6 ms·

If its okay for europe its okay for america.

geofft 9y ago
I realize you're making a snarky political point, but, "Refugees are bad for a country's culture but we should still let them in if they exist" is a perfectly consistent position. It's trading off prevention of something unwanted but not an evil (cultural dilution) in order to prevent an actual evil (death of the refugees). "We should let refugees in, but we should avoid creating refugees" is also a consistent moral position, and perhaps a more obvious one. (Also, as an American citizen, the fact that we're not absorbing a significant fraction of the refugees in Europe when we have the resources to do so is absolutely unconscionable. I now feel like every time I was taught "never again" in grade school, it was just virtue signaling and we're actually totally fine with it happening again.)
- nolepointer 9y ago
  Be sure not to equate refugees with migrants.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  > (Also, as an American citizen, the fact that we're not absorbing a significant fraction of the refugees in Europe when we have the resources to do so is absolutely unconscionable. I now feel like every time I was taught "never again" in grade school, it was just virtue signaling and we're actually totally fine with it happening again.) And are instrumental in making it happen again.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- snomad 9y ago
  > we're actually totally fine with it happening again. Sadly, it is reality. It is happening all the time all over the world - Democratic Republic of Congo makes American press maybe once a year but has been awful for 2+ decades.
- muninn_ 9y ago
  And as an American citizen I'm very glad that we aren't contributing to the problem by absorbing a lot of refugees. We should be providing aid, and if necessary, peacekeeping support so we can get these areas on their feet. The solution to "things are going to hell" isn't move everybody to the West, especially if we're absorbing all the smart people.
  - rmateu 9y ago
    You are absorbing a lot of Venezuelans, they are just called asylees — rather than refugees — because we are able to arrive in the US with tourist visas. Last year Venezuelans requesting political asylum passed China and is now the number 1 country. 3 years ago we weren't even on the top 10. https://www.voanews.com/a/veneuela-china-us-asylum-requests/3719949.html https://www.voanews.com/a/veneuela-china-us-asylum-requests/...
  - openasocket 9y ago
    Refugees are accepted based on need. Priority is given to those from oppressed minorities, LGBT individuals, people with medical conditions and disabilities, etc. See https://www.state.gov/j/prm/releases/factsheets/2017/266447.htm https://www.state.gov/j/prm/releases/factsheets/2017/266447.... . We aren't systematically taking out the "smart people," even a massively expanded refugee program is unlikely to lead to a "brain drain" effect. I agree that stabilizing the region is a better solution than taking in refugees. But stabilizing the region is much, much more difficult and requires time to work, during which individuals are suffering. The solution is to do both: resettle those in imminent danger, while providing aid and peacekeeping support to restore stability to the region. Of course, the events in Syria have demonstrated, in my opinion, a serious apathy on the part of the west to actually providing that second point. What the US and NATO allies have done in Syria is the bare minimum, and in doing so has allowed dangerous groups to fester and grow, and created a massive humanitarian crisis. The attitude in certain circles seems to be that as long as the West doesn't get involved in this, they can't be held responsible for the outcome, while getting involved means the West owns the issue and any consequences. But the issue is already the West's responsibility, because we have the ability to act and choose not to. We bear some responsibility for what is happening in Syria, whether through action or inaction.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- jack_galt 9y ago
  Be sure not to equate refugees with migrants. You may call it cultural dilution, but I call it cultural suicide. Safe zones should be established.
  - geofft 9y ago
    Good morning jack_galt aka nolepointer. Creating a new account to evade a ban is an absolute violation of HN rules, and it's quite ironic that you're worried about migrants destroying your culture when you're insisting on forcing your way into this community in violation of our rules and our values. In any case, sure, call it "cultural suicide." I still think the death of a culture is an acceptable price to pay to avoid the death of even one individual. And no, in the real world you don't get safe spaces.
    - DarkKomunalec 9y ago
      > I still think the death of a culture is an acceptable price to pay to avoid the death of even one individual. 'Culture' is a broad term, and encompasses the legal and government systems as well. When you say death of a culture, you probably have in mind things like traditional food, music, and clothes. What about things like legal and social equality of the sexes, worker's rights, the right to free speech or a fair trial, socialized medicine, the educational institutions supporting all of this, and a police and legal system where corruption is rare? They're just as much a part of culture. Different countries have different amounts of these cultural characteristics. Many lives, far more than one or a thousand, were lost fighting for them, or lost due to their absence, and few would throw them away as carelessly as you.
