On a personal note, I'm more likely to investigate anti-refugee arguments because I feel like they're underrated. I agree with the sentiment that we should understand that we're dealing with humans here, not numbers; but just like statistics has its weakness in that it can cause us to over-generalize, picking out the stories of individuals can allow a narrative to be crafted that is overfitted away from the whole.
Big picture: most refugees going across the Mediterranean are Syrian, male (like 72% male!), young, and poor.[0] Like unless they have families that they're hoping to have evacuated (why didn't they bring them over in the first place?), we're talking about a recipe for complete stupidity. Language barriers exist, education barriers exist; I don't know how the Europeans intend to get all of these refugee adults up to economic snuff at the same grade of Europeans who were trained in the ways of the West from birth.
This is going to be a demographic shock to countries with more balanced gender ratios, and in the case of Europe, upside-down aging pyramids. Men without solid economic recourse and lack of cultural integration are going to resort to crime. They will upset the local sex market through strong male competition for women (rape town!). Politics in Europe will never be the same as the majority of the young do not carry any of the previous generation's values.
I'm really open to being proved wrong, I really am. But I'm not counting on it.
I saw the data you linked, but I don't see the "poor".
From what I see, they make up a range of demographics and educational levels.
As to why they did not bring their families over in the first place? That is usually because they want to make sure they have somewhere to stay before bringing their families over.
Bigger picture. The population of Europe as a whole is 740 million or so. Even if the entire population of Syrian pitched up in Europe (20 million or so), it would be under 5% of the population. The actual numbers of refugees is around 5 million, so less than 1%. You are trying to suggest that 1% of the population is a "demographic shock"?
The problem arises when the refugees are concentrated in a few countries, and then other nations use the crowding and chaos there as an excuse not to take any.
"Men without solid economic recourse", as per my previous point, these individuals span the entire socio-economic range, and have a wide range of skills. If they are able to gain employment (Many countries do not allow refugees to work) then I do not see why they would not have solid economic recourse.
Migrants won't spread uniformly trough Europe, but will try to build their own communities into the major hub. While 5 million across Europe uniformly is not a big number, spread them in few of the biggest cities that may offer a chance for them to get a job and suddenly you have a problem.
You are ignoring hundred of years of migration data if you think they will spread uniformly across Europe or even within a single city, the likely outcome is that they will try to stick into their own area, building their own neighborhood, much like you have the Chinese, Arab and whatever quarter in all major cities.
Those individuals while skilled will have no connections, no competitive advantage against the local laborers except a sob story and the necessity to work by whatever means. Guess how it will play out?
They will also carry their own culture tradition and overall mindset. We had many cases of attempted integration gone wrong already over previous migrations, with people beating their own wife or imprisoning their daughters because that's the way they grew up and how they learned to cope with family issues. They are not running away from weird green aliens, eh.
I'm all for integration and acceptance, but with the right process - split them up, isolate them from each other, have them spread uniformly, whatever it can be done to avoid the creation of refugee camps. Then you might have a chance to avert a crisis. Leave them on their own and it will only allow them to bring here the same crises they have over there (just look Turkish/Kurdish escalation and how it affected Swiss ill-integrated communities for a recent example)
Why don't you mention the predominant religion of the migrants and culture shock? Islam is a way of life not just a religion. Literally following the Koran is not compatible with life in the West as indeed with the Christian Bible. You soon get arrested in the UK for proclaiming statements from the Bible (on homosexuality for instance). Interestingly, not so if the text is the Koran. But that's another matter.
I am disgusted with the media recently. All western media are portraying this in a A/B approach. Either you accept migrants without hesitation, or you are fascist animal.
Discussion is not allowed and despite growing public dislike of the process of accepting undocumented immigrants from war torn country that is full of ISIS fighters.
Manipulation (majority of pictures show only women, children and few poorly dressed males), public hate towards people asking questions - this is fascist in my opinion.
Unaddressed things like the fact that majority of immigrants are actually safe in Turkey and Lebanon immigrant camps, yet they decide to go to Europe for better life (so its not like they are in danger). Majority of young males getting to Europe (who in their right mind leaves their wifes and kids in war torn country to find a better life if that's the case? Or are they safe in immigration camps?).
