7 ms·

I'm living in one of poor EU countries. I earn less money than they pay for refugees. Our pensioners get less money than these 'refugees' with Armani clothing

• Cenk 11y ago
  — What refugees wear does not matter. Even if they all wore genuine Armani clothing, what are they supposed to do? Sell all their clothes and buy cheaper brands before they flee? Your idea that a person who doesn’t look destitute or poor enough should not be regarded as a refugee shows how little you understand what a refugee is. The people fleeing to Europe are from all kinds of backgrounds, including workers, the middle class and highly skilled professionals. When a war breaks out and a city is destroyed, the middle class doesn’t stay behind. They sell their houses, cars and anything else they can and spend upwards of $10K to make it to somewhere safe. — I’m sure refugees in your country get less money than pensioners, just as they do in Germany. Are you saying that Germany should give refugees less money than any pensioner in the EU gets?
• raverbashing 11y ago
  I can understand the sentiment However, for those who want to work in Berlin (or somewhere else) can apply for a German Blue Card (usually you apply for jobs hen the company gets you one), shouldn't be too hard
  • nikolak 11y ago
    I'm from a European, but not an EU member country, and I got offered a senior software developer job in Germany. I applied for a 12 month work visa, even signed a statement that I will return when it expires, and it got denied. So yes in theory it's "easy", but in practice it isn't always like that. (To be fair you're talking about Blue Card which I didn't apply for because I've heard it's bit harder to get since it's usually issued for period longer than 12 months)
    • raverbashing 11y ago
      It's easy as in "much easier than an H1B" but sometimes there are issues getting one, yes (might be the company's fault as well).
• sabertoothed 11y ago
  Don't forget that living expenses are higher (in "richer" EU countries), too.
• pantalaimon 11y ago
  You earn less than 200€?
• gambiting 11y ago
  All this statement means is that your pensioners should be getting more money, not that refugees should be getting less. Likewise, you should be making more money than you do, if your income is lower than refugee support money. I see this argument repeated ad nauseam and it's really upsetting, because it's basically saying that other people should have it worse for the sake of having it worse.
  • programmernews3 11y ago
    The government should start planting more money trees so they can pay for it all.
  • michaelbuddy 11y ago
    You do realize where money comes from right? That the refugees get any thing when actual tax, social security, disability was paid into by citizens for citizens and even if it was as available as you think it should be, the citizens are having their money funneled and real estate taken from them in ways that are unsettling and downright disgraceful.
    • matt4077 11y ago
      The cost of the refugee crisis for Germany will be about 8 billion in 2015. That's more than postage but still less than 100€ per citizen. On the grand economic scale, it barely registers. Compared to the plight of these people (which some may argue the west is somewhat responsible for), it is hardly enough to get jealous.
      • hugh4 11y ago
        And how much will the cost be by 2045? The entire fucking country and its culture, presumably.
    • gambiting 11y ago
      Yeah, I pay for it in my taxes and I am very happy the money goes to these causes. And your statement about real estate being taken from anyone is just outright false.
• dattl 11y ago
  Come on, don't be a dick. You're exactly like a child that cries because the others get "more" and it's so unfair. Boohoo.
  • jmorphy88 11y ago
    It's hardly "being a dick" to expect his government to provide better for its own citizens than it does for foreigners.
    • cabalamat 11y ago
      But it's not his government, it's the German government. How Germany chooses to spend its money is a matter for the German people, and not anyone else.
      • jmorphy88 11y ago
        I was referring to the EU, which is supposed to serve the interests of its member states -- a radical idea, it seems.
        • wolfgke 11y ago
          The member states have different interests.
      • michaelbuddy 11y ago
        That may have been the case before the EU and the euro but now it appears that he should have a voice in the greater European continent. Also is it not essential that they all raise each others livelihood before giving massive amounts of cash towards non citizens? I think Japan has it right in this case regardless of what the guardian and other liberal media want to cram down everyone's throat.
