the richest people in the world were doing more to help solve or bring some relief to the Syrian crisis/refugees. I guess you need heart not money to be generous!
Personal attacks will get your account banned here, so please don't do this again. Instead, please (re-)read the site rules, and post civilly and substantively, or not at all:
Dang, I'm interested to know why you shadowban some accounts (obviously without warning, or else it wouldn't be a shadownban) and yet give others advance warning in a very public way.
No matter how heartwarmingly good this appears, it's terribly misguided. This approach does not scale. You simply cannot provide hundreds of thousands of refugees with food, shelter and education in a 1st world country. We have all seen what even a few of them do to countries: mass xenophobia, terror and rising popularity of right-wing parties.
If we truly wanted to help these people and make a difference then the best thing we can do is provide local refugee camps with the resources to take care of their greatest needs. They know much better than we ever could what is needed. Hell, we can't even communicate with many of them, as many don't speak English and we have far too little translators.
And meanwhile we need to actually tackle many of the root problems of why we're in this hole mess to begin with. Solving many of those are hard, others not so much. For example, could we please stop selling those countries weapons to kill themselves with?
> we need to actually tackle many of the root problems
We have frequently shifting national moods so why is it a surprise our foreign policy behaves as if it has a multiple personality disorder? If one was a cynic they might suggest this was a subversive policy for one system to cause systemic instability outside of its borders.
As somebody who grew up in Guelph, this doesn't surprise me. Few other places I've been to would have a CEO spending his own money to help out complete strangers.
Hm, freedom of speech, freedom of apostasy, freedom of any other religion to evangelize in a majority-muslim nation (Albania/Lebanon might be an exception here), freedom to criticize Muhammad & Aisha. Try doing/saying any of this in any country controlled by the religion of peace, and see how it goes over.
Look at what just happened in France and Germany, a "refugee" decided to run a semi into a crowd of people for fun. I did not see any details on the Immigration Canada screening procedures in this article. It's only a matter of time until these sort of attacks start coming to Canada and the USA...oh wait San Bernadino. Better start putting in concrete roadblocks.
Honestly this sort of thing is why people in the flyover states decided to elect Trump. They are sick and tired of the bleeding-hearts importing the worlds refugees and thus making them their problem. Jobs and health insurance is what America cares about, not immigrants or transgender bathroom usage. I don't want any refugees in the united states, at all. We have our own goddamn problems to deal with, and don't need anymore.
America seems to care very, very much about that. It's just that you think bigotry is right, so you see people fighting for their rights as making nonsense up.
Please don't make sweeping generalizations like this. It's pretty clear that the US has a wide variety of opinions on this and a variety of other issues.
Please keep political rants off HN, and especially religious flamewars. This is the kind of thing we don't want here. It's pure poison for thoughtful and substantive discussion, which is what we do want.
Good thing to do, but makes me think how much more effective (in terms of help given per dollar spent) it would be to help these people in some other place where the costs of living are much lower.
There are many ways to answer this. Here is a high level explanation of why we are in disagreement. Instead of explaining 'How' and getting bogged down in the details and worse, trapped by semantics, I shall explain 'Why' I think we differ. Then if you want to get into the specifics we can.
I used to be a Creationist, how the political ideology of Progression thinks about biology is very similar to how Creationists have thought about biological evolution down through the last two centuries.
While both camps see each other as being extraordinarily different, this is not compelling evidence that they aren't related, note the conflict between Shia and Sunni. They see each as being oppositional... Similarly Progressivism and Creationism come from the same source. If you trace back the history of ideas to ye olde England and Germany this becomes startlingly obvious. It is not a coincidence that the phrase 'social justice' is Catholic in origin.
Why this matters is that when Darwin set off his Atom Bomb concerning the Origin of Species, he immediately ran into direct conflict with the Church because the implications of evolution theory contradicted the account of life being formed in Genesis.
