European Politics

The Flash said:
I feel like a lot of Europeans, especially those who live in welfare states, are afraid that refugees and immigrants are leeching off the state thus promoting a culture of expectance of services without contribution. But when you go into the depths of it, the so-called leeching off is often caused by racial/religious/nationalistic discrimination itself, due to social pressures, biased employments and what have you. It's a case of perceived reaction actually being the causation. (Not exclusively, there are people leeching off the state but they're merely an exception to the rule from where I see it)

Then again, I'm not European and I may well be misinformed about the place immigrants have in developed European societies culturally and economically.
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Being a well off middle-class/working class Swede having grown up in a rather homogenous area, I really mostly meet well-integrated immigrants, and for me the anti-immigrant politics on the rise are still strange to me. Where the hell would this country be without immigrants? The whole food culture is dependent upon immigrants. I have never been to a pizzeria not run by a first or second generation immigrant. They work their asses off and take great pride in having their own business. Balkan, Turkish, middle-eastern, no difference.

At the same time, some refugees are really not that smart. There was a busload of newly arrived immigrants who caused quite a stir in the media earlier this year... Being driven to a refugee-centre with provisional accomodation in the middle of the woods in northern Sweden, they refused to get off the bus and loudly proclaimed that it "wasn't what they expected".

http://www.dn.se/nyheter/sverige/utdragen-protest-nar-flyktingar-vagrade-lamna-buss/

I don't blame anyone for wanting to put those people in a box addressed to ISIS territory. Luckily, these people has to be a tiny minority.

As for leeching off the state, that is indeed a problem, because Swedes leeching off the state gets less benefits than the newly arrived...
 
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I read the comment section of a certain domestic website regarding a story about the refugees. Shouldn't have. Everyone who's not saying that this is all an ISIS plan to islamize Europe and a big Nazi-like plan to enslave the whole world is downvoted to oblivion. It's either bots or people are absolutely retarded. Probably both.

Refugees are obviously not interested in staying here, you can only really see them at the Macedonian border, around the central bus station in Belgrade and on the Hungarian border. Dunno what's the cause of so much butthurt, it's not like everyone got a Syrian refugee shipped to their doors. Fuck's sake.
 
The media certainly isn't helping either. Based on the headlines you could pretty much say we're becoming an ISIS colony next month and that we're their #1 target for elimination.
 
Forostar said:
... I am specifically talking about Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic and Slowakia.
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If they don't give in, I feel these countries should be cut financially.
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I'm from the Czech Republic and yes, I agree, we should be cut financially, we should have left EU a long time ago actually, I think :-) And yes, we are afraid of unknown. I actually do not follow these immigrant problems that much, but I believe large countries like Germany or France already have areas where it is not wise to enter? Where policemen do not dare to enter? Places confirming that "integration" is almost impossible and costs money that could be used for natives? Actually, we already start to have some problems with muslims, but still not that large (Teplice). And also with Vietnamese as my colleague told me yesterday (Šumperk) :-)

To my defence, I bought some books (by well known arabists - Tauer, Musil) to learn something about islam, but so far, I'm not sure what to thing. I'm in the process of reading of Quran as translated by our arabist Hrbek and it does not seem that hateful or something, but I still have to reach surahs calling for jihad and beheading of unbelievers :-)
 
@Belenor

Islam, as most religions, is very open to interpretation. Quran is not 'hateful' or 'evil' outright but it is possible to interpret its symbolism and metaphors as such. It's an outdated book that mostly features well intended possible solutions for the evil that was going on in the Arabian Peninsula and through that the evil throughout the world.

That's not to say there aren't anything 'bad' on it, but you gotta think about it in relation to the time and place it was written. Most 'bad' things on it are located on the Nisa and Bakara surahs, mostly concerning inheritance, marriage and women's rights as a whole. But what seems a very unfair treatment of women now was actually a massive step forward in the Arab world. Before Islam people burying their daughters alive, not leaving anything for them on inheritance were common sights there.
 
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Belenor said:
I believe large countries like Germany or France already have areas where it is not wise to enter? Where policemen do not dare to enter?
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All countries have dangerous places. They are not caused by immigrants but by social problems such as poor education or lax public safety. In some countries, immigrants are ghettoed - and ghettoes are almost always where these places occur. In some countries the ghettos have existed for a very long time, including my own.

Belenor said:
Places confirming that "integration" is almost impossible and costs money that could be used for natives?
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Integration isn't impossible, or my country wouldn't exist. Every day I see people who are not from Canada originally taking part in a traditional Canadian lifestyle - buying coffee at Tim Hortons, complaining about the lack of improvement to the local hockey club in the off season, going to work for the federal government, muttering about the Prime Minister - or planning to support him in our current elections. This European idea that integration is impossible prizes too much skin colour and a person's religion over a person's ability to take part in the overall culture of the country in which they find themselves.
 
I understood the 'no go zones' thing is referring more to areas of poverty and crime, rather than it being anything to do with immigrants. These areas just happen to be the areas where immigrants often end up because they can't afford to live anywhere else, and communities become established. I've heard it said by a fascist organisation in the UK about a town close to me, and it's rubbish. There's a relatively high population of Muslims, especially in some parts of the town, but the prevailing issue is poverty/relative poverty and related crime, and that involves residents of all races and religions. Same goes for a couple of towns in France I've visited which have a lot of North African immigrants.
 
