A punch in the gut - European Migration Forum

[Happy Ent]

Solmyr, thanks for a reasoned response to what – in hindsight – reads like a needlessly dismissive post #58 by me.

[Happy Ent]

I don't see how making all areas on earth equally viable to live in isn't a (very) long term goal.

Oh, this is fine as a long term goal. Universal peace and happiness indeed solves all the other problems.

But as a plan of action I don’t see the value in saying “we can solve all these current smallish problem by just solving this long-term huge problem.”

[The Iceman of the North]

Oh, this is fine as a long term goal. Universal peace and happiness indeed solves all the other problems.

But as a plan of action I don’t see the value in saying “we can solve all these current smallish problem by just solving this long-term huge problem.”

I have yet to see anyone in this thread who have said that. You sound more and more like Scot, HE.

[Lukey]

I think the immigrant issue will solve itself. Soon there will not be countries so therefore no immigrants.

I think non-Eurpeans have lots more kids than Europeans and there is alot of interracial relationships so there won't be a majority historic culture to lord it over others.

Once some of immigrants' ancestors get in positions of power things will change and people from Africa won't be treated so poorly.

[Solmyr]

But as a plan of action I don’t see the value in saying “we can solve all these current smallish problem by just solving this long-term huge problem.”

Well I imagine if anyone here could indeed produce a comprehensive plan of action that most people agreed with, he or she must work in the UN or other similar organisation.

Having said that, I see no harm in attempting to improvise and sketch something down to provoke further debate ;):

Disclaimer: both plans are unlikely to work unless ratified by almost every country in the world, including all major players.

1. Short term plan

Impose a tax on waging war and on all weapon sales to war-torn regions. This tax is not to be confuted with war reparations - those remain, but this tax is for the benefit of whoever ends up taking care of all the refugees of the conflict. The principle should always be - the aggressor pays the tax. If the aggressor are domestic persons, then the tax is covered by whoever sold them the weapons. If the weapons can be proven to be sold to someone else (e.g. the government of that country in peace time) and have later fallen in the hands of terrorists as civil war ensued then the tax is paid by whoever mishandled the weapons and allowed them to fall into the hands of terrorists.

Once it is determined, who should pay, collecting could be done in several ways. If it's a stable government, the international community forces them to pay - if they refuse they suffer sanctions and international isolation that would result in far greater cost. If it's the country that is being war-torn, then the tax is due from the pockets of whoever ends up stabilizing the country. Countries have natural resources and other things of value, provided they remain stable enough for these to be utilized. Until that happens the money required to fund whoever is taking care of the refugees can be subsidized by some sort of international fund, which would hopefully provide the capital at less interest than the IMF currently does.

2. Long term plan

Create a fund, participation in which is voluntary. Each country can pool in as much money as they want and can afford to. The money go to improving the social and economic conditions in third-world countries. The incentive should be that they get to settle quotas of emigrants proportionate to their participation and the population the improved country can handle in those countries when conditions are improved. I realize the latter is either too little incentive or too much, depending on how exactly it is implemented and how much actual power the donor country has in the improved one.

That way you basically allow the free market to decide when is it worth to improve a region (cost vs. gain) and when is it more effective to simply deal with the refugees and allow it to depopulate. Currently it might be too costly to improve most regions, but as resources and living space begin to grow scarce, we'll eventually find out that settling Africa might be highly profitable.

ETA: My post may not seem very relevant to the quoted bit from HE - I somehow got the impression he's asking for a plan of action and proceeded to think in that direction. Only when I finished this and re-read it did I realize he was talking about something else :).

[Happy Ent]

I think […] there is alot of interracial relationships […]

There is? I thought that was one of the depressing facts: that we breed with our ingroup. I’d be happy if you were right.

[Darzin]

There is? I thought that was one of the depressing facts: that we breed with our ingroup. I’d be happy if you were right

Why is that depressing, it kind of sounds like you want people to breed outside their in group, but would you yourself ever consider doing that?

Australia' solution sounds the best to me for refugees, they should get somewhere to go but removing the economic incentives ensures those who come are actually refugees.

[baxus]

There is? I thought that was one of the depressing facts: that we breed with our ingroup. I’d be happy if you were right.

To be honest, we "breed within our group" because we spend most time within our group.

Sure, there are places where people of many races and ethnic backgrounds live together, but quite a few more where one would have to make it his/her mission to find a mate of different race and really go out of their way to make it happen.

Just compare the opportunities for an interracial marriage/dating when you're living in USA to those when you're living in China (or Serbia, for that matter).

There were no kids of Far-eastern or African descent in my generation in elementary school, high school nor college.

I have trained quite a few sports and have never had a non-Caucasian team-mate...

We can go on and on, but even today I have only one non-Caucasian acquaintance.

On the other hand, I have friends and family of quite a few nationalities.

[Happy Ent]

Why is that depressing, it kind of sounds like you want people to breed outside their in group, but would you yourself ever consider doing that?