Today Darwin's ideas have won out over Christianity. Most Christians believe in evolution theory, and they take the first book of the Bible as not being a literal account of reality. In my opinion this ultimately neutered the political legitimacy of Christianity.
However a descendant of Christianity, Progressivism, continues to not believe in Evolution. Unlike Christianity, it has managed to exert enormous political influence through the education system, especially the universities. It is what has tabooed discussion of human speciation.
This is less than obvious because most students would initially deny that they disbelieve Evolution theory. Then, as it moves further up against their taboos, red lights begin to flash and they begin exhibiting failures of imagination.
There are students that;
- Believe evolution explains the animal/plant kingdoms but not that of humans "there hasn't been enough time for human evolution" (christian variant: humans are special).
- Believe evolution explains human evolution in the past but not the present.
- Believe evolution explains human evolution below the neck only. Here the brain is immutable but obvious physiological changes are fine.
- Believe evolution explains the development of the human brain but insist that nonetheless human speciation is impossible (christian variant: 'microevolution' i.e. small changes up to a limit - The reason for the constrained scope is never explained, only assumed).
None of them want to acknowledge that if evolution is real then humans evolve, and if humans evolve, then logically there could be evidence for different groups of humans. If such evidence existed for the beginning of human speciation the strongest evidence would be found in human population groups which have been separated for the longest period of time e.g. 100,000 years.
As you know science is very dependent on the ability to replicate experiments and make predictions. This is why in universities in the West, this subject is so tabooed there are few scientists willing to stick their necks out by doing those experiments. One of the men who discovered DNA, James Watson, is blacklisted because of some off the cuff remarks about race. If a bollocking can happen to somebody who made one of the most important discoveries in biology, it can sure happen to a less prestigious scientist. It is a tabooed subject because Progressivism is founded on theological roots i.e. the premise of their beliefs was never rational to begin with. The Chinese, who have no such taboo, Christian or Progressive, are making huge strides in biological science because the Progressivism meme is not strong in China.
This documentary 'DNA Dreams' is worth watching to fully appreciate this.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 122 ms ] threadPS: programmers are good at programming. Not at all things thinking-related. Which this community shows countless times again.
Maybe because of the fact we have 2 official languages, are so spread out with various ethnic enclaves, our immigrant roots show a little more. Our culture has never been close to homogeneous.
The show described amazing combinations of cultures Inuit-Korean or Greek-Jamaican or Mexican-Tibetan plus the mix of religions and food too.
Wild stuff. It's pretty much common place in central Canada big cities it's just really getting rolling here in my region. Chinese, Lebanese (100 year history here), Russians, the usual Scottish Irish British Dutch Native.
But good job signalling his virtue.
[1] c.f. France, UK, Sweden and soon Germany.
Sweden:
Australian journalists attacked for going into a Muslium ghetto http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/news-and-cu... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-pG4oiih3A#t=3m9s
Swedish girl explains what's wrong with Sweden today https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgRE5upxvAU
http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religi...
Please stop creating accounts to break the site guidelines with. Doing that eventually gets your main account banned as well.
Right now countries just pick and choose what to do with refugees in conflicts that, often, they helped exacerbate.
If this convention existed back in the early 20th century then many Jews would have been saved from the Holocaust, there would be no stateless Palestinians today, and so forth.
As it is, I find it frustrating that the question isn't dealt with seriously: "why do so few Arab countries give asylum and citizenship to Arab refugees?" Lebanon did it, with Syrian refugees. Jordan did it with Palestinian refugees. But by and large, Arab countries don't help fellow Arab refugees.
What makes you Arab? Speaking Arabic and sharing a common culture. Russia would have taken in Russian refugees. It is one of their "five points". They even annexed Crimea and gave everyone there Russian citizenship.
Speaking the same language means you can integrate into societ FAR more quickly, get a job and support your family. It is also better for the country as skilled workers can become productive faster.