      - geofft 9y ago
        That's a very fair counterargument! I think I do not see it as realistic that those things you mention are threatened by mass migration (whether of refugees or otherwise). As a concrete example, I live in Brooklyn, where there is a significant Jewish sub-community with their own cultural identity and in particular very conservative religious/political views. This community showed up in Brooklyn largely because they were part of the Jewish migration from eastern Europe in the early 20th century, escaping anti-Semitism there (so, this was not quite voluntary migration by people who chose America for American values). They're very successful in their own neighborhoods and absolutely maintain their own values, but don't seem to have had any effect on Brooklyn's liberal values or the culture at large; if anything we're one of the communities most stereotyped as liberal to a fault. Usually when I see fears about cultural changes in European countries receiving migrants, that fear is expressed in racial or at most religious terms, and not in political terms. I see things like "your child will be going to school with Muslims," not "your child will be taught at school that the right to free speech doesn't cover blasphemy." Yes, you can argue in theory that the former could imply the latter. But that doesn't seem to be what's actually happening. (If it is, I'd appreciate being corrected!) Also, at least as I see it, the lives that were lost fighting for legal and social equality of the sexes, worker's rights, etc. were almost universally not fights between European culture and non-European cultures. They were generally fights within a culture, and occasionally fights between different Western cultures (e.g., the US war for independence). I do not see people arguing against migration e.g. within the US or even between Western states, just from one particular racial/religious origin to any Western nation, whether or not that Western nation believes in legal equality of the sexes, socialized medicine, free speech, etc.
- neves 9y ago
  Please, would you explain what is "never again" for a non american? Is it about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Defense_League https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Defense_League ?
  - openasocket 9y ago
    "never again" refers to the Holocaust. As in, never again will we let genocide happen. I'm not sure what the origins of the phrase is, but I (an American) was able to recognize what he was referring to immediately.

I realize you're making a snarky political point, but, "Refugees are bad for a country's culture but we should still let them in if they exist" is a perfectly consistent position. It's trading off prevention of something unwanted but not an evil (cultural dilution) in order to prevent an actual evil (death of the refugees). "We should let refugees in, but we should avoid creating refugees" is also a consistent moral position, and perhaps a more obvious one. (Also, as an American citizen, the fact that we're not absorbing a significant fraction of the refugees in Europe when we have the resources to do so is absolutely unconscionable. I now feel like every time I was taught "never again" in grade school, it was just virtue signaling and we're actually totally fine with it happening again.)

nolepointer 9y ago
Be sure not to equate refugees with migrants.
jacquesm 9y ago
> (Also, as an American citizen, the fact that we're not absorbing a significant fraction of the refugees in Europe when we have the resources to do so is absolutely unconscionable. I now feel like every time I was taught "never again" in grade school, it was just virtue signaling and we're actually totally fine with it happening again.) And are instrumental in making it happen again.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
snomad 9y ago
> we're actually totally fine with it happening again. Sadly, it is reality. It is happening all the time all over the world - Democratic Republic of Congo makes American press maybe once a year but has been awful for 2+ decades.
muninn_ 9y ago
And as an American citizen I'm very glad that we aren't contributing to the problem by absorbing a lot of refugees. We should be providing aid, and if necessary, peacekeeping support so we can get these areas on their feet. The solution to "things are going to hell" isn't move everybody to the West, especially if we're absorbing all the smart people.
- rmateu 9y ago
  You are absorbing a lot of Venezuelans, they are just called asylees — rather than refugees — because we are able to arrive in the US with tourist visas. Last year Venezuelans requesting political asylum passed China and is now the number 1 country. 3 years ago we weren't even on the top 10. https://www.voanews.com/a/veneuela-china-us-asylum-requests/3719949.html https://www.voanews.com/a/veneuela-china-us-asylum-requests/...