Funny thing - leftist parties are actually shooting themselves in the foot as within 5 years we will see huge rise in right wing parties taking over majority of votes. The "right thing to do" took over "right thing to do to our citizens".
IMO this should be handled as follows: immigrants without visas get send to closed immigration camps, where they wait for paper work. If they pass, off they go, if they wont pass they can either stay in the camp or go back to the country of origin. This is how it was decade ago, not sure why all of sudden there was a change. Letting anyone in will cause rise in right wing movements fueled by increased terrorist activism from undocumented immigrants. Anyone saying "hey, this worked before" forgets, that before ALL immigrants were required to apply for proper visa before getting in, not like now, when they get them without any proper check so we dont know who gets in.
> Unaddressed things like the fact that majority of immigrants are actually safe in Turkey and Lebanon immigrant camps, yet they decide to go to Europe for better life (so its not like they are in danger).
This is false and it's easy to confirm, just read a bit about the conditions of these camps, the lack of food, etc, and if you want to see it for yourself, check YouTube, it actually has a lot of in person short docs about most refugee camps. That's what I did when I had that question in my mind, why would they leave those camps to risk their lifes, and it's mostly due to the lack of food, hygiene, healthcare, and over-capacity.
On a side-note, how can someone say something is unaddressed with the amount of information available on the internet? People just need to read a bit when in doubt and stop with false (and dangerous) assumptions.
> On a side-note, how can someone say something is unaddressed with the amount of information available on the internet? People just need to read a bit when in doubt and stop with false (and dangerous) assumptions.
I meant by mainstream media. They ignore majority of issues and keep misinforming people dependent on old age media.
>This is false and it's easy to confirm...
1) Some camps are actually good suited, its easy to make video/picture of bad state of them - depending on angle - but in general they provide survivable environment - good enough if you run away from your country worrying about your life.
2) Those camps receive huge amounts of foreign aid including cash. We are talking here about hundreds of millions dollars. If the camp is in bad state, then organizations so willingly sending money to those camps should finally start checking where they go. Its easy to throw money at problem through ignorant organization (what was happening in Africa since decades through "charities" completely misusing money), but why common folk in Europe should be taken responsible for their inability to account money they send? Why regular taxpayer needs to pay for mistakes of US, UK, France and Italy governments going in to the wars like in Lybia or Syria? Again, this is no A/B situation, there is many ways to deal with it and one currently offered is probably one of the worst as it will fuel right wing parties to promote separation from EU structures.
And videos like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFiumADzwdI are of not help as this shows that immigrants intentions might be way off. Even some old Syrian refugees are against current migration explaining, that the only reason for it is to get on social welfare. People that own properties and are considered wealthy in Syria.
There is a huge difference between seeing an informed documentary and seeing an out of context video. For example, it's quite possible these people were rejecting food and water because they were tired of being beaten and hold up by the Hungarian police/military, as seen in lots of other videos. One should see these videos with an open mind and not with a preconceived idea because that's how it got us to be surprised by a young child drown in the beach when hundreds of others already had had the same fate or when we start saying they should stay on the neighbouring countries when, in fact, they already are, millions of them.
Obviously these people will behave like any other people would: in a possibly desperate and irrational way. Some would do some things they shouldn't and might end up in jail for it, some will not. It's up to each individual to fight in their own way.
Regarding your first point, you should really read about the United Nations World Food Programme which is the organism in charge of paying for all the food in these camps. From their own page[1]: "The World Food Programme (WFP) is struggling to meet the urgent food needs of close to six million displaced people in Syria and in neighbouring countries. Food operations are severely underfunded, meaning that WFP has been forced to reduce the level of assistance it provides to refugees across the region." More[2]: "1.7m Syrian refugees face food crisis as UN funds dry up". I have never been hungry in my life but it mustn't be what I would call being "good enough". I agree they are not dead though, just hungry.
The easiest way is to try to look for confirmation or a denial of what you just saw. But in the given example all you have is a few minutes of video footage which doesn't give you any context. So in a documentary, you would expect those people rejecting water to explain why they are rejecting it, while in that video all you have is the images without any context. That's obvious, I'd say. Now, given this, you would be surprised by what people might say they are doing what they are doing, as shocking and uncomprehensible as it might seem in a video.
