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People leaving Africa right now are being forced out by war and violence, most of them aren't choosing to leave. As respectfully as possible, this is completel

People leaving Africa right now are being forced out by war and violence, most of them aren't choosing to leave. As respectfully as possible, this is completely wrong. https://www.google.com/search?q=migrant+crisis+economic https://www.google.com/search?q=migrant+crisis+economic I phrased this a little wrong, the source of the current refugee crisis is mostly not Africa, but my point is that the societal disruption you're referring to is not caused by voluntary immigration. Not even the majority of unauthorized border crossers into Europe are from Syria. Once again with all due respect, these are very definitely voluntary actions on the part of the border crossers. Check out this article from 2 years ago, even then it wasn't primarily Syrians. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/07/closing-european-harbors/395321/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/07/closing... The migrants come from a vast swath of Africa and the Middle East, spanning not only war-torn Syria (in the first four months of 2015, Syrians accounted for just 30 percent of those crossing the sea) but also Nigeria and the Gambia and Eritrea and Somalia and Mali. The migrants who embark upon this journey are typically represented as terrorized and impoverished—as people driven (to quote Amnesty International) “to risk their lives in treacherous sea crossings in a desperate attempt to reach safety in Europe.” The demographic and economic facts complicate that story. When populations flee war or famine, they generally flee together: the elderly and the infants, women as well as men. The current migrants, however, are overwhelmingly working-age males. All of them have paid a substantial price to make the trip: it can cost upwards of $2,000 to board a smuggler’s boat, to say nothing of hundreds or even thousands of dollars to travel from home to the embarkation point in the first place. Very few of the migrants from Libya are actually Libyan nationals.

burkaman 9y ago
Thanks, that was plenty respectful and I didn't know that. I wish there were sources and numbers to define "overwhelmingly", and I think refugees are probably more likely to pay "a substantial price" than a voluntary migrant, but overall I get the point. I'll fall back to my other question then, why would people leave? I was looking at this image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_migrant_crisis#/media/File:Map_of_the_European_Migrant_Crisis_2015.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_migrant_crisis#/media... It seems like most migrants at the moment are not from Africa. If their motivations are mostly economic, we would expect the numbers to rise in proportion with the population, right? And they would be tempered by economies improving as their citizens get healthier and more productive and they stop having to fight and treat malaria. After some time, people will adapt to having healthier children and the rate of population increase will get lower. I'm just not seeing this imminent crisis of exploding numbers of African migrants, and I don't see how the issues of integrating people could possible outweigh the benefits of people not dying. I also have some issues with what qualifies as "mass societal disruption", but I guess that's mostly a semantics argument.
- canoebuilder 9y ago
  Every single image I've seen of this has been overwhelmingly young males, the personal experience of everyone I know in the affected areas has been that they are overwhelmingly young males. In most cases cases "overwhelmingly" is an understatement, because they are all young males. The data on that map is from 2015. If you want to read about migrant/illegal border crossers from Africa in recent years, italy has been bearing the brunt of it. https://www.google.com/search?q=italy+migrants https://www.google.com/search?q=italy+migrants Here's a recent video from a spanish beach that looks like some kind of absurdist theater. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xA02zZCGTdk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xA02zZCGTdk I also have some issues with what qualifies as "mass societal disruption", but I guess that's mostly a semantics argument. How about pre-meditated and coordinated sex attacks with 1000+ perpetrators? This was hardly an isolated incident, just one of the more shocking in scale and brazen in execution. https://www.google.com/search?q=new+year%27s+eve+cologne https://www.google.com/search?q=new+year%27s+eve+cologne Societal disruption needn't be limited to large scale events like the above, just the steady flow of increased crime disrupts and degrades society. https://www.google.com/search?q=migrant+crime https://www.google.com/search?q=migrant+crime

burkaman 9y ago

Thanks, that was plenty respectful and I didn't know that. I wish there were sources and numbers to define "overwhelmingly", and I think refugees are probably more likely to pay "a substantial price" than a voluntary migrant, but overall I get the point. I'll fall back to my other question then, why would people leave? I was looking at this image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_migrant_crisis#/media/File:Map_of_the_European_Migrant_Crisis_2015.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_migrant_crisis#/media... It seems like most migrants at the moment are not from Africa. If their motivations are mostly economic, we would expect the numbers to rise in proportion with the population, right? And they would be tempered by economies improving as their citizens get healthier and more productive and they stop having to fight and treat malaria. After some time, people will adapt to having healthier children and the rate of population increase will get lower. I'm just not seeing this imminent crisis of exploding numbers of African migrants, and I don't see how the issues of integrating people could possible outweigh the benefits of people not dying. I also have some issues with what qualifies as "mass societal disruption", but I guess that's mostly a semantics argument.

canoebuilder 9y ago
Every single image I've seen of this has been overwhelmingly young males, the personal experience of everyone I know in the affected areas has been that they are overwhelmingly young males. In most cases cases "overwhelmingly" is an understatement, because they are all young males. The data on that map is from 2015. If you want to read about migrant/illegal border crossers from Africa in recent years, italy has been bearing the brunt of it. https://www.google.com/search?q=italy+migrants https://www.google.com/search?q=italy+migrants Here's a recent video from a spanish beach that looks like some kind of absurdist theater. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xA02zZCGTdk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xA02zZCGTdk I also have some issues with what qualifies as "mass societal disruption", but I guess that's mostly a semantics argument. How about pre-meditated and coordinated sex attacks with 1000+ perpetrators? This was hardly an isolated incident, just one of the more shocking in scale and brazen in execution. https://www.google.com/search?q=new+year%27s+eve+cologne https://www.google.com/search?q=new+year%27s+eve+cologne Societal disruption needn't be limited to large scale events like the above, just the steady flow of increased crime disrupts and degrades society. https://www.google.com/search?q=migrant+crime https://www.google.com/search?q=migrant+crime