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They are under concerted attack by Russia, that bankrolls nationalist/anti-immigration movements to strategically weaken intra EU relations (and intra NATO). ht
by throwaway5752 9y ago
They are under concerted attack by Russia, that bankrolls nationalist/anti-immigration movements to strategically weaken intra EU relations (and intra NATO). https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/01/10/everything-we-know-so-far-about-russian-election-meddling-in-europe/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/01/10... presents a decent summary.
- toasterlovin 9y agoOr there is a sizable portion of the European population who don’t want mass immigration. It’s not exactly a new phenomenon that tensions develop when heterogeneous groups of humans inhabit the same geographical area.
- amiga-workbench 9y agoI'm totally for migration, but at a level where we can adequately integrate the people we bring in. I want to make sure everybody has the support they need and conversely I want the state to make sure the people coming in are acting in the best interests of the country. Is this really such a far-right fringe position to have?
- ythn 9y agoThe problem is that proponents of mass immigration frame it as "either you are for mass immigration, or you are for the slaughtering/suffering/starvation/etc. of refugees in war torn areas"
- k__ 9y agoWhich you basically are, but that's just life. You can't have a cake and eat it.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoNo, you're not - there are plenty of options in between the current state of things and complete indifference to peoples' lives. Alternatives include accelerated immigration programs focused on refugees. Or a peace-keeping intervention in the war-torn places. The issue GP is pointing out is that this framing is basically shutting out any possible discussion. While myself I'm rather currently in favour of relatively lenient immigration policies, a lot of people I know personally are anti-immigration because they feel like we're being scammed with a bait-and-switch tactic - i.e. that we're told to accept war refugees, and what we get instead are economical migrants. Whether justified by evidence or not, I find those fears are something reasonable for people to have.
- pjc50 9y ago> we're told to accept war refugees, and what we get instead are economical migrants How on earth would you tell the difference as a bystander? Or is it the case that the media are telling them to be afraid of "migrants"?
- TeMPOraL 9y agoI wouldn't. They wouldn't and can't. It's all what the media says and shows. I'm just reporting on what my acquaintances believe from what they see on the news / in their social media feeds / through third-hand stories and cherry-picked examples confirming stereotypes. It's all just perceptions from indirect sources, like 99% of social issues of today.
- candiodari 9y agoYou perhaps wouldn't but for one thing, refugees come from war-torn areas. It is implied constantly, but never stated, by the government that the current flow of refugees come from Syria, fleeing the violence there. Reality: Syrian refugees are a tiny minority. Africans and people from central Asia are the large bulk of the immigrants (>80%) and they are most definitely not coming from war-torn areas.
- 9y ago
- pjc50 9y agoWhen a millon refugees walk across the border, what are the options? And what will the outcomes of those choices be?
- godzillabrennus 9y agoIt’s probably a far right enough position that it’ll get you convicted of some hate crime in the U.K., just as some teen got convicted of one for posting rap lyrics online from American rapper Snap Dog. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/british-woman-found-guilty-posting-racist-snap-dogg-lyrics-article-1.3948046 http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/british-woman-found-gu...
- LoSboccacc 9y agosame, I'm all for immigration and cultural interchange. however what we get is immigration and segregation. that's not a recipe for long term stability, especially with the southern states youth unemployment rate - whether is true or not that immigration impact the available job pool, the hundred thousands that arrive yearly plus the current job situation is bounded to breed resentment on both sides. can anyone blame either of them?
- amiga-workbench 9y agoThis is also a problem in the UK, we have ended up with insular parallel societies. I truly hope that time will fix this because its not looking good.
- candiodari 9y agoIt's a lot worse than it was in the 1990s and 2000s. It's definitely moving in the wrong direction and ... what exact reason do you have there is any change coming at all ? Meanwhile, the economic situation of the urban poor keeps getting worse (less pay for more work, more abuses, worse housing, ...) so in addition to creating these insular societies, the UK is also seriously upping the pressure on them. And before you say it, no it's not brexit (not that I'm claiming it's improving matters), it's been going on for decades.
- minikites 9y agoWhy is "immigrants are harmful" the default approach?
- amiga-workbench 9y agoBecause not all cultures are equal.
- mfoy_ 9y agoAnd you have a magic, unbiased ICopmparable<Culture>?
- amiga-workbench 9y agoNo, nobody does. The point is that nobody should tolerate and import values which would lead to an erosion of that very same tolerance. The culture I live in isn't perfect, but lets try and make sure any changes we make are in the right direction.
