A question for everyone: Would a delay in the open borders element have helped? For instances a gradual transition, with restrictions, gradually over several years moving towards full openeness?
Some restrictions pertaining to integration would help.
Being able to speak the language within your first year in a new country helps integration and lessens the us-vs-them feeling. Ideally people wouldn't mind hearing a different language, but unfortunately we're not that tolerant yet.
The rich countries want cheap workers, you can have them both cheap and educated in foreign languages, this workers also will go home when working season is over or if they don't like the conditions. The ones that do not directly benefit by this cheap workforce may not like this people that don't speak the main language well but the ones that benefit don't care.
It's a vote-winning strategy to keep an economic boom going, and importing young workers to fuel it is such a strategy. Almost all European countries did this.
By the time said workers are old, and their kids (who aren't mentally comparing to the village their family) are unhappily unemployed... well that's decades later, you don't get elected by worrying about such things.
The ones that do not benefit from this do not want it, but there are family businesses that would fail without the cheap workers from other countries, I am not making the point that cheap work is a good thing or a bad thing, just that people are benefiting from this.
Also this workers are working hard jobs in agriculture or constructions, with bad conditions, the citizens would not accept to work this job, for the agriculture obs I am not sure if even with bigger pay the regular citizens would want to work hard physical jobs outside in the bad weather.
If you're an Italian guy and we meet on the street and I don't speak Italian, how would you know if I'm visiting or living?
EDIT: Before you respond that "immigration policy etc etc", notice that the post I was responding to was talking about interations between individuals (using phrases like "ideally people wouldn't mind hearing a different language"), not policy.
I've found in different countries within the EU that attitudes change dramatically to foreigners once you go beyond the centres of major cities or tourist areas. This is true even in Ireland where the only language barrier is an accent.
Maybe this is what he means by the distinction of living/visiting?
There's already a lot of rights that countries can (and do) use to limit this, but for whatever reason the UK chose not to. We could have stopped/limited migration from the new EU members (for up to 7 years after they join), but chose not to. We could prosecute benefit fraud/welfare tourism, but choose not to. We could return EU migrants who don't work and can't support themselves, but choose not to.
I have no idea what the motive for not taking any of these actions is, but whatever it is it'd probably apply to any other delay or transition you could come up with - unless it was forced on the UK I guess.
What do you mean by "open borders"? If you're talking about the UK, the UK never had open borders in the sense that the rest of the EU has open borders (i.e. complete absense of customs).
Helped with which of those countries? With which borders?
The top of the divided list is Serbia, which has still not fully healed from its own civil war. Then you have Italy, whose problems probably mostly relate to the financial crisis fallout.
The UK being divided over Europe is hardly new, but the salience of the issue has been driven up by the press systematically misreporting it. There are also questions of the centralisation of power which aren't going away.
"Each year, pro-government crowds rally on March 15, the anniversary of Hungary’s 1848 nationalist uprising against the Habsburg yoke. This year as usual Orban spoke of what it meant to be Hungarian — and not Hungarian. “We are fighting an enemy that is different from us. Not open, but hiding; not straightforward but crafty; not honest but base; not national but international; does not believe in working but speculates with money; does not have its own homeland but feels it owns the whole world.” The Wandering Jew is back in Hungarian politics.
The Reuters article does not bring anything new: Soros is a political opponent of the current government of Hungary since he is funding groups which are opposing the policies of the government.
For the FT, I couldn't read it since I don't have a subscription. Still the quote provided does not specifically talk about the “Wandering Jew” stereotype.
Of course I agree with you that the criticism of Soros by the government could lead to act of antisemitism as shown by the tags (of which we have no pictures in the articles), but this act of the government does not seem anti-Semitic.
> Then you have Italy, whose problems probably mostly relate to the financial crisis fallout
Italy is a victim of austerity first and foremost. We could recover like everyone else on the eurozone, but got instead crushed by the eu imposing restrictive budgeting measures in the most critical times http://bruegel.org/2014/10/austerity-tales-the-netherlands-a...
I agree; this is the real most serious problem with the EU and various parts of the centre-right consensus. The insistence that the books be made to balance regardless of the human cost.
Or there is a sizable portion of the European population who don’t want mass immigration. It’s not exactly a new phenomenon that tensions develop when heterogeneous groups of humans inhabit the same geographical area.
I'm totally for migration, but at a level where we can adequately integrate the people we bring in.