The Flash: that is good about the arabists I mentioned - they try to put it to perpective - e.g Hrbek's Quran translation contains quite a large commentary to the respective surahs. So I hope to learn a lot from him. Musil even lived among Arabs, albeit that was around 1900 - not recently :)

LooseCannon - well, Canada is one of the countries to think about moving into when EU starts to fall apart :) I think it just depends on the willingness of the immigrants to follow the rules of the country they move to. Do the immigrants coming to the Europe plan to do this? That's it actually, integration cannot be forced upon them, the only think we can do is to allow them to integrate. Somebody was talking about those escaping the Iron Curtain - yep. It was nice that they were accepted, but I think there were not such a huge crowds of them in a short time, or were they? (I may be wrong with this - i checked wikipedia and it seems there were periods of high emigration) And lots of them were intelligent and educated I believe, or weren't they? I do not believe those thousands of immigrants want to change. One of our politicians went to a camp to talk to immigrants directly. He says they seem to be naive, e.g. some of them think they will save enough money to buy Ferrari in a year. How, I wonder? Oh btw. I think Canada refused to accept Gypsies coming from our country I think? Some years back?

Brigantium: I'm afraid the new immigrants will end up or form their own no-go zones and I do not see how this could be avoided. We actually already have similar problems with Gipsies. Only a tiny few of them is able to really adapt. True, it is not easy for them due to discrimination, but there are some cases. I do not dare to say any percentage, but I believe it will be the same with the immigrants - just a miserable percent will be able to integrate and what with the rest of them? It will lead to a rise of another Hitler eventually. Another problem with these people who are able to integrate is that they actually leave their own culture behind so they are considered outsiders or something by both sides afterwards (hm, I do not know if I explain it clearly - I'm starting to getting beyond my English language knowledge :)
 
Forostar said:
In Croatia people are welcoming and helping the fugitives. They even point out where the mines are still laying.
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With a population density of 75 people per square km and a shitload of abandoned/almost empty villages and rural zones, I see no problem with providing about 1500 people (which is our quota) with food, clothes and a roof. Like I already wrote here, there's a part of the population which is hardline against, but the larger part still remembers that Croats are almost immigrants by definition - for the last 150 or 200 years people have been fleeing from this country every now and then, for the reasons of war, politics and economy. Not accepting number of people from outside which is equal to a good local metal show attendance would be pure, unfiltered hypocrisy.
 
Belenor said:
Brigantium: I'm afraid the new immigrants will end up or form their own no-go zones and I do not see how this could be avoided. We actually already have similar problems with Gipsies. Only a tiny few of them is able to really adapt. True, it is not easy for them due to discrimination, but there are some cases. I do not dare to say any percentage, but I believe it will be the same with the immigrants - just a miserable percent will be able to integrate and what with the rest of them? It will lead to a rise of another Hitler eventually. Another problem with these people who are able to integrate is that they actually leave their own culture behind so they are considered outsiders or something by both sides afterwards (hm, I do not know if I explain it clearly - I'm starting to getting beyond my English language knowledge :)
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It's possible to object to immigration for more rational reasons, or to accommodate it, I don't think mass support for genocidal right-wing ideologies has to be inevitable.

As for actual integration, I think that can have a lot to do with the local reception of immigrants and where they're able to settle. I know towns in which immigrants have settled almost entirely in a particular locality, and there's a big divide. But in Middlesbrough, for example, where local authority rental housing is commonplace and fairly evenly distributed throughout the town, the immigrant population as a whole seems be integrating well.

I don't think the formation of a community of one ethnic group automatically leads to a no-go zone. Native population becoming outnumbered by immigrants in a particular locality isn't the same thing as hostility from immigrants towards the native population. There are similar sentiments expressed about areas here where there are a lot of Polish and Czech migrant workers living. Where there's crime and poverty, it's an issue distinct from immigration itself.

This all happened with Irish immigrants in the Victorian era, and now....well, nobody would guess I was from an Irish family.
 
Regarding mines in Croatia. When Yugoslav Army retreated, they mined the land as army does it, in a pattern. Those patterns were provided to us after the war and sweeping was relatively easy. It's the mines that were put by rebeled Serbs paramilitary that still remain, they were placed in unsystematic manner. Ask any sweeping squad how hard it is to neutralize an area of several square km with random and unknown number of mines. We're bearing the consequences of that even today, even after 20 years of a well funded sweeping program.

Loosely related to current events, eg. providing arms to paramilitaries makes the situation even worse.
 
Belenor said:
LooseCannon - well, Canada is one of the countries to think about moving into when EU starts to fall apart :) I think it just depends on the willingness of the immigrants to follow the rules of the country they move to. Do the immigrants coming to the Europe plan to do this? That's it actually, integration cannot be forced upon them, the only think we can do is to allow them to integrate. Somebody was talking about those escaping the Iron Curtain - yep. It was nice that they were accepted, but I think there were not such a huge crowds of them in a short time, or were they? (I may be wrong with this - i checked wikipedia and it seems there were periods of high emigration) And lots of them were intelligent and educated I believe, or weren't they? I do not believe those thousands of immigrants want to change. One of our politicians went to a camp to talk to immigrants directly. He says they seem to be naive, e.g. some of them think they will save enough money to buy Ferrari in a year. How, I wonder? Oh btw. I think Canada refused to accept Gypsies coming from our country I think? Some years back?
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The amