5 ms·
Ah yes, the myth of immigration as both cultural enrichment and economically beneficial. I can tell you that at least in my own (Belgium) and neighboring countr
by jgb1984 5y ago
Ah yes, the myth of immigration as both cultural enrichment and economically beneficial. I can tell you that at least in my own (Belgium) and neighboring country (Netherlands) this hasn't been the case.
The cost of immigration, especially from outside of the EU, is catastrophically high, and remains that way, even for 2nd or 3rd generation immigrants.
A paper studied the cost of immigration in the Netherlands to be around 400 billion euros between 1995 and 2019 (I can only find the paper in Dutch from the Renaissance institute, performed by several PhD / processors).
The people arriving here from outside of the EU are often unskilled, in certain cases illiterate, and come from a cultural and religious background which proves to be nearly impossible to integrate, let alone assimilate.
As a result, in Brussels and many cities all around western Europe, it's riddled with ghettos, people living outside of the system, in poverty, with ideas that aren't compatible with our society (about topics such as religion, rule of law, sexuality, equality and so on).
In my own neighborhood there are parts where as a woman you can't walk the street without a headscarf or you'll be harassed. And I'm not even suggesting what happens if you're openly gay in said streets.
Even multiple generations down the line the situation doesn't improve.
Why, in countries that are supposedly democratic, should mass immigration be the one thing that is shoved down our throats, without having any influence or say in it?
Side note: Belgium has a very flexible and generous social security system. We are known for providing unemployment benefits without any limit in duration, and with too little stimulus and followup, resulting in a lot of people simply exploiting the system. This is why immigration and the access to said system is a sensitive topic. We are also famous for having bungled the topic of integration for decades, resulting in people having lived here for ages and still not even speak the local language.
- atlasunshrugged 5y agoI'm sorry to hear about your experience and as an American who lived in a few European cities I know what you mean, some neighborhoods are decidedly un-European, but I would partially blame that not on the immigrants but on policies that bring in so many at once. Of course there is no need to assimilate when there is a huge neighborhood of people just like you... imagine the driving culture if you brought a million Cairo cab drivers to Singapore? But if you bring 50 a year, they assimilate. That said, I'm pretty sure most economists (other than Borjas perhaps, whose seminal work on the Mariel boatlift seems critically flawed) would broadly disagree with you about the net economic benefits being negative and I would love if you could share that paper. https://www.economist.com/the-world-if/2017/07/13/a-world-of-free-movement-would-be-78-trillion-richer https://www.economist.com/the-world-if/2017/07/13/a-world-of... https://www.cgdev.org/blog/what-mariel-boatlift-cuban-refugees-can-teach-us-about-economics-immigration https://www.cgdev.org/blog/what-mariel-boatlift-cuban-refuge...
- jgb1984 5y agoIt's in Dutch, and can be found here: http://www.demo-demo.nl/files/Grenzeloze_Verzorgingsstaat.pdf http://www.demo-demo.nl/files/Grenzeloze_Verzorgingsstaat.pd... Of course take things with a grain of salt, as always, but it's quite a hefty and well documented piece of research.
- doteka 5y agoFor anyone missing the required context here: The “Renaissance institute” that sponsored this “research” is a far-right think tank associated with the FvD, which can be charitably described as far right nationalists, or less charitably as a bunch of actual racists and fascists.
- jgb1984 5y agoAh yes, before you know it we're off slinging Hitler accusations left and right. If you've got counter arguments related to the paper, you're more than welcome to share them. But discarding the entire thing because it comes from a political direction which isn't your own is hardly a productive attitude.
- doteka 5y agoThere’s political directions and there’s literal fascism. My grandparents gave their lives in the fight against this rotten ideology, and anyone who supports it and gives it credibility can go right to hell in my book.
- jgb1984 5y agoLol yes of course, because debating and researching the impact of mass immigration makes us all fascists, clearly!