But it seems that international pressure must be applied to make Arab countries take in Arab refugees at a far greater rate than European countries with totally different culture.
EDIT:
According to this, a similarly named convention exists, but does not require countries to TAKE the refugees. And most Arab countries are not even signatories to it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_Relating_to_the_S...
So as a result getting the real figures is a complete clusterfuck, with Arab governments claiming some numbers and stretching the definitions: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrians_in_Saudi_Arabia
As an American citizen who publicly supported both gulf wars and contributes disproportionally to climate change, the above is an understatement of how I feel about the Syrian crisis.
Somewhat related, we have cities in the U.S. that are depressed in part because of population decline. An influx of immigrants could be mutually beneficial. The City of Detroit, for example, has no budget or incentive to demolish condemned homes because the cost of demolition exceeds the vacant land value. A refugee could be granted two homes on the promise they demolish one home. Perhaps one livable home can be constructed from reclaimed materials of the two.
Last I checked, it cost $10k to demolish a small home and a barely livable COD home costs around $5k. Receiving $10k in property for delivering a $10k service doesn't seem like a handout.
Granted refugees require support and resources beyond housing but this inspirational article on Jim Estill and his team of volunteers offer much encouragement in this regard.
edit: grammar
Regardless of the beneficiary, how to these people otherwise live. Where do they work and go to school? What do they eat?
More realistically, the local poor would just move from A to B with no improvement. People fleeing warzones have different backgrounds and incentives.
I agree on the general-welfare issue, but a lot of these refugees have very low expectations.
A lot of people have this notion that welcoming (muslim) immigrants is like asking for terrorism, that they take away jobs, that they don't integrate well into society and they are out to convert everyone to Islam or something like that.
I don't know what makes believe these crazy ideas, but the media certainly doesn't help, painting every terrorist attack as something to do with immigration policy or muslims. Social media plays a major role in spreading all these wrong stories. Unfortunately the vast majority of internet users get their news from social media platforms, where emotional appeal of a story trumps facts, which is something fake news writers have exploited to great success.
I have no idea how people can support policies which actively want to stop helping immigrants. It's a humanitarian crisis and we need to do everything to help people who are suffering. As simple as that.
Some interesting statistics can be found here, though the video is pretty one-sided: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSPvnFDDQHk (From a real Muslim woman, not just a concern troll.)
Of course this doesn't mean immigrants should not be accepted with humanitarian rights and love like anyone else.
Note that the US also polled with 33% recipients disagreeing with "should society accept homosexuality".
[0] http://www.pewglobal.org/2013/06/04/the-global-divide-on-hom...
In fact, it isn't, and there are other polls and studies looking into opinions on topics such as execution of homosexuals. Again, a single search engine query could solve this mystery for you.
A lot of people have this notion that welcoming (muslim) immigrants is like asking for terrorism, that they take away jobs, that they don't integrate well into society and they are out to convert everyone to Islam or something like that."
I don't care for parts of that comment. There are a lot of people in Canada that need help, and the notion that many people hold that you should help your countrymen before others, while somewhat heartless, absolutely is not "crazy" or necessarily xenophobic.
> the vast majority of internet users get their news from social media platforms, where emotional appeal of a story trumps facts, which is something fake news writers have exploited to great success
Indeed.
By the way, I thought this was a great, heartwarming, inspirational story and would like to see more like it, but saying anyone who disagrees with this approach is necessarily a racist or xenophobe, is incorrect.
No, it's not crazy or xenophobic. But it's interesting, because from a philosophical standpoint: what difference does it make? Why should you really help someone who lives down the street from you over someone 10 miles away? Why someone 30 miles away over someone 300 miles away? Because circumstance led you to randomly live near them?
Of course, the real answer is that it's hard to take in more people without externalities (like more splitting of funding, etc.). But the notion of helping your countrymen before non-countrymen on principle seems foolish and insular to me. People have feelings and desires whether they're born in the US or Canada or Iraq.