For example, I was having a lot of questions about the situation in Calais, France, why would there be people looking to risk their lifes to go from France to England? Seeing a couple of documentaries on this situations with interviews with some of the people there, I got a completely new insight into what's happening there.
The difference between a few minutes footage and cherrypicked longer footage is just money.
Just because it looks comprehensive doesn't mean it's not trying to spin a certain story.
I'm thoroughly sickened by masd media constantly trying to make it about little girls or shaggy people.
The footage from Hungary might be out of context, but one thing is visible - people there are perfectly fine physically. They are healthy, well fed. This alone should be enough to make one go "Hold on. This is weird"
And if they are rioting because they are being detained until some basic documentation can be set up, then well, fuck them. They come to our home and are already pushing our patience - we were kind enough to not go Saudi Arabia on them. They are not being instantly deported, nor shot.
The overwhelmingly male youth that are immigrating are the reason a bunch of conspiracy theories are afloat on the internet.
The next few years will be interesting. By all accounts Europe is headed for a recession and recessions usually foster xenophobia.[0]
As an Indian living in Europe, I haven't yet noticed any changes but I assume that it will only get worse since behind all the talk about "humanity" most people still have to get 3 meals and when you have thousands such young hungry and tired men who can't get a job, I agree with the parent. Hopefully he and I are proved wrong since this is a real crisis.
Some families send the strongest/healthiest male in the family since the trip to Europe is so dangerous, but the families often come afterwards. It's easier for them to come legally if they already have a family member in the country.
During the first half of 2015, 2000 women and 4500 men came as refugees to Sweden from Syria, but 3100 women and 2000 men came afterwards as asylum searching family members. In total ~5300 women and ~6800 men (including working visas) came to Sweden from Syria.
I wonder, do you think people from non-western countries has a bigger potential of commiting rape? How different do you think the values of these people are compared to "us"?
I think that the extreme cases become more likely for non-Western cultures, even if we assume that the distribution of rapes per ethnicity follows a similar average between populations of West and non-West. Islamic countries are not known for their respect for the sanctity of women, particularly in the Middle Eastern clades of Islam.
(I've had Somalian, Malaysian and Sudanese Muslim friends which were extremely well-adjusted to Western culture and make good claims about women in these countries; but likewise I've had Bangladeshi friends who deplored the situation of women. So I think cultural temperament comes before religious law, but a religion can serve as a strong post-hoc justification for the strongest aspects of that temperament.)
>Like unless they have families that they're hoping to have evacuated (why didn't they bring them over in the first place?),
The reasons I've gathered so far are: The journey is dangerous not just because of the risk of drowning. If I recall correctly, there were stories of rape. There's also a law for family reunification (I don't know the details but at least in the case of minors this means they can bring their family). Lastly, many young Syrian men flee because they could be conscripted by the army.
>I don't know how the Europeans intend to get all of these refugee adults up to economic snuff at the same grade of Europeans who were trained in the ways of the West from birth.
Wow.
You mention immigrant rapists on the way as a valid reason to not bring women..
Yet when you as much as mutter about immigrant rapistz in europe all hell breaks loose, political correctness maelstorm
Where is open discussion about the issues?
Where is data to talk about? I tried to look for any and there are almost none that supports the PC side...
You are going to be massively downvoted, but I am glad to see a dissenting opinion here. It is far too easy for a discussion like this to turn into a "look at our empathy, aren't we great" - alternate opinions are useful.
The demographic 'shock', particularly "upside-down aging pyramids" isn't a problem - it's actually the primary benefit of this migration. "Upside-down aging pyramids" are a problem for us - as the population tends towards older, we have more tax-drains (increasing medical requirements, increasing retirement costs) and less tax-feeders. 18-30yo men, what in another age would have been our definition of eligible conscripts, are exactly the injection required.
Integration is a concern, yes. Language barriers I'm fine with - this is Europe, I don't speak German either - but perhaps the path from temporary to permanent residency needs to be a bit more than paperwork. Some form of (non-military) national service may be ideal.