I want to make sure everybody has the support they need and conversely I want the state to make sure the people coming in are acting in the best interests of the country.
Is this really such a far-right fringe position to have?
The problem is that proponents of mass immigration frame it as "either you are for mass immigration, or you are for the slaughtering/suffering/starvation/etc. of refugees in war torn areas"
No, you're not - there are plenty of options in between the current state of things and complete indifference to peoples' lives. Alternatives include accelerated immigration programs focused on refugees. Or a peace-keeping intervention in the war-torn places.
The issue GP is pointing out is that this framing is basically shutting out any possible discussion. While myself I'm rather currently in favour of relatively lenient immigration policies, a lot of people I know personally are anti-immigration because they feel like we're being scammed with a bait-and-switch tactic - i.e. that we're told to accept war refugees, and what we get instead are economical migrants. Whether justified by evidence or not, I find those fears are something reasonable for people to have.
I wouldn't. They wouldn't and can't. It's all what the media says and shows. I'm just reporting on what my acquaintances believe from what they see on the news / in their social media feeds / through third-hand stories and cherry-picked examples confirming stereotypes. It's all just perceptions from indirect sources, like 99% of social issues of today.
You perhaps wouldn't but for one thing, refugees come from war-torn areas. It is implied constantly, but never stated, by the government that the current flow of refugees come from Syria, fleeing the violence there.
Reality: Syrian refugees are a tiny minority. Africans and people from central Asia are the large bulk of the immigrants (>80%) and they are most definitely not coming from war-torn areas.
Not at all. If my neighbor breaks his bathroom, he's welcome to use mine. But after a month, when his whole family is now frequently coming over, I will ask him to get a plumber. If he won't, I'll do it and lock my door.
For many countries sending people to prime immigration target countries, the only visible fix is running their countries for them.
Instead, the UN and other groups do the opposite. They run around singing about human rights, enabling lawlessness and crime to go on unchecked while decent citizens become frustrated, some of them escaping and contributing to immigration.
In particular, Central America. I know many people that would be 100% onboard with defending and cleaning up their country. Instead, they all tell me they don't even carry a weapon, because using it will get them jailed with a short life expectancy.
Meanwhile, pretty much every Guatemalan I speak with pines for the days of Rios Montt which kept things safe and clean. Yet is decried by the international community which doesn't have to live with the result of their choices.
Fix the source, take a heavy hand. There's no need for the West to babysit people.
Letting a tiny amount of people in to your own countries will accomplish little to actually relieve suffering. It's pointless and costly and not a real solution.
> For many countries sending people to prime immigration target countries, the only visible fix is running their countries for them.
Funnily enough, the current "immigration" fiasco in the UK is about the Windrush generation, who came over from Jamaica at the instigation of the UK which was running the country at the time. The UK is trying to retroactively undo this and deport them, including people who were born in the UK, despite the fact that they originally came over on British passports.
Yes it was an obviously disastrous policy, as anyone should have been able to predict. Some politicians at the time accurately stated this obvious truth, and years later they've been proven right beyond a doubt. So right are they that critics even now only yell insults and demand censorship.
Running a country for someone doesn't mean you need to give citizenship, residency, or even visas to them. It just means you do the math and see that it's obviously less suffering to remove some liberty and self-governance to improve the lives of millions. Over time, slowly give back bits of governance while retaining the right to override. Then take it from there.
It takes some mental gymnastics to allow a situation where innocent people live in fear and can be robbed and killed without reprisals only to claim you've delivered "human rights" and democracy.
> remove some liberty and self-governance to improve the lives of millions
The trouble with this is that, as currently demonstrated around the world, you need to keep killing increasingly large numbers of people to maintain this level of control. The argument for apartheit South Africa was always this, and it was a terrible idea. It was the argument for tanks on the streets in Northern Ireland and the argument for tanks on the streets of Hungary in 56.
Apartheid killed very few, 7000 is the number I can find (then 14k during transition). This doesn't square with "needs to kill increasingly large number of people". That's my only point.
It doesn't matter because it doesn't justify apartheid, just shows that you don't need to murder lots of people. Having bad countries outsource key government roles to good countries doesn't need to involve any sort of tiered citizenship or segregation.
Current murder rates seem high and are likely underreported. (For instance, Guatemala won't record a homicide if the person doesn't die right away but is helped by aid personnel.)