I’m anemophile, so I don’t have much of a say in it anyway.

[Happy Ent]

But seriously, I don’t think admixture is a way to “solve immigration.” For instance, Arab males are culturally not very attractive to feminist Scandinavian women, so mostly they breed with imported females from their home areas. Dynamics like that lead to greater segregation, not integration.

I could be wrong. Tell me.

[Born Yesterday]

This thread is physically painful.

I have a suggested reading for you: "A Seventh Man", by John Berger and Steve Mohr. A combination of photographs and texts, documenting the experience of the migrant worker in Western Europe in the '70s. The situation is vastly different, but perhaps it will highlight two things some people don't seem to grasp. One, you don't need to be a refugee to be a human being (deserving human rights, which include equal labor rights). And two, the industrial miracle of Western Europe was largely built by migrant labor.

Immigrants today, regardless of their legal status, are a significant percentage of the European labor force. And a huge percentage of the agricultural labor in the South and in France. They are literally the ones who put food on your table.

They are working class people, they all come here to work (even those who directly flee bullets, and deserve refugee status), they pick the oranges for your morning juice (you probably import oranges from Spain, so raise your glass to the Moroccan immigrants who do all the work), they work in appalling conditions, their rights range from ill-defined to non-existent because they legally don't exist, more often they are stuck in a horrendous legal limbo ("you need employment to get a green card, but you need a green card to get employment, so here's a paper that gives you no rights at all, and allows us to arrest you whenever"), they get rounded up and harassed and locked up as soon as they cross the Mediterranean, assuming they don't get shot or drowned first, and as a result of all the above, they are at the mercy of their employers, the police, and the neighborhood's fascists.

...Which was the point all along. THAT WAS THE POINT. It's not an accident. Europe very much chooses to allow immigrants to come in, but grants them no citizenship, no equal rights, and makes their lives hell. This ensures there is a marginalized portion of the population which you can blame for all your woes, that the working class is fragmented and thus weak, and that, when money is short, instead of asking "well, why not redistribute from the top, then?", your knee-jerk reaction will be "if only there weren't so many goddamn immigrants at the bottom...".

To sum up. In the unlikely scenario that reducing welfare benefits for the natives is ever gonna be the only way to grant equal welfare benefits to the immigrants, suck it up. Really. Until then, here's a wild idea, knock the door of those who swim in money. And leave the poor sods who clean your toilets alone.

P.S. My apologies for being a tad aggressive here, but I don't think you people realize on what kind of brink Europe stands right now. Walter Benjamin once wrote "if WWII and the horror of the holocaust surprised you, you weren't paying attention" (not in those exact words). Please, PAY ATTENTION. Europe is becoming a caste society. We are building a Jim Crow regime, and we are letting fascism make a comeback. I mean, fuck.

[Happy Ent]

To sum up. In the unlikely scenario that reducing welfare benefits for the natives is ever gonna be the only way to grant equal welfare benefits to the immigrants, suck it up. Really. Until then, here's a wild idea, knock the door of those who swim in money. And leave the poor sods who clean your toilets alone.

This is what Sweden does. Very easy access to citizenship, full benefits, etc.

Yet Sweden is easily the country in Europe with worst integration.

By the way, I am an immigrant (to Sweden). I put food on “their” table. I don’t have citizenship. My life is not hell. You seem to be making the mistake of thinking “immigrants” is a homogenous group.

And, as pointed out before, the anger does not really help. This is not a problem that can be solved by those who are best at signalling indignation.

[Born Yesterday]

By the way, I am an immigrant (to Sweden). I put food on “their” table. I don’t have citizenship. My life is not hell. You seem to be making the mistake of thinking “immigrants” is a homogenous group.

And, as pointed out before, the anger does not really help. This is not a problem that can be solved by those who are best at signalling indignation.

I treat the EU as an entity. There are - obviously - wild variations from country to country, and from one immigrant's experience to another. But the responsibility is shared. Much like the market.

As for indignation, do you find it inappropriate? Really? Two countries in Europe have an actual Nazi party in the parliament, with percentages that range from 7 to 10%. Xenophobic and fascist-leaning parties, that usually trade (or simply hide) their traditional antisemitism for an unabashedly anti-immigrant stance are rising and rising. Even in Sweden.

How long will it be before the fascists of Front National govern France? And who would have thought that possible right after WWII?

[Altherion]

You know, I kind of feel bad for what we've done to Little Miss Sunshine's thread. Fifteen years ago, I could easily have made a post just like the first post in this thread and my younger self would be not be happy at the direction the thread has gone. Unfortunately, my current self is rather cynical so...

Immigrants today, regardless of their legal status, are a significant percentage of the European labor force. And a huge percentage of the agricultural labor in the South and in France.

Why yes, they are indeed. And given the rather substantial rates of unemployment in many of those regions, this fact does not exactly endear them to the native population.