Germany has a fantastic track-record of vocational / apprenticeship-based education. Perhaps if we can mix such a model with some other requirements (eg, local language), a path could be laid where they not only work for their benefits & contribute back, but also offer a future for them, their family, and a continent that's begging for young blood.
I don't think it's anything to do with "ways of the west", but simply ensuring there's some sort of future ahead of them. Running water stays fresh, standing water grows stagnant.
>I don't know how the Europeans intend to get all of these refugee adults up to economic snuff at the same grade of Europeans who were trained in the ways of the West from birth.
Is anyone really planning on that? It's much nicer to have an underclass under you. The economic argument is often brought up, but there is little backing, seeing how Swedish and German economies are the strongest in Europe and have accepted tons of immigrants in the past decade or two. It is costly for the state to nurse and educate a native citizen.
Your numbers can't be faulted, but the risks might be overstated. Based on purely anecdotal evidence (several young Syrian men who ended up in Belgium) I can say that many of these guys do indeed have families they intend to bring over. Because of the danger and uncertainty of the journey, those who could stash their families somewhere relatively safe for a short while did so. They knew it would be easier for them to reach real safety on their own, and that there will be organisations to help them reunite with their families afterwards. Of course, a negative aspect to this is that the current refugee numbers are lower than they should be, as many of these people will soon account for several more.
The struggle for economic resources might not be as bad as you envision. Countries like Germany have excellent social welfare systems with the capacity of processing refugees as quickly as possible. (OK, "as quickly as possible" isn't very quick, but they'll handle it.) The biggest challenge at the moment is getting these people off welfare and into the job market. Sure, because of cultural and educational differences we're probably not going to see many engineers or neurosurgeons, but the people who collect our garbage and do our cleaning mostly aren't engineers or neurosurgeons either. And language barriers are more fuzzy in the EU than in most other places, we tend to get around them. The jobs won't be fancy, but they'll pay minimum wage and give the refugees a purpose and a sense of self-worth. Also, there's no path to integration as straight and speedy as hanging out with colleagues over breaks.
But you're right, it's not going to be easy. It's going to take pragmatic and inspired leadership within the EU, and we're in very short supply of that. On the other hand, these people and their children will pay the future taxes that fund my pension and socialised medicine, all I need to do is make sure they're safe and land on their feet now.
I was hoping that it wouldn't come down to that sort of thing - exploiting the refugees as a taxable resource. Because it seems kind of two-faced, to have Janus wear compassion/universalism on one side and to have taxing/demographic sustainability on the other side.
Truth is, most migrants end up benefiting their new country despite a general hostility towards them. It's always been like that, even in XIX century US. So there is no hypocrisy really: we are not letting them in "because they help with taxes", that's a secondary side-effect that we are forced to emphasize in modern debate only because we have to fight naturally-xenophobic elements in our societies.
Can we put (dubious in my opinion) benefits from migrants against girls (including teenage and children) raped by said migrants and weight it up? How much money does one child rape cost?
And this is not unique, in the UK they busted like a dozen of underage brothels any of which had dozens of underage girls abducted, beaten and made prostitute. Brothels of course run by muslim immigrants.
We're all someone's cattle in some greater scheme. The community funds education and healthcare, not because we're nice people, but because there's a net benefit to having a healthy and educated workforce. It's cynical and sad, but also realistic.
> Have some more goddamn kids.
Volunteers for the bordercases EU breeding programme eagerly awaited! :)
A demographic inverse pyramid occurs when parents decide to breed below replacement rate. I intend to have two or more children, preferably around four children, as a way of ensuring that my values exist more strongly over the coming decades. It's a form of game theoretic cooperation with my culture in what resembles a Commons problem.
I would say we had a population bubble. "Inverse pyramid" is a fallout from bubble.
It happened that many people were born and raised, setting all-time population records, and trying to keep this number increase forever and forever is unviable. One may argue that there's still a lot of land for people to live in, but truth is people skip villages and small towns for capitals because they're not needed where they used to live. There's land, but there's no demand.