- dogma1138 9y agoUnbiased completely no, good enough yes. Oddly enough you can look at the Middle East and see two great examples which while are at odds with each other have more in common than with most of the rest of the of the region. Iran and Israel.
- toasterlovin 9y agoCan you really look at human history and think that, upon creating an underclass with a different religion and different phenotypic traits, somehow things will go well?
- mfoy_ 9y ago>Can you really ... think that ... creating an underclass with ... different phenotypic traits ... will go well? What are you saying, exactly? Don't dress it up with $20 words... you're literally saying "Those Others are different from us. Ick!"
- toasterlovin 9y agoSeems pretty reasonable to me, but then I am also of the opinion that 0 immigration should be the starting point in discussions of immigration (rather than “as much as possible”, which seems to have somehow become the default position).
- pjc50 9y agoHardly. Zero immigration or zero net immigration? I'm not sure people realise that the only countries that have that state are ones that are both so authoritarian that they can enforce it and so bad that nobody wants to live there. "Zero work visas" leads to even more egregiously stupid outcomes. No trade shows. No touring bands. ("Zero immigration" also means that if one of your nationals wants to marry a foreigner, they have to leave the country. And so on.)
- iguy 9y agonet migration seems like an entirely irrelevant number here. It's something politicians speak of in the UK just because it's smaller. If the issue under debate is assimilation, then every native who departs increases the relevant ratio.
- amiga-workbench 9y agoA perfectly reasonable default position to have, in my mind if you are going to bring outsiders in, you should probably do it for selfish reasons.
- 18pfsmt 9y agoI believe the perception that the immigration policy is "as much as possible" doesn't reflect reality. Many in the west feel it is the humane thing to offer immigrants in war torn ME an opportunity for a better life considering the selfish meddling the West has been involved in WRT ME policy for the last 100 years (think Sykes-Picot, which carved the ME up for UK/France ends). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sykes%E2%80%93Picot_Agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sykes%E2%80%93Picot_Agreement
- 9y ago
- mfoy_ 9y agoImmigration is just a wedge issue-- a means to an end. The point is to use propaganda to pit half of the population against the other half. Divisive politics in a nutshell! As the saying goes, "divide and conquer."
- candiodari 9y agoI don't know how you can say this. Go and try to get a low end job in a European capital, and then come back with an answer to "do immigrants directly lower the quality of life for the urban poor ?". The answer, without any doubt, is yes. Now you could say that the economy must simply grow to compensate, but it hasn't been doing that for decades now. Exactly when will this happen ? Likewise, government support has been shrinking while taxes have been growing. Solve this problem and you make immigrants a solvable issue. Don't solve this and you might as well try to paint the sky a bright shade of green. Don't solve it for another decade, perhaps two and there will be civil war.
- mtgx 9y agoI also believe it's unfair to ask European countries to take immigrants running from wars mostly caused by the U.S. in the Middle East. It must be nice to launch wars worldwide, knowing there is an ocean separating you from the targets so you won't have to suffer any of the consequences for it (whether it's direct retaliation or having to take in the civilians running from the war - especially when the U.S. government seems to consider civilians living nearby targets as "collateral damage" or outright targets, with the whole 16+ year old male enemy combatant rule).
- eeZah7Ux 9y ago> Is this really such a far-right fringe position to have? Yes. We live in a world were for wealthy people/orgs it's very easy and cheap to move money, products, raw material, energy, information and jobs across the world, travel for business and recreation, even obtain visas and relocate to poor countries (both legally or with small bribes). This 8 categories list almost everything that moves in the world with only one exception: people relocating to rich countries. That's incredibly difficult in comparison. Even if you have an advanced degree, good intentions, no criminal record, fluency in the local language, willingness to work even at lower salaries, you still need a company to do expensive paperwork to effectively authorize you to be there. If this does not sounds unjust enough let's not forget that people do not choose to be born in a wealthy or poor country. EDIT: The usual bunch of downvotes came in just after posting. Interesting.
- mfoy_ 9y agoRegarding justice. There is no such thing. To borrow a pun from Terry Pratchett, there is "just us".
- amiga-workbench 9y agoFor the record I didn't downvote. Your comment has raised some interesting questions for me, would true freedom of movement would seem to undermine the traditional nation state and the will of its people? At the very least it would massively change what it means to belong to a nation, it could largely erase that belonging. It would be such a different world to live in, national identity is already a tough thing to quantify and reason about.