Further, apartheid isn't a case of what I'm proposing. They were running their own country for their benefit, not as a humanitarian/client setup.
It’s probably a far right enough position that it’ll get you convicted of some hate crime in the U.K., just as some teen got convicted of one for posting rap lyrics online from American rapper Snap Dog.
same, I'm all for immigration and cultural interchange. however what we get is immigration and segregation. that's not a recipe for long term stability, especially with the southern states youth unemployment rate - whether is true or not that immigration impact the available job pool, the hundred thousands that arrive yearly plus the current job situation is bounded to breed resentment on both sides. can anyone blame either of them?
It's a lot worse than it was in the 1990s and 2000s. It's definitely moving in the wrong direction and ... what exact reason do you have there is any change coming at all ?
Meanwhile, the economic situation of the urban poor keeps getting worse (less pay for more work, more abuses, worse housing, ...) so in addition to creating these insular societies, the UK is also seriously upping the pressure on them. And before you say it, no it's not brexit (not that I'm claiming it's improving matters), it's been going on for decades.
Oddly enough you can look at the Middle East and see two great examples which while are at odds with each other have more in common than with most of the rest of the of the region.
Can you really look at human history and think that, upon creating an underclass with a different religion and different phenotypic traits, somehow things will go well?
The instinct that you describe is real. You can either acknowledge it as a constraint and design your immigration policy to work around it, or you can ignore it. But you do so at your peril.
You're hearing that. But "look at human history" could mean thinking a little bit about the great multicultural empires of the recent past... like you know, the Ottomans, or the Austrians, or the Indian Raj.
All of these ended in great violence, and once the killing was over, a much higher degree of segregation. (Arguably what's going on in Syria is still the endgame of Ottomans disintegration.) Not wishing to repeat this historical experience does not seem crazy to me.
Do you have other historical examples? Or you prefer to just imagine sunshine and rainbows forever?
Creating an underclass is a terrible idea. So we should strive to ensure an egalitarian, pluralistic society in which people can live alongside each other with respect.
(This includes not making an underclass out of people who are already citizens, either!)
This is the correct goal. But work on reducing the existing underclass is frequently undercut by importing another. Seeking not to make the problem larger, and assessing realistically how fast your solutions are working, seems like a rational course of action.
For example, the best thing that could happen to the US underclass is for unskilled labour to become expensive. If slaughterhouses and gardening firms and nail salons had to all bid for the same supply of local labour, they would bid the price up. But instead these industries are heavily reliant on imported labour. (Their owners will speak of a shortage but, as HN well knows when it's programming jobs, they mean a shortage at the price and docility to which they are accustomed.)
You didnt really process all the information in the parent post properly.
At no point did she claim it was a default approach
But i will bite...why not? Tech changes tend to be adverse to change in many organizations, why not policy?
Seems pretty reasonable to me, but then I am also of the opinion that 0 immigration should be the starting point in discussions of immigration (rather than “as much as possible”, which seems to have somehow become the default position).
Hardly. Zero immigration or zero net immigration? I'm not sure people realise that the only countries that have that state are ones that are both so authoritarian that they can enforce it and so bad that nobody wants to live there.
"Zero work visas" leads to even more egregiously stupid outcomes. No trade shows. No touring bands.
("Zero immigration" also means that if one of your nationals wants to marry a foreigner, they have to leave the country. And so on.)
net migration seems like an entirely irrelevant number here. It's something politicians speak of in the UK just because it's smaller. If the issue under debate is assimilation, then every native who departs increases the relevant ratio.
I believe the perception that the immigration policy is "as much as possible" doesn't reflect reality. Many in the west feel it is the humane thing to offer immigrants in war torn ME an opportunity for a better life considering the selfish meddling the West has been involved in WRT ME policy for the last 100 years (think Sykes-Picot, which carved the ME up for UK/France ends).
Countries that had nothing whatsoever to do with Sykes-Picot or the Middle East also feel compelled to import huge numbers of people, so that is not the most parsimonious explanation, unless you think e.g. contemporary Sweden & Norway are somehow responsible for the actions of the UK & France 100 years ago.
Well, national borders are an entirely human construct, so there's an argument to be made that freedom of movement should be the default and those who want to restrict it should have to justify themselves.
(I do get that there are justifications given that framing...)
Actually, I was ridiculing your stance that something being a human construct is somehow an argument against it.
