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> The refugee intake should be taken to zero, and borders strictly enforced, since the net economic contribution of MENA migrants currently is negative Delete

> The refugee intake should be taken to zero, and borders strictly enforced, since the net economic contribution of MENA migrants currently is negative Delete this sentence and the rest of your post is mostly good. Simplifying bureaucracy? Mandating English as an option? Capping payroll taxes at some reasonable level? All good ideas. But the idea that we should turn away people fleeing poverty and violence because their "net economic contribution... is currently negative" is racist and gross. Economic growth is nice, but it's a means to an end. The first step is to have a society worth growing.

pas 8y ago
> the rest of your post is mostly good. No, it's not. It's hogwash. Especially the education one. Income inequality is a lot more serious problem than uncapped payroll taxes.
beerlord 8y ago
The people who arrive in Europe are economic migrants. The real ones are in refugee camps in Lebanon and Turkey. By 2020 only half the refugees who arrived in Germany a few years ago are forecast to be employed, with the current unemployment rate 40%. [1] I have seen firsthand (Christian) refugees offered settlement in Poland, who after receiving handouts from the local community including a car, packed everything up and drove to Germany overnight to join an ethnic community there. Besides, if we care about helping refugees, we can help 10x as many people in their home regions than in Europe, for the same cost. Really we should be addressing the underlying problem - inequality and overpopulation - by devoting all of our foreign aid budget to providing education and contraception to women. I'm not against migration per-se, as long as it is from culturally compatible countries. If Europe needs cheap workers there are millions of them to be found in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia etc. Even further afield, there are millions more in South America. These people already share a culture similar to or identical to Europeans, and already speak a language similar to a native European one. Europe should control explicitly who it allows into its borders, not outsource the job to criminal people smugglers. [1] https://www.ft.com/content/bea8507e-64cb-11e8-90c2-9563a0613e56 https://www.ft.com/content/bea8507e-64cb-11e8-90c2-9563a0613...

pas 8y ago

> the rest of your post is mostly good. No, it's not. It's hogwash. Especially the education one. Income inequality is a lot more serious problem than uncapped payroll taxes.

beerlord 8y ago

The people who arrive in Europe are economic migrants. The real ones are in refugee camps in Lebanon and Turkey. By 2020 only half the refugees who arrived in Germany a few years ago are forecast to be employed, with the current unemployment rate 40%. [1] I have seen firsthand (Christian) refugees offered settlement in Poland, who after receiving handouts from the local community including a car, packed everything up and drove to Germany overnight to join an ethnic community there. Besides, if we care about helping refugees, we can help 10x as many people in their home regions than in Europe, for the same cost. Really we should be addressing the underlying problem - inequality and overpopulation - by devoting all of our foreign aid budget to providing education and contraception to women. I'm not against migration per-se, as long as it is from culturally compatible countries. If Europe needs cheap workers there are millions of them to be found in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia etc. Even further afield, there are millions more in South America. These people already share a culture similar to or identical to Europeans, and already speak a language similar to a native European one. Europe should control explicitly who it allows into its borders, not outsource the job to criminal people smugglers. [1] https://www.ft.com/content/bea8507e-64cb-11e8-90c2-9563a0613e56 https://www.ft.com/content/bea8507e-64cb-11e8-90c2-9563a0613...