May I suggest looking up statistics on rape in Norway and Sweden before you formulate your next answer? It has been rather well documented - even though both Norway and Sweden tend to try to hide ethnicity (especially when a non-native is involved, leading to the suspicion that absence of information on ethnicity implies foreign origin of the perpetrator) - that the large majority of rape cases (Sweden: 85%, 2006 [1], Norway 'all reported rape cases committed by non-western immigrants', 2007-2009 [2]) in these countries involve non-western immigrants or their first-generation offspring. This problem will not be solved by looking away. Now that these people seem to be there to stay it is adamant that this problem is solved - not by ignoring it but by acting decisively. Denying a problem does not equal acting upon it. Blaming the victim does not do so either. Trying to mollify the circumstances is counterproductive.
No, the report says nothing like that. It says that immigrants have a 4.5 times higher possibility of being suspscted of rape. This does not mean that 85% of all rape cases are committed by non-western immigrants. This is of course troubling though.
That is what you get when a normal, level-headed discussion on a subject is not allowed. Merely breaching the subject in public invites accusations of racism, xenophobia and discrimination. That is not helpful as it is clear that the problem does exist. That problem needs to be solved, not ignored or hidden under a false blanket of understanding. A crime is a crime, no matter whether the perpetrator is a native-born or immigrant.
'Rape town!' is not normal level headed discussion on the subject. If you want serious debate I'd suggest you can start by not defending the comment that's clearly overstepped the boundary on what constitutes serious debate.
The poster who originally wrote those words, wrote them in context of a much larger post. (That phrase was 0.8% of the entire posts by word count). That post was written in response to a propaganda article [0] that got 130+ upvotes. You can't expect a response to propaganda to not include at least a little rhetoric.
And as far as the quality of discussion, the point it really went downhill was when this responder seized on that one small sentence (0.8% of the post!) and responded with pure empty rhetoric: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10225065
> If you want serious debate I'd suggest you can start by not defending the comment that's clearly overstepped the boundary on what constitutes serious debate.
No. If you want serious debate, don't defend a comment that skimmed a thoughtful contribution to cherry-pick the most potentially objectionable bit of rhetoric and then posture off an out-of-context quote of it. And, don't repeat that same mistake.
TeamCarryology: @Brad, I think you've missed the point entirely. Through this piece, and by using 'carry'as a thread, we're able to bring this 'serious' and dire crisis to the attention of our 130K + readers, in the hope that they may take interest in these people and visit the International Rescue Committee to learn more.
Please stop the FUD. It's true that immigrants are over-represented in crime statistics, but that is both as victims and perpetrators, and it must be understood in the light of their socioeconomic status.
Regardless, >99% of the people who are coming to Europe right now are not future rapists.
Denying a problem does not solve it. Please read up on those statistics before you start wielding terms like 'FUD'. The 'U' in this case in not justified as it is known that non-western immigrants are heavily overrepresented in crime statistics. Neither is the 'D', for the same reasons. The mere fact that a large part of the immigrants will not commit crimes does not mean you should ignore or talk down the crimes perpetrated by those who do. Which leaves the 'F' for fear. That fear is fed for a large part by the fact that discussing these issues immediately leads to outcries of 'FUD', 'Racism', 'Discrimination' and 'Xenophobia'. Not being allowed to discuss something does not make it go away. It makes it grow in the minds of those subjected to the censure. It also does not help in solving these problems since they have to be visible and understood before they can be solved.
Would I have been better off if I just said "(rape!)" (i.e. remove "town")? Just saying "sex market imbalance" felt too P.C. when the real consequence I was trying to emphasize was yeah, guys are going to behave sexually aggressively towards women when they're economically starving and there are more guys than there are women to go around.
I believe "rape!" is nearly as bad as it's still just charged invective. A more neutral construction would be something like, 'leading to an increase in <crimes>' and I would have no objection to that.
Why not call problems by their name?
Does calling rape an increase in sex crimes helps the victim?
No, it waters down the problem so some people can keep living in a fantasy bubble, which could pop when facing pointy, definite words like rape, that just happen to describe the problem
The problem is, 1% of rapists is an awfully high number considering the severity of problem that is rape.
"<1%" suicide terrorists as passengers on your B747 means you're dead.
If a society is not able to reduce this "<1%" to at least strict 0,001% by filtering and background checks, it should probably reject the remaining 99% too. This isn't fair to the rest of immigrants but otherwise it will not be fair to your own citizens.