Here's a more forthright approach: The problem with your argument is that it goes about half a level deep and doesn't hold up to even the most elementary criticism. Specifically, I was pointing out that human constructs are a fundamental element of human existence; they are how we negotiate existing alongside one another. So, trying to argue against something solely because it is a human construct makes about as much sense as arguing that somebody is evil because they were born in February.
On the contrary, human groups have defended their territorial boundaries against other human groups since the beginning of our species. Even chimps do it.
Immigration is just a wedge issue-- a means to an end.
The point is to use propaganda to pit half of the population against the other half. Divisive politics in a nutshell! As the saying goes, "divide and conquer."
I don't know how you can say this. Go and try to get a low end job in a European capital, and then come back with an answer to "do immigrants directly lower the quality of life for the urban poor ?".
The answer, without any doubt, is yes.
Now you could say that the economy must simply grow to compensate, but it hasn't been doing that for decades now. Exactly when will this happen ? Likewise, government support has been shrinking while taxes have been growing.
Solve this problem and you make immigrants a solvable issue. Don't solve this and you might as well try to paint the sky a bright shade of green.
Don't solve it for another decade, perhaps two and there will be civil war.
I also believe it's unfair to ask European countries to take immigrants running from wars mostly caused by the U.S. in the Middle East.
It must be nice to launch wars worldwide, knowing there is an ocean separating you from the targets so you won't have to suffer any of the consequences for it (whether it's direct retaliation or having to take in the civilians running from the war - especially when the U.S. government seems to consider civilians living nearby targets as "collateral damage" or outright targets, with the whole 16+ year old male enemy combatant rule).
> Is this really such a far-right fringe position to have?
Yes. We live in a world were for wealthy people/orgs it's very easy and cheap to move money, products, raw material, energy, information and jobs across the world, travel for business and recreation, even obtain visas and relocate to poor countries (both legally or with small bribes).
This 8 categories list almost everything that moves in the world with only one exception: people relocating to rich countries. That's incredibly difficult in comparison.
Even if you have an advanced degree, good intentions, no criminal record, fluency in the local language, willingness to work even at lower salaries, you still need a company to do expensive paperwork to effectively authorize you to be there.
If this does not sounds unjust enough let's not forget that people do not choose to be born in a wealthy or poor country.
EDIT: The usual bunch of downvotes came in just after posting. Interesting.
Your comment has raised some interesting questions for me, would true freedom of movement would seem to undermine the traditional nation state and the will of its people?
At the very least it would massively change what it means to belong to a nation, it could largely erase that belonging.
It would be such a different world to live in, national identity is already a tough thing to quantify and reason about.
It's well known that ultra-nationalist governments thorough history has been always very strict with both immigration and emigration.
Also ideas (books, movies, even music...) can influence a country even more than immigrants. Unsurprisingly, heavy censorship is very common dictatorships.
It's interesting to look at what rich and poor countries import and export ideas, ranging from academic research, literature, art to popular movies...
>Or there is a sizable portion of the European population who don’t want mass immigration.
This isn't a "one or the other" kind of thing. Yes, there are people who oppose mass immigration, but Russia also has a habit of trying to destabilize European countries by supporting nationalist/anti-immigration groups.
Yeah, but pointing to Russia as the primary cause is an attempt to take away legitimacy from certain political positions. As if to say, “The only reason anybody has this position is because they’ve been fooled by the Russians.”
No, they are under attack by eurocrats that dream of a uniform Europe under one central government. If the EU wants to do help Europe, it should become democratic (today, it isn't, the only democratically elected body of the EU is the parliament, but that "parliament" does not even have the power to propose new laws because their is no proper separation of powers) and actually live subsidiarity (a principle that is recognized on paper only).
the problem is that this EU is a tyrannical democracy. it's too easy to strong-arm some states into swallowing some policy that benefits everyone but them, like Dublin III, like production quotas, like fishing rights... this leaves basically everyone discontent about something everywhere.
> this leaves basically everyone discontent about something everywhere.
Isn't that the definition of a good compromise?
I mean, each EU country is fighting to get itself the best deal, to bolster its position over other EU states. There is no way to make it so that everyone (or even the majority) is happy, when the definition of "happy" is "much more than you could possibly get".
The Treaty of Lisbon is not equivalent with the proposed constitution. It merely amends current EU legislation with some aspects salvaged from the far further-reaching Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe.