    • matt4077 11y ago
      He's comparing apples to orange tic tacs. Germany provides 140€ per month in cash to asylum seekers plus accommodation (usually a shared dorm room). He's in "a poorer European country" and apparently earns less. He's ignoring costs of living. 140€ is a pittance in Germany. It is much less than pensioners or unemployed get. I spend 3x as much on food.
• tdkl 11y ago
  Don't be a dick indeed, work more, so you can earn more and pay more taxes for the immigrants (if they were refugees they would stay whereever help was offered instead of storming to Germany), because those loans won't pay by itself and USA, IMF and the banks surely won't write that off. Right now my country is stormed by them and can barely keep up. Schengen is a joke, same as the EU. This will probably be down voted since Hacker News turned into a "safe space" (which is ironic considering all the whiplash about free speech on the internet around here), so let me just quote a character called Reality on the popular show "South Park": "You're sad that people are mean ? Well I'm sorry, the world isn't one big liberal arts college campus."
  • legulere 11y ago
    So they would stay in Hungary instead which already has more refugees per capita than Germany and is totally overwhelmed? Or in Greece which is in the middle of a crisis itself? How about Lebanon and Turkey where there are more than 10 times as much refugees, where refugees have no perspective of being able to work and where basic needs of life are not guaranteed. Free speech is about the right to express oneself, it has nothing to with people not being allowed to disagree with you.
    • hugh4 11y ago
      No, they should stay in fucking Syria. If they're so keen on western values such as democracy and freedom of religion, they should take up arms and fight for them, just like our ancestors did. And if they're not keen on western values such as democracy and freedom of religion, they should stay the fuck out of the west. The right to live in a peaceful, prosperous country is not automatic. For those of us in the west, our ancestors earned that right for us. For those in the Middle East -- well, they need to work hard now to earn that right for their descendants. Is it fair that some are born in Europe and some are born in Syria? No. Is it fair that some are born human and some are born fish? No.
      • vidarh 11y ago
        Most of our ancestors did nothing to "earn that right" for us. The vast majority tried to go about their lives as before. And a substantial number of "our" ancestors were part of messing up Syria and Iraq in the first place, going back to colonial times.
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
• pjc50 11y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_St._Louis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_St._Louis This is what happened last time refugees were turned away en masse with no option but to return to their home country: they were exterminated. The EU was formed with a "never again" attitude to this kind of catastrophe. There are already over 4 million refugees plus an estimated 6 million displaced within Syria. People have finally noticed that they're already dying trying to escape, often in the Mediterranean. The options are to take them in or send them to their deaths. This is probably going to happen again when Yemen goes up; it doesn't help that the country is running out of groundwater while a Saudi/Iranian proxy war is being fought in it.
  • sccxy 11y ago
    Poor jews. I guess they have learned from history and help others now. How many refugee camps for Syrian people are in Israel?
    • theworstshill 11y ago
      They learned from history alright, just not in the way you think. Israel is one of the best defended states with some of the best social welfare for its citizens. They work six days a week to make it happen, and their public-private partnerships are top notch and generate a massive amount of real innovation (as in - life saving medical technology instead of boredom apps). If every state in the world was as self-sufficient and productive, humanity would be colonizing space by now.
      • tdkl 11y ago
        They sure are good in colonizing the land of Palestine with moral and monetary support of a western country that sadly forgot how to use their resources for space exploration and are colonizing third world countries since the WWII with government coups.
        • theworstshill 11y ago
          I am not denying that, but you're beating up the wrong bush. Colonization and exploitation are more than buzzwords, but in the real world they work the other way around. Look at the yearly trade balance between say Chile and South Korea. Chile is basically an enormous copper ore mine, it accounts for 50% of their exports. South Korea exports back finished goods. So who is really exploiting who, and what country is more important to the world? I'd say the imagination of South Koreans and the ability to make high quality products trump the Chileans. That doesn't mean the Chilean people are in any way lesser than the Koreans, but that they need to invest in what produces real value in 21st century - brains. There is really not much to be gained for Israel by colonizing areas of Palestine, except better security (which is an economic bonus in itself). What I do wonder though - if Israel is magically relocated to an island nation, say in the middle of a trade route like Singapore, what would they be really capable of, unhindered by defensive considerations.