> helping your countrymen before non-countrymen on principle seems foolish and insular to me
is a bit insular =).
If you travel a bit around the world, having pride in your country, or camaraderie with your countrymen isn't that unusual a viewpoint. In fact, your view-point is a bit unusual (although that doesn't necessarily make it wrong). Many people will put their own country/tribe/family before strangers.
I'm probably the other side of the coin to you. To me, the next step is treating your country as nothing more than a business-transaction - I pay taxes, you give me services. I don't like that viewpoint.
Having a sense of civic pride - in a shared culture of history with those around you - can lead to many selfless things, and binds people together. Of course, taken too far, you get jingoism - but to my mind, there is a happy middle-ground.
>To me, the next step is treating your country as nothing more than a business-transaction - I pay taxes, you give me services. I don't like that viewpoint.
I guess that's my ideal world. I think that's where we're all inevitably moving, though it'll be slow.
Maybe because you've been through hardships together, maybe your neighbors ancestors owe yours a tremendous debt of gratitude, numerous reasons that I doubt refugees from most anywhere in the world would find difficult to understand.
Also, this thing called war used to affect us in the west, where the comfortable living of the last 70 odd years seems to have completely wiped any memories from the earlier difficult periods from our collective consciousness. The very idea of forming tightly knit bonds with your neighbors, and saving in times of plenty for the inevitable times of hardship that lie down the road, is now considered not just passe, but foolish.
Maybe, but that's a special exception. Usually this is not the case.
>maybe your neighbors ancestors owe yours a tremendous debt of gratitude
Who cares about ancestors? If my ancestor was a murderer, do I have to honor his legacy? I couldn't care less what my ancestors did, unless I've interacted with them while they were still alive.
As for war: that's the one big exception. Of course nationalism is required during war. But the West is not currently in a state of war.
Almost everyone.
Of course, I know it's different in many non-Western cultures.
Because it's more efficient. Because you're more likely to be able to effectively communicate and interact with a neighbor than with someone from across the world. Because of self-interest: helping your neighbor is in part helping yourself.
Like, I grew up here, but the extreme individualism in America seems weird and unhealthy to me. People instinctually work for their family, friends, and tribe first, and we should harness that instinct for good rather than trying to just suppress it.
So if your idea of charity is selflessly giving money, local is not the place to look. But it's rather abstract and you don't build relationships that way.
But you are right, charity doesn't have to purely selfless; it can also be about building the local community.
It is not some majestic yet universal coincidence that people have more in common with those who happen to share the same genes, and less so the more divergence exists.
>It is not some majestic yet universal coincidence that people have more in common with those who happen to share the same genes, and less so the more divergence exists.
It is the definition of a coincidence. The confounding variables being the shared area, culture, and socioeconomic tier in which you're born.
To be fair, he did give a good deal of jobs to these people at his warehouse. Jobs that would have otherwise gone to locals. I know this, because I used to have one of those jobs and still have a number of friends that work there. Whether or not those jobs deserved to be for someone local or not, I can't say, but it's disingenuous to label people xenophobes for having legitimate concerns about how they, and their community, will continue to provide for their loved ones as jobs/livelihoods are given away to people from outside their communities (especially in a region that was hit pretty hard by the auto-industry issues of recent years).
Probably because there is some truth in there. If you have any Muslim friend just ask them if they believe in freedom of speech and expression, few will say yes then ask them, should making fun of Mohammad be allowed, they will say no.
Every American Muslim I have met believes in the 1st Amendment.
Perhaps more than many Americans, American Muslims are acutely aware of how our laws keep them safe. Reducing these laws would make them more of a target then they already are.
Did you also ask them my follow up question, if making fun of Mohammad is allowed. I guarantee you almost all of them will say no.
About integrating well into society it is well known that Muslims tend to create their own enclaves, whole districts where non-Muslims are afraid to enter, and where unofficial "Shariah police" can beat the crap out of you for buying alcohol, or pork meat. Brussel's Molenbeek is one such example.