Europe very much chooses to allow immigrants to come in, but grants them no citizenship, no equal rights, and makes their lives hell. This ensures there is a marginalized portion of the population which you can blame for all your woes, that the working class is fragmented and thus weak, and that, when money is short, instead of asking "well, why not redistribute from the top, then?", your knee-jerk reaction will be "if only there weren't so many goddamn immigrants at the bottom...".

As has already been pointed out, such policies vary significantly from country to country. Furthermore, "makes their lives hell" is a gross exaggeration: even in the least generous countries, they still tend to be better off than they were in their native land (it's not like anyone is preventing them from leaving). And yes, a lot of people understand that this fragmentation of the working class is intentional, but there's not much that can be done about the top whereas the bottom is somewhat more vulnerable.

In the unlikely scenario that reducing welfare benefits for the natives is ever gonna be the only way to grant equal welfare benefits to the immigrants, suck it up. Really.

Up until now, this is exactly what people have been doing... but it cannot go on indefinitely, particularly given the cultural incompatibilities. The interesting thing is what will happen when people get tired of "sucking it up". I agree with you that things have the potential to become rather unpleasant.

[Happy Ent]

As for indignation, do you find it inappropriate? Really?

Inappropriate? No. I’m often indignant about many things.

I said it was not helpful.

Indignation is easy. It seldom is illuminating, and almost never solves the problem.

You are free to vent whatever frustrations you have. Outgroup-bashing can be very liberating and cathartic.

But I’m in full problem-solving mode. What’s wrong? Can it be fixed? How? Is that route politically viable? Is it morally acceptable? Etc.

[Filippa Eilhart]

But the responsibility is shared

it's not, and that's part of the problem. The countries with the biggest influx of refugees/illegal immigrants are left alone with the problem. It would be easy to work out a solution where refugees are distributed equally among all member states but noone is willing to do that.

[Mentat]

it's not, and that's part of the problem. The countries with the biggest influx of refugees/illegal immigrants are left alone with the problem. It would be easy to work out a solution where refugees are distributed equally among all member states but noone is willing to do that.

This.

To sum up. In the unlikely scenario that reducing welfare benefits for the natives is ever gonna be the only way to grant equal welfare benefits to the immigrants, suck it up. Really. Until then, here's a wild idea, knock the door of those who swim in money. And leave the poor sods who clean your toilets alone.

While I recognize the moral validity of your arguments, these natives are citizens of democratic nation states, who thus can collectively decide if they want to suck it up or not (and if yes, how much exactly they are willing to suck up). A system where responsibility is collectively shared by wealthy countries in proportion with their wealth is going to be a much easier sell than 'suck it up'. Many countries don't have to deal with immigration because they're geographically hard to reach, which seems to me as much of an unfair advantage as the ones I enjoy over people born in third world countries.

I also agree that providing resources so that refugees can be dealt with as close to home as possible, with the financial burden put on wealthy countries rather than wherever that happens to be, would be good for everyone.

It's hard to say if countries such as Spain benefit from illegal immigration, or if's only some people who are part of the underground economy and exploit both immigrants and the State. Would agriculture collapse without illegal immigrants as cheap working hands? There are quite a few examples of collectivized agricultural industries close to where I work which seem to do OK, so I'd like to think the answer is no, but I'd be interested to see studies on this subject.

[Anubiel]

I have interviewed hundreds of refugees, mostly Eritreans, Ethiopians and Somalis, all of them made their way from Africa either over the Mediterranean or by crossing from Egypt into Israel, moving up to Turkey before entering the EU in Greece. Eventually they ended up in Norway where they applied for asylum and ended up having to tell their story to me in the hope that I would grant them that asylum.

As horrifying as their stories are, the thing that gets me the most is the ones who do NOT make it to Europe. The refugees I interviewed in Sudan, who had no means whatsoever to make it to Europe. They had been living in the camps for generations. The ones who make it all the way north have some backing, either from wealthy relatives, by selling their business and home before they go etc, with the understanding that they will be supporting the ones left behind when they "make it" in Europe. That is also why there are so many who do not return home after having their applications denied - they owe people money, they can't face their family after what is perceived as a failure.

The ones who flee with just the clothes on their backs on foot across the border, they very, very, rarely end up in Europe. They do not have the means to get there.

Yes, there are many who come to Europe as "real" refugees, who are in danger of persecution, but sad to say there are more who are simply fleeing a life in poverty. Since labour immigration is impossible for most people, they seek asylum as their only means for getting in to Europe legally. And I understand that completely. My own dad came to Norway as a foreign labourer in the seventies before the borders closed.

[Happy Ent]

And I understand that completely.

Oh, sure. I’d do the same, for my sake and that of my children. Refugees, even if they’re “only” flee from poverty or broken governments, are rational agents.

Shame on the parent who does not try to improve the living conditions of their children.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Does the OP believe that borders should be eliminated and open immigration be allowed worldwide?