You speak as if Europe has a choice in accepting refugees. I believe the last few weeks in particular show that this choice does not exist. They will come, and we will have to do the best we can out of the situation.
They do! Germany, the UK and the Scandinavian nations are the only European countries (that I was aware of circa within the week) to be actively accepting Syrian refugees - every other country in between them AND the Mediterranean have had negative responses to incoming refugees and I would expect deportation.
If refugees were just coming in for safety's sake, there are plenty of other Islamic countries that would be more culturally compatible (that argument would fail in the case of Syrian Christians; I don't know the full proportion of real religious denomination to refugee count). There are plenty of European countries that want no business with refugees, like Hungary, who have just declared martial law in the last few days or so wrt refugees.
It's a choice. It's a hard choice, one which tangles several levels of liberal beliefs of tolerance in a democratic state and respecting a country's historical/ethnic heritage, which is why I think there is so much controversy. I personally don't see how any country in Europe is obliged to accept refugees.
> "Germany, the UK and the Scandinavian nations are the only European countries (that I was aware of circa within the week) to be actively accepting Syrian refugees"
You might need to inform yourself a bit better as most European countries have been accepting Syrian refugees[0]. Germany is now leading the effort to give documents to the new arrivals but in the upcoming weeks a part of them will be sent to different locations around Europe. Pretty much all countries' newspapers have been reporting this (in regards to its numbers and locations).
All obligations people have to each other boil down to moral obligations. Barbarism and conquest age societies were much more rational than modernity, with little formalities or attachment of value to human life. So it comes with a territory of living in a civil society.
Europe espouses a particular set of humanitarian values and has to act correspondingly. It is in European law (being UNCHR members for a start), tradition and customs of education. It is what constitutes modern Europe.
Now I personally would rather seen Assad dealt with in timely manner, years ago, instead of drawing stupid red lines in the water. This would have prevented the humanitarian disaster propelling the refugee crisis today, and would have hindered the raise of ISIS to boot. Since we can not change the past though, I'm OK with helping people survive with my tax money.
> Now I personally would rather seen Assad dealt with in timely manner, years ago, instead of drawing stupid red lines in the water. This would have prevented the humanitarian disaster propelling the refugee crisis today, and would have hindered the raise of ISIS to boot. Since we can change the past though, I'm OK with helping people survive with my tax money.
Please don't mess with Syria anymore, and don't try to help with "your tax money". Syria was fine, at least compared to current situation, before West started meddling with the middle east and forcing democracy there.
ISIS started as a response of destroyed country (Iraq) without actual rule, that was brought in such state because of western occupation. Then, it was even armed and supported by the "west" as a "moderate islamistic democratic opposition" to Assad regime. The rest is history, and we didn't learn anything from it.
Just leave the middle east alone, as well as the rest of the world. Don't try to bring your values and way of life to them. Don't try to "help" them. Let them do it themselves on their own pace when they are ready for it. It's obvious right now they lived much better under any dictator that now, with all the "western" support.
> By helping with tax money I meant supporting the refugees, so. No.
And that's fine for me too, as long as your and mine tax money doesn't go into fueling the war instead, like weapon, military training, sanctions, ...
> It wasn't the West who massacred an unarmed protest with an airstrike back in the day.
It was the "west" that financed the opposition in Syria, and wanted Assad taken over for a long time. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it was also the "west" or ISIS (it was called democratic opposition back in the time) that organized this. Wouldn't be the first time. Example: shooting on Maydan square.
> Newsflash: the occupation of Iraq was opposed by most of the "West".
Opposed verbally, as in "I don't want to participate, but I'm fine if you do it, I'll even give you some minor support". And I said "west".
> Rwanda was left alone, oh look how wonderfully that worked.
Rwanda is a place where it went to hell, but I'm pretty sure it would be much worse if "west" intervened. Examples of interventions of "west", and in some cases "east" where local population would be much better if left alone: Afghanistan, Syria, Egypt, Tunis, Lybia, Iraq, Iran, Georgia, Yugoslavia, Vietnam, China, Korea, Hungary, Poland, Chechoslovakia, Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo, Croatia, Australia, Chile, Panama, Honduras, plus many African and Asian states. In all those places foreign intervention brought much more problems than it solved, and is a direct or indirect cause of millions of dead people.