[1] http://www.infowars.com/entitled-illegals-when-will-i-get-my...
Europe is vacuuming up anyone who wants to join so that they don't stay in the warzone and possibly turn against them.
EDIT: This is a genuine question. I might not agree with the answers, but I want to know what makes people make this distinction.
The term Economic migrants is used for those that are not in immediate danger, just in search of a better living situation. If the economic situation in your country is so bad there is widespread starvation you'd qualify as a refugee, if I as a european move to the US because tech jobs there pay better I'd still be an economic migrant.
Asylum is an exception to other immigration rules for those that really need it. If you are not in danger, you should follow the normal rules.
The Capital for economic migrants and the State for war refugees.
If Canada were to receive a proportionally large number of refugees that would be about 450 000 refugees. In actuality Canada has received about 35 000. An order of magnitude less.
The Canadian refugee system is/was under no where near the amount of stress that the European states are/were.
(Some European countries like Hungary for example have behaved thoroughly Xenophobic during these events and are frankly embarrassing to be associated with)
[1] http://www.migrationsverket.se/English/About-the-Migration-A...
[2] http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/refugees/welcome/milestones.asp
I mean nearly everybody knows that foreigners and xenophobia are correlated.
Sweden did an amazing job in the last 30 years picking up the mess that the rest of the WHOLE WORLD keeps making. They have been left alone and now they are struggling. Germany is now reaching a similar status. It can't go on like that.
One thing that would likely help is linking seats on the UN Security Council to refugee quotas. You shouldn't be able to decide what goes on without accepting responsibility for picking up your rubbish.
Great idea, but it will never pass while certain countries possesses and abuses their veto[0] on pretty much any deal that has some impact on real world.
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Counci...
Just last month my lifelong friend moved back to Malmö from Amsterdam and now he is moving out because a hand grenade was thrown into the hallway of their apartment complex.
He is a second-generation immigrant from Egypt, but if he'd talk about his experiences publicly, upper class white pseudo-leftist would drive hours from the overpriced hipster district to attack him and his girlfriend for being "racist uncle toms" and vandalize their apartment.
Your holier-than-thou virtue signaling only serves your narcissism and hurts people who are actually in need of help.
edit: I said economic migrants who lie about being refugees are a security threat, not the actual Syrian refugees.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/12/20/everything-know-s...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Maria_Ladenburger
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Year's_Eve_sexual_assaults...
The flood of people into Europe was less than 1/4 Syrians, and those that were were mostly young males and not too many families.
Merkel made a huge mistake by opening the borders.
Disastrous.
It would have been more humane, safe, and cheaper to pluck refugees from the UN camps.
German government could have paid Lufthansa 400 Euros per flight, flown them in from Lebanon right to the spots in Germany. Processed them ahead of time, got them lined up with housing etc. etc..
Instead, many died in transit, it cause political chaos - and terrorists got into the country: the incident this weekend was by a Tunisian, denied status but 'allowed to stay' (meaning he will never leave). No doubt he's angry - as will the 100's of thousands of Tunisians, Pakistanis and others who will not be given status, but 'allowed to stay' and therefore live in a grey zone.
I believe most Syrians, Iraqis and Afghanis will be given status, the rest, not.
Yes, having an ocean in between is an advantage.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13234860 and marked it off-topic.
Is there a criteria or policy you follow?
If we truly wanted to help these people and make a difference then the best thing we can do is provide local refugee camps with the resources to take care of their greatest needs. They know much better than we ever could what is needed. Hell, we can't even communicate with many of them, as many don't speak English and we have far too little translators.
And meanwhile we need to actually tackle many of the root problems of why we're in this hole mess to begin with. Solving many of those are hard, others not so much. For example, could we please stop selling those countries weapons to kill themselves with?