- openasocket 9y ago
  Refugees are accepted based on need. Priority is given to those from oppressed minorities, LGBT individuals, people with medical conditions and disabilities, etc. See https://www.state.gov/j/prm/releases/factsheets/2017/266447.htm https://www.state.gov/j/prm/releases/factsheets/2017/266447.... . We aren't systematically taking out the "smart people," even a massively expanded refugee program is unlikely to lead to a "brain drain" effect. I agree that stabilizing the region is a better solution than taking in refugees. But stabilizing the region is much, much more difficult and requires time to work, during which individuals are suffering. The solution is to do both: resettle those in imminent danger, while providing aid and peacekeeping support to restore stability to the region. Of course, the events in Syria have demonstrated, in my opinion, a serious apathy on the part of the west to actually providing that second point. What the US and NATO allies have done in Syria is the bare minimum, and in doing so has allowed dangerous groups to fester and grow, and created a massive humanitarian crisis. The attitude in certain circles seems to be that as long as the West doesn't get involved in this, they can't be held responsible for the outcome, while getting involved means the West owns the issue and any consequences. But the issue is already the West's responsibility, because we have the ability to act and choose not to. We bear some responsibility for what is happening in Syria, whether through action or inaction.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
jack_galt 9y ago
Be sure not to equate refugees with migrants. You may call it cultural dilution, but I call it cultural suicide. Safe zones should be established.
- geofft 9y ago
  Good morning jack_galt aka nolepointer. Creating a new account to evade a ban is an absolute violation of HN rules, and it's quite ironic that you're worried about migrants destroying your culture when you're insisting on forcing your way into this community in violation of our rules and our values. In any case, sure, call it "cultural suicide." I still think the death of a culture is an acceptable price to pay to avoid the death of even one individual. And no, in the real world you don't get safe spaces.
  - DarkKomunalec 9y ago
    > I still think the death of a culture is an acceptable price to pay to avoid the death of even one individual. 'Culture' is a broad term, and encompasses the legal and government systems as well. When you say death of a culture, you probably have in mind things like traditional food, music, and clothes. What about things like legal and social equality of the sexes, worker's rights, the right to free speech or a fair trial, socialized medicine, the educational institutions supporting all of this, and a police and legal system where corruption is rare? They're just as much a part of culture. Different countries have different amounts of these cultural characteristics. Many lives, far more than one or a thousand, were lost fighting for them, or lost due to their absence, and few would throw them away as carelessly as you.
    - geofft 9y ago
      That's a very fair counterargument! I think I do not see it as realistic that those things you mention are threatened by mass migration (whether of refugees or otherwise). As a concrete example, I live in Brooklyn, where there is a significant Jewish sub-community with their own cultural identity and in particular very conservative religious/political views. This community showed up in Brooklyn largely because they were part of the Jewish migration from eastern Europe in the early 20th century, escaping anti-Semitism there (so, this was not quite voluntary migration by people who chose America for American values). They're very successful in their own neighborhoods and absolutely maintain their own values, but don't seem to have had any effect on Brooklyn's liberal values or the culture at large; if anything we're one of the communities most stereotyped as liberal to a fault. Usually when I see fears about cultural changes in European countries receiving migrants, that fear is expressed in racial or at most religious terms, and not in political terms. I see things like "your child will be going to school with Muslims," not "your child will be taught at school that the right to free speech doesn't cover blasphemy." Yes, you can argue in theory that the former could imply the latter. But that doesn't seem to be what's actually happening. (If it is, I'd appreciate being corrected!) Also, at least as I see it, the lives that were lost fighting for legal and social equality of the sexes, worker's rights, etc. were almost universally not fights between European culture and non-European cultures. They were generally fights within a culture, and occasionally fights between different Western cultures (e.g., the US war for independence). I do not see people arguing against migration e.g. within the US or even between Western states, just from one particular racial/religious origin to any Western nation, whether or not that Western nation believes in legal equality of the sexes, socialized medicine, free speech, etc.
neves 9y ago
Please, would you explain what is "never again" for a non american? Is it about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Defense_League https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Defense_League ?
- openasocket 9y ago
  "never again" refers to the Holocaust. As in, never again will we let genocide happen. I'm not sure what the origins of the phrase is, but I (an American) was able to recognize what he was referring to immediately.