Similarly, just leave the old-timey American south alone. Don't try to bring your desegregationist or abolitionist values and way of life to the American south, or your anti-apartheid values to South Africa, or your anti-genocide values to Nazi Germany.
Germany declared war on pretty much all of the neighbouring countries and some non-neighbouring ones. But the argument probably holds for the South. Over a million people died gruesome deaths in the war. It is unlikely that they prevented an even larger evil.
We will see about South Africa. It is on a fast track to a failed state status currently. They went from surplus energy production to blackouts. Same with food while the farmers are being systematically pushed out or murdered.
Pssst, don't tell any Syrian friend, but we only pretend to close the borders. We only control the Autobahn-routes, not the smaller streets, and we control miles behind the border, meaning that refugees are already in Germany and can stay.
Germany tries to create pictures to discourage people from coming, while behaving the same to those who come. It is an interesting approach, and I am not sure yet how I feel about it.
Undocumented immigrants in the US who don't want to be discovered and deported are different from documented "refugees" (or actual refugees) in Europe. The latter don't have anywhere near the same reason to fear being deported or banished -- and they can be quite criminal with very few consequences (depending on the country they are in -- one of the reasons why Sweden is so popular at the moment).
Unless I'm missing something, there's no actual data about per capita crime or criminality rates by country of origin or even immigration status in that article. That's the data that would actually be useful.
At this stage, I expect to happen the following: They will adapt. We will adapt. There will be lots of problems. There will be many opportunities and there will be good.
What you're saying, you don't have any control over the situation but you hope that it'll end well.
Кривая вывезет.
It doesn't always turn out right, you know? Holocaust happened as an example where situation has never fixed itself. See also Kosovo, previously populated by Serbs, then they let muslim move in, muslim then drive out serbs by fear and intimidation, take over the region just for themself, and THEN seek refuge as crazy because they don't want to live in the kind of country they created.
Let me take on the easiest part of the argument first. Someone more knowledgeable can deal with the rest.
> Politics in Europe will never be the same as the majority of the young do not carry any of the previous generation's values.
First reaction: boo-hoo. More reasonable reaction: the Eurozone's population is about 330 millions right now, are they really expecting 100millions+ refugee? Yes, right now the refugees are concentrating in just a few countries, but that's because of the EU's attitude and passing-the-ball solution so far. The area as a whole CAN take on the refugees.
The same argument on the scale can easily apply to most of your other objections really. But the most important point is as simple as this: it's a very shitty situation all around, but does the anti-refugee camp have any proposed solution besides "tough shit, they are not my problems"? I mean, I can see people being selfish, and that itself is not a problem, but let's just call a spade a spade? EU citizens are all within their own rights for vote for their Trump-equivalent and build a wall around EU.
it's not just EU's attitude: the immigrants choose the countries themselves, there is no way to keep them e.g. in Hungary if all they want is to go to Germany
You can try and likely ontain at least some erosion. Say you place 10,000 in Hungary and 6,000 end up in Germany anyway -- that's still some relief. These people have travelled for so long and gone through such a huge culture shock, if you try to integrate them quickly they will probably lose the appetite for relocating again.
Unfortunately, the unspoken truth is that Eastern European countries have a huge unaddressed problem of deep racism. They have not gone through the experience of being target for economic mass-migration from other continents yet, unlike most Western European countries have been for more than 50 years now (and still struggle with the issue occasionally, but with much softer undertones). Countries like Hungary will do the bare minimum required to keep their EU funding and will likely not even try to really help these people, which means the quota system might end up being an exercise in futility. We still have to try though, it's the only solution. We must hope our Eastern fellows will eventually find the compassion to change their ways.
It's not purely a compassion thing by any means, don't get me wrong, Eastern European countries by large are racist, but they're also still dealing with the aftermath of previous (forced) migration during the Soviet times.
Families still remember their property being taken away and re-purposed, the (huge, up to one third of population) Russian minorities in the Baltic States by large have not integrated well over many generations now.
Fresh memories of the past and issues still present (understandably) spawn distrust and xenophobia among the locals.
Every time it seems like HN is making a little bit of progress you click on a link and find out they've upvoted something like 'Rape Town!' to the top of a thread.
I downvoted you because yours is a largely content-free comment in which you pretend that 'Rape Town!' is the only content of the top-level comment you are complaining about. (And I realize that my comment adds even more noise, but I prefer to explain my downvotes.)
Sure, it's not going to be easy; there will be a bit more crime and a bit more poverty. But there are a few points to consider. First, the number of refugees would amount to no more a few percent of the local European population. It's not a "demographic shock". Second, the entire Middle East was under European control or various degrees of meddling for a very long time (hell, the entire world), and nobody asked them when Europe came barging in. With power comes responsibility, you reap what you sow etc. etc.. Finally, if compassion didn't have a price, it wouldn't be worth much.
> I don't know how the Europeans intend to get all of these refugee adults up to economic snuff at the same grade of Europeans who were trained in the ways of the West from birth.
they became economic immigrants in the moment they left first safe country after leaving Syria. c'mon, we all know they aren't going to Germany because it's the only place in this world to escape war back home.
I understand that the refugee debate is an emotional one, but let me try and show you another way of thinking about it.
You said earlier that we shouldn't over-generalise especially with the influx of (positive) stories of these refugees, but one can argue that you're doing the same thing but from the other perspective. In fact, before the Aylan tragedy, I remember that there wasn't much coverage about the refugees themselves, but certainly there was a lot of sentiments, mostly fear, from the media and the public on the Internet. Even NYT remarked on the apparently British obsession with refugees: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/14/world/europe/calais-migran... .
Personally I welcome the recent positive stories about the plight of the refugees because it brings balance to the debate, and remind us that they are also human beings and merely want to escape from death and poverty. Who wouldn't run? I'm in no way likening you with Stalin but your quote regarding statistics brought back some chilling memories: "One man is a tragedy, a million statistics". We cannot and must not let go of humanity, not after so much tragedies.
I know that it's completely unrealistic to take in all of them, and I think it's nonsense that one can just open up borders without proper checks - the argument that a terrorist might be disguised as refugee is a valid one, I think. But I also think that neighbouring countries should have responsibilities to accommodate as many refugees as they can handle - and that's where the problems come in. Despite the media pandering on the lack of action from neighbouring Arab countries, Jordan, Lebanon and even Turkey have been taking in millions of refugees for years, even decades, see http://www.mercycorps.org/articles/turkey-iraq-jordan-lebano... . However it's starting to take its toll, and it's definitely not sustainable, which the refugees themselves could see. Lower wages, lower standards of living, growing dissent ... and then there's the next neighbour, rich and civilised: Europe. It's easy to see why it looks like the Promised Land!
Sure, people smugglers exploit this ruthlessly and many have even died trying to reach Europe, but for those who are already at your doorstep, is it really necessary to question if you should take them in or not?
We live on the same planet, and it's getting smaller. We used to think that what happens on the other side of the world won't affect us, but clearly globalisation and the Internet have linked us all up in a way more intimate than before. Sometimes I think that the concept of borders and countries are outdated[1]; we have so much more in common than differences that it's hard to feel "us vs them" now. And I think that's the key with the refugee crisis, and it's the same thing with other global issues like climate change: Division of privileges is increasingly becoming irrelevant and we've got to start thinking like global citizens.
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[1]though I can't see countries getting scrapped in the future, we're way too tribal for that (!)
Big picture: most refugees going across the Mediterranean are Syrian, male (like 72% male!), young, and poor.[0] Like unless they have families that they're hoping to have evacuated (why didn't they bring them over in the first place?), we're talking about a recipe for complete stupidity. Language barriers exist, education barriers exist; I don't know how the Europeans intend to get all of these refugee adults up to economic snuff at the same grade of Europeans who were trained in the ways of the West from birth.
This is going to be a demographic shock to countries with more balanced gender ratios, and in the case of Europe, upside-down aging pyramids. Men without solid economic recourse and lack of cultural integration are going to resort to crime. They will upset the local sex market through strong male competition for women (rape town!). Politics in Europe will never be the same as the majority of the young do not carry any of the previous generation's values.
I'm really open to being proved wrong, I really am. But I'm not counting on it.
[0] http://data.unhcr.org/mediterranean/regional.php