But as Wolf Blitzer so astutely pointed out on CNN, that would deeply impact the bottom line of America's 'defense' contractors!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gk0TqIbPNbY
We have frequently shifting national moods so why is it a surprise our foreign policy behaves as if it has a multiple personality disorder? If one was a cynic they might suggest this was a subversive policy for one system to cause systemic instability outside of its borders.
Look at what just happened in France and Germany, a "refugee" decided to run a semi into a crowd of people for fun. I did not see any details on the Immigration Canada screening procedures in this article. It's only a matter of time until these sort of attacks start coming to Canada and the USA...oh wait San Bernadino. Better start putting in concrete roadblocks.
Honestly this sort of thing is why people in the flyover states decided to elect Trump. They are sick and tired of the bleeding-hearts importing the worlds refugees and thus making them their problem. Jobs and health insurance is what America cares about, not immigrants or transgender bathroom usage. I don't want any refugees in the united states, at all. We have our own goddamn problems to deal with, and don't need anymore.
America seems to care very, very much about that. It's just that you think bigotry is right, so you see people fighting for their rights as making nonsense up.
Please don't make sweeping generalizations like this. It's pretty clear that the US has a wide variety of opinions on this and a variety of other issues.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13235239 and marked it off-topic.
I used to be a Creationist, how the political ideology of Progression thinks about biology is very similar to how Creationists have thought about biological evolution down through the last two centuries.
While both camps see each other as being extraordinarily different, this is not compelling evidence that they aren't related, note the conflict between Shia and Sunni. They see each as being oppositional... Similarly Progressivism and Creationism come from the same source. If you trace back the history of ideas to ye olde England and Germany this becomes startlingly obvious. It is not a coincidence that the phrase 'social justice' is Catholic in origin.
Why this matters is that when Darwin set off his Atom Bomb concerning the Origin of Species, he immediately ran into direct conflict with the Church because the implications of evolution theory contradicted the account of life being formed in Genesis.
Today Darwin's ideas have won out over Christianity. Most Christians believe in evolution theory, and they take the first book of the Bible as not being a literal account of reality. In my opinion this ultimately neutered the political legitimacy of Christianity.
However a descendant of Christianity, Progressivism, continues to not believe in Evolution. Unlike Christianity, it has managed to exert enormous political influence through the education system, especially the universities. It is what has tabooed discussion of human speciation.
This is less than obvious because most students would initially deny that they disbelieve Evolution theory. Then, as it moves further up against their taboos, red lights begin to flash and they begin exhibiting failures of imagination.
There are students that;
- Believe evolution explains the animal/plant kingdoms but not that of humans "there hasn't been enough time for human evolution" (christian variant: humans are special).
- Believe evolution explains human evolution in the past but not the present.
- Believe evolution explains human evolution below the neck only. Here the brain is immutable but obvious physiological changes are fine.
- Believe evolution explains the development of the human brain but insist that nonetheless human speciation is impossible (christian variant: 'microevolution' i.e. small changes up to a limit - The reason for the constrained scope is never explained, only assumed).
None of them want to acknowledge that if evolution is real then humans evolve, and if humans evolve, then logically there could be evidence for different groups of humans. If such evidence existed for the beginning of human speciation the strongest evidence would be found in human population groups which have been separated for the longest period of time e.g. 100,000 years.
As you know science is very dependent on the ability to replicate experiments and make predictions. This is why in universities in the West, this subject is so tabooed there are few scientists willing to stick their necks out by doing those experiments. One of the men who discovered DNA, James Watson, is blacklisted because of some off the cuff remarks about race. If a bollocking can happen to somebody who made one of the most important discoveries in biology, it can sure happen to a less prestigious scientist. It is a tabooed subject because Progressivism is founded on theological roots i.e. the premise of their beliefs was never rational to begin with. The Chinese, who have no such taboo, Christian or Progressive, are making huge strides in biological science because the Progressivism meme is not strong in China.
This documentary 'DNA Dreams' is worth watching to fully appreciate this.