The EU is democratic: it empowers the democratically-elected governments of 27 states to collectively make policy (most of the time by unanimous voting, traditionally), and then empowers the population at large, as directly represented in EuroParliament through proportional methods, to amend or reject such policy.
The Commission is not instated by God Almighty or by hereditary laws: it is nominated by democratically-elected national governments. The Council does not spring fully-formed from the head of Zeus: it is made of democratically-elected governments. The European Court of Justice was not created by the Pope 1000 years ago: it was created by democratically-elected governments through treaties. And so on and so forth.
The fact that such governments are then able to sustain the fiction that they have no say in EU matters, is more a reflection of the poor state of critical thinking in voters across the continent than an indictment of EU's "democracy level", whatever that might mean... unless we assume that a process is democratic when it agrees with one's opinions, and completely tyrannical when it doesn't.
Also just individual humans who don't assume that open borders and mass immigration is the correct state we must eventually arrive at.
Isn't it much simpler to believe that there are people who organically disagree?
And if the goal of the conspiracy is to sow discontent and weaken relations, and if a disagreement requires two opposing viewpoints, aren't both sides equally responsible for the weakening?
From the linked article: Le Pen’s (National Front leader in France)has taken loans from Russian banks and has repeatedly praised Putin.
They are taking loans from Russians banks because all French banks have refused to give them loans and has closed all their accounts. If you're inclined to believe conspiracy theory, remember that Macron has worked for banks before...
>In return, Russian state media openly supported her in the French election
And the support given by various American politician to Macron doesn't count? The article is pretty hypocritical.
So mentally-weak people oppose Muslim immigration because Russia, just like mentally-weak vote Trump because Russia
--
Its a fallacy: "All of my ideological opponents are mentally-weak, but its not their fault"
I'm not a statistician, but I have this feeling that this applies primarily when you're testing for simple things from an uniform population - not for a complex factor which has more possible spurious correlations involved than the number of samples you're taking. So I wouldn't have 95% confidence in a result of a politics poll on 1000 people per country.
(Also, there's selection bias involved, including self-selection if the poll was voluntary. I generally don't trust voluntary opt-in polls much, as it's too easy to get bullshit results from them, and I don't often see people even realizing this.)
EDIT: the poll authors do claim that their results are representative of the nation in some countries:
"16 of the 27 countries surveyed generate nationally representative samples in their countries (Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Poland, Serbia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, and United States). Brazil, Chile, China, India, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Turkey produce a national sample that is considered to represent a more affluent, connected population. These are still a vital social group to understand in these countries, representing an important and emerging middle class."
I'd say "almost all", and this is actually the place where perception becomes the reality, for all practical purposes. Society being polarized, vs. everyone believing the society is polarized and acting accordingly, is equivalent in practice.
That's why I believe media people - both mainstream and social - are being dangerously irresponsible my sharing every possible polarizing bullshit to maximize ad clicks. And I mean "dangerously" as in "could cause significant loss of life at some point".
In regards to immigration issues, the best long term solution is to build up Middle Eastern nations as productive societies capable of providing a comfortable life for their citizens.
Consider the US's Marshall Plan for rebuilding Europe post WW2. Western nations must partner in a concerted effort to build up Middle Eastern nations, rather than funding destructive and chaos inducing wars and revolutions.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 174 ms ] threadBeing able to speak the language within your first year in a new country helps integration and lessens the us-vs-them feeling. Ideally people wouldn't mind hearing a different language, but unfortunately we're not that tolerant yet.
Because I don't think I've ever heard a politician say out loud that they want cheap workers.
By the time said workers are old, and their kids (who aren't mentally comparing to the village their family) are unhappily unemployed... well that's decades later, you don't get elected by worrying about such things.
Also this workers are working hard jobs in agriculture or constructions, with bad conditions, the citizens would not accept to work this job, for the agriculture obs I am not sure if even with bigger pay the regular citizens would want to work hard physical jobs outside in the bad weather.
Not sure what you're talking about. I'm been to Italy and Germany many times and never felt unwelcome for not speaking their language.
EDIT: Before you respond that "immigration policy etc etc", notice that the post I was responding to was talking about interations between individuals (using phrases like "ideally people wouldn't mind hearing a different language"), not policy.
Maybe this is what he means by the distinction of living/visiting?
Again, on which immigrants are we talking about here? Could you be specific?
I have no idea what the motive for not taking any of these actions is, but whatever it is it'd probably apply to any other delay or transition you could come up with - unless it was forced on the UK I guess.