- eeZah7Ux 9y agoIt's well known that ultra-nationalist governments thorough history has been always very strict with both immigration and emigration. Also ideas (books, movies, even music...) can influence a country even more than immigrants. Unsurprisingly, heavy censorship is very common dictatorships. It's interesting to look at what rich and poor countries import and export ideas, ranging from academic research, literature, art to popular movies...
- DavidVoid 9y ago>Or there is a sizable portion of the European population who don’t want mass immigration. This isn't a "one or the other" kind of thing. Yes, there are people who oppose mass immigration, but Russia also has a habit of trying to destabilize European countries by supporting nationalist/anti-immigration groups.
- toasterlovin 9y agoYeah, but pointing to Russia as the primary cause is an attempt to take away legitimacy from certain political positions. As if to say, “The only reason anybody has this position is because they’ve been fooled by the Russians.” Speaking frankly, it’s patronizing bullshit.
- Hermel 9y agoNo, they are under attack by eurocrats that dream of a uniform Europe under one central government. If the EU wants to do help Europe, it should become democratic (today, it isn't, the only democratically elected body of the EU is the parliament, but that "parliament" does not even have the power to propose new laws because their is no proper separation of powers) and actually live subsidiarity (a principle that is recognized on paper only).
- ginko 9y agoWell, last time they tried that (EU constitution) it was shot down by the same people that complain that the EU isn't democratic enough.
- LoSboccacc 9y agothe problem is that this EU is a tyrannical democracy. it's too easy to strong-arm some states into swallowing some policy that benefits everyone but them, like Dublin III, like production quotas, like fishing rights... this leaves basically everyone discontent about something everywhere.
- Double_a_92 9y ago> this leaves basically everyone discontent about something everywhere. That's life, I guess.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago> this leaves basically everyone discontent about something everywhere. Isn't that the definition of a good compromise? I mean, each EU country is fighting to get itself the best deal, to bolster its position over other EU states. There is no way to make it so that everyone (or even the majority) is happy, when the definition of "happy" is "much more than you could possibly get".
- baud147258 9y agoThen UE walked on the democratic opinion of its citizens and established the constitution without asking the citizens, with the treaty of Lisbon.
- menacingly 9y agoAlso just individual humans who don't assume that open borders and mass immigration is the correct state we must eventually arrive at. Isn't it much simpler to believe that there are people who organically disagree? And if the goal of the conspiracy is to sow discontent and weaken relations, and if a disagreement requires two opposing viewpoints, aren't both sides equally responsible for the weakening?
- throwaway5752 9y agoSure. And how is "people disagree on a policy issue" and "other people are exploiting that disagreement" incompatible? In that case (embarassingly obviously) it's the 3rd party's fault, not either of the two disagreeing parties.
- enriquto 9y ago> They are under concerted attack by Russia, oh, come on, this is ridiculous. The russians may be somewhat evil, I concede, but the problems that we europeans have are not their fault, but ours.
- rcatcher 9y ago> The russians may be somewhat evil It's sad to see such xenophobic comments on HN. Please stop blaming every Russian for what Putin and his friends do.
- enriquto 9y agoi'm not blaming russians, on the contrary. I said that blaming them was ridiculous.
- throwaway5752 9y agoAs I said elsewhere, the disagreements are real and legitimate. The exploitation of that divide is real, also.
- baud147258 9y agoFrom the linked article: Le Pen’s (National Front leader in France)has taken loans from Russian banks and has repeatedly praised Putin. They are taking loans from Russians banks because all French banks have refused to give them loans and has closed all their accounts. If you're inclined to believe conspiracy theory, remember that Macron has worked for banks before... >In return, Russian state media openly supported her in the French election And the support given by various American politician to Macron doesn't count? The article is pretty hypocritical.
- 0x4f3759df 9y agoSo mentally-weak people oppose Muslim immigration because Russia, just like mentally-weak vote Trump because Russia -- Its a fallacy: "All of my ideological opponents are mentally-weak, but its not their fault"
- throwaway5752 9y agoI think weak-minded people immediately jump to a straw man attack instead of a legitimate rebuttal.
- 0x4f3759df 9y agoYour article linked directly to the 'monkey cage' section: {Over at the Monkey Cage blog, Lucan Ahmad Way and Adam Casey recently summarized some of the most prominent cases of Russian meddling in Europe } Let me quote it for you: >But it’s not at all clear that Russia’s efforts made any difference >And even in these, a closer look shows that Russia’s actual influence is far from clear. >But there are reasons to be skeptical of the claim that Russia swung the election for Trump. >[Russia] hasn’t gotten much for its efforts — and these efforts have often backfire