We absolutely do. You need to look at "no recourse to public funds" (something that causes significant harm).
See also many of the Windrush generation being refused benefits, or forced to repay benefits:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/apr/22/government-a...
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/apr/20/dwp-sent-win...
The current benefits regime is brutal to everyone, and there's extra brutality for migrants.
The top of the divided list is Serbia, which has still not fully healed from its own civil war. Then you have Italy, whose problems probably mostly relate to the financial crisis fallout.
Next is Hungary, which is on the classic path of fascism by rallying against external and internal percieved enemies and anti-semitism: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/12/george-soros-u...
The UK being divided over Europe is hardly new, but the salience of the issue has been driven up by the press systematically misreporting it. There are also questions of the centralisation of power which aren't going away.
Poland has an ongoing constitutional crisis which seems to be a straightforward concentration of power by the right: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/11/2...
Spain is also a victim of the financial crisis, but the important issue there is Catalonia.
Of course there could be example of anti-semitism from the gov in Hungary, but I don't think that's the case of the linked article.
Longer: https://www.ft.com/content/ed901d78-38c4-11e8-8b98-2f31af407...
"Each year, pro-government crowds rally on March 15, the anniversary of Hungary’s 1848 nationalist uprising against the Habsburg yoke. This year as usual Orban spoke of what it meant to be Hungarian — and not Hungarian. “We are fighting an enemy that is different from us. Not open, but hiding; not straightforward but crafty; not honest but base; not national but international; does not believe in working but speculates with money; does not have its own homeland but feels it owns the whole world.” The Wandering Jew is back in Hungarian politics.
For the FT, I couldn't read it since I don't have a subscription. Still the quote provided does not specifically talk about the “Wandering Jew” stereotype.
Of course I agree with you that the criticism of Soros by the government could lead to act of antisemitism as shown by the tags (of which we have no pictures in the articles), but this act of the government does not seem anti-Semitic.
Italy is a victim of austerity first and foremost. We could recover like everyone else on the eurozone, but got instead crushed by the eu imposing restrictive budgeting measures in the most critical times http://bruegel.org/2014/10/austerity-tales-the-netherlands-a...
I want to make sure everybody has the support they need and conversely I want the state to make sure the people coming in are acting in the best interests of the country.
Is this really such a far-right fringe position to have?
You can't have a cake and eat it.
The issue GP is pointing out is that this framing is basically shutting out any possible discussion. While myself I'm rather currently in favour of relatively lenient immigration policies, a lot of people I know personally are anti-immigration because they feel like we're being scammed with a bait-and-switch tactic - i.e. that we're told to accept war refugees, and what we get instead are economical migrants. Whether justified by evidence or not, I find those fears are something reasonable for people to have.
How on earth would you tell the difference as a bystander? Or is it the case that the media are telling them to be afraid of "migrants"?
Reality: Syrian refugees are a tiny minority. Africans and people from central Asia are the large bulk of the immigrants (>80%) and they are most definitely not coming from war-torn areas.
For many countries sending people to prime immigration target countries, the only visible fix is running their countries for them.
Instead, the UN and other groups do the opposite. They run around singing about human rights, enabling lawlessness and crime to go on unchecked while decent citizens become frustrated, some of them escaping and contributing to immigration.
In particular, Central America. I know many people that would be 100% onboard with defending and cleaning up their country. Instead, they all tell me they don't even carry a weapon, because using it will get them jailed with a short life expectancy.
Meanwhile, pretty much every Guatemalan I speak with pines for the days of Rios Montt which kept things safe and clean. Yet is decried by the international community which doesn't have to live with the result of their choices.
Fix the source, take a heavy hand. There's no need for the West to babysit people.
Letting a tiny amount of people in to your own countries will accomplish little to actually relieve suffering. It's pointless and costly and not a real solution.
Funnily enough, the current "immigration" fiasco in the UK is about the Windrush generation, who came over from Jamaica at the instigation of the UK which was running the country at the time. The UK is trying to retroactively undo this and deport them, including people who were born in the UK, despite the fact that they originally came over on British passports.
Running a country for someone doesn't mean you need to give citizenship, residency, or even visas to them. It just means you do the math and see that it's obviously less suffering to remove some liberty and self-governance to improve the lives of millions. Over time, slowly give back bits of governance while retaining the right to override. Then take it from there.
It takes some mental gymnastics to allow a situation where innocent people live in fear and can be robbed and killed without reprisals only to claim you've delivered "human rights" and democracy.
The trouble with this is that, as currently demonstrated around the world, you need to keep killing increasingly large numbers of people to maintain this level of control. The argument for apartheit South Africa was always this, and it was a terrible idea. It was the argument for tanks on the streets in Northern Ireland and the argument for tanks on the streets of Hungary in 56.
It doesn't matter because it doesn't justify apartheid, just shows that you don't need to murder lots of people. Having bad countries outsource key government roles to good countries doesn't need to involve any sort of tiered citizenship or segregation.
Current murder rates seem high and are likely underreported. (For instance, Guatemala won't record a homicide if the person doesn't die right away but is helped by aid personnel.)
Further, apartheid isn't a case of what I'm proposing. They were running their own country for their benefit, not as a humanitarian/client setup.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/british-woman-found-gu...
Meanwhile, the economic situation of the urban poor keeps getting worse (less pay for more work, more abuses, worse housing, ...) so in addition to creating these insular societies, the UK is also seriously upping the pressure on them. And before you say it, no it's not brexit (not that I'm claiming it's improving matters), it's been going on for decades.
The culture I live in isn't perfect, but lets try and make sure any changes we make are in the right direction.
Oddly enough you can look at the Middle East and see two great examples which while are at odds with each other have more in common than with most of the rest of the of the region.
Iran and Israel.
What are you saying, exactly? Don't dress it up with $20 words... you're literally saying "Those Others are different from us. Ick!"
All of these ended in great violence, and once the killing was over, a much higher degree of segregation. (Arguably what's going on in Syria is still the endgame of Ottomans disintegration.) Not wishing to repeat this historical experience does not seem crazy to me.
Do you have other historical examples? Or you prefer to just imagine sunshine and rainbows forever?
(This includes not making an underclass out of people who are already citizens, either!)
For example, the best thing that could happen to the US underclass is for unskilled labour to become expensive. If slaughterhouses and gardening firms and nail salons had to all bid for the same supply of local labour, they would bid the price up. But instead these industries are heavily reliant on imported labour. (Their owners will speak of a shortage but, as HN well knows when it's programming jobs, they mean a shortage at the price and docility to which they are accustomed.)
At no point did she claim it was a default approach But i will bite...why not? Tech changes tend to be adverse to change in many organizations, why not policy?
"Zero work visas" leads to even more egregiously stupid outcomes. No trade shows. No touring bands.
("Zero immigration" also means that if one of your nationals wants to marry a foreigner, they have to leave the country. And so on.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sykes%E2%80%93Picot_Agreement
(I do get that there are justifications given that framing...)
Here's a more forthright approach: The problem with your argument is that it goes about half a level deep and doesn't hold up to even the most elementary criticism. Specifically, I was pointing out that human constructs are a fundamental element of human existence; they are how we negotiate existing alongside one another. So, trying to argue against something solely because it is a human construct makes about as much sense as arguing that somebody is evil because they were born in February.
The notion of real border control is barely 100 years old.
The point is to use propaganda to pit half of the population against the other half. Divisive politics in a nutshell! As the saying goes, "divide and conquer."
The answer, without any doubt, is yes.
Now you could say that the economy must simply grow to compensate, but it hasn't been doing that for decades now. Exactly when will this happen ? Likewise, government support has been shrinking while taxes have been growing.
Solve this problem and you make immigrants a solvable issue. Don't solve this and you might as well try to paint the sky a bright shade of green.
Don't solve it for another decade, perhaps two and there will be civil war.
It must be nice to launch wars worldwide, knowing there is an ocean separating you from the targets so you won't have to suffer any of the consequences for it (whether it's direct retaliation or having to take in the civilians running from the war - especially when the U.S. government seems to consider civilians living nearby targets as "collateral damage" or outright targets, with the whole 16+ year old male enemy combatant rule).
Yes. We live in a world were for wealthy people/orgs it's very easy and cheap to move money, products, raw material, energy, information and jobs across the world, travel for business and recreation, even obtain visas and relocate to poor countries (both legally or with small bribes).
This 8 categories list almost everything that moves in the world with only one exception: people relocating to rich countries. That's incredibly difficult in comparison.
Even if you have an advanced degree, good intentions, no criminal record, fluency in the local language, willingness to work even at lower salaries, you still need a company to do expensive paperwork to effectively authorize you to be there.
If this does not sounds unjust enough let's not forget that people do not choose to be born in a wealthy or poor country.
EDIT: The usual bunch of downvotes came in just after posting. Interesting.
Your comment has raised some interesting questions for me, would true freedom of movement would seem to undermine the traditional nation state and the will of its people?
At the very least it would massively change what it means to belong to a nation, it could largely erase that belonging.
It would be such a different world to live in, national identity is already a tough thing to quantify and reason about.
Also ideas (books, movies, even music...) can influence a country even more than immigrants. Unsurprisingly, heavy censorship is very common dictatorships.
It's interesting to look at what rich and poor countries import and export ideas, ranging from academic research, literature, art to popular movies...
Why ? Because that makes a lot of sense given the economic changes they're trying to make happen.
This isn't a "one or the other" kind of thing. Yes, there are people who oppose mass immigration, but Russia also has a habit of trying to destabilize European countries by supporting nationalist/anti-immigration groups.
Speaking frankly, it’s patronizing bullshit.
That's life, I guess.
Isn't that the definition of a good compromise?
I mean, each EU country is fighting to get itself the best deal, to bolster its position over other EU states. There is no way to make it so that everyone (or even the majority) is happy, when the definition of "happy" is "much more than you could possibly get".
The Commission is not instated by God Almighty or by hereditary laws: it is nominated by democratically-elected national governments. The Council does not spring fully-formed from the head of Zeus: it is made of democratically-elected governments. The European Court of Justice was not created by the Pope 1000 years ago: it was created by democratically-elected governments through treaties. And so on and so forth.
The fact that such governments are then able to sustain the fiction that they have no say in EU matters, is more a reflection of the poor state of critical thinking in voters across the continent than an indictment of EU's "democracy level", whatever that might mean... unless we assume that a process is democratic when it agrees with one's opinions, and completely tyrannical when it doesn't.
Isn't it much simpler to believe that there are people who organically disagree?
And if the goal of the conspiracy is to sow discontent and weaken relations, and if a disagreement requires two opposing viewpoints, aren't both sides equally responsible for the weakening?
In that case (embarassingly obviously) it's the 3rd party's fault, not either of the two disagreeing parties.
oh, come on, this is ridiculous. The russians may be somewhat evil, I concede, but the problems that we europeans have are not their fault, but ours.
It's sad to see such xenophobic comments on HN. Please stop blaming every Russian for what Putin and his friends do.
They are taking loans from Russians banks because all French banks have refused to give them loans and has closed all their accounts. If you're inclined to believe conspiracy theory, remember that Macron has worked for banks before...
>In return, Russian state media openly supported her in the French election
And the support given by various American politician to Macron doesn't count? The article is pretty hypocritical.
{Over at the Monkey Cage blog, Lucan Ahmad Way and Adam Casey recently summarized some of the most prominent cases of Russian meddling in Europe }
Let me quote it for you:
>But it’s not at all clear that Russia’s efforts made any difference
>And even in these, a closer look shows that Russia’s actual influence is far from clear.
>But there are reasons to be skeptical of the claim that Russia swung the election for Trump.
>[Russia] hasn’t gotten much for its efforts — and these efforts have often backfire
(Also, given it's an on-line poll, I have some doubts about whether the sampled population is representative in any way.)
(Also, there's selection bias involved, including self-selection if the poll was voluntary. I generally don't trust voluntary opt-in polls much, as it's too easy to get bullshit results from them, and I don't often see people even realizing this.)
EDIT: the poll authors do claim that their results are representative of the nation in some countries:
"16 of the 27 countries surveyed generate nationally representative samples in their countries (Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Poland, Serbia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, and United States). Brazil, Chile, China, India, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Turkey produce a national sample that is considered to represent a more affluent, connected population. These are still a vital social group to understand in these countries, representing an important and emerging middle class."
https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/bbc-global-survey-wor...
The mainstream and social media can amplify negative sentiments, which propagate between people. This leads to a bad assessment of reality.
That's why I believe media people - both mainstream and social - are being dangerously irresponsible my sharing every possible polarizing bullshit to maximize ad clicks. And I mean "dangerously" as in "could cause significant loss of life at some point".
Consider the US's Marshall Plan for rebuilding Europe post WW2. Western nations must partner in a concerted effort to build up Middle Eastern nations, rather than funding destructive and chaos inducing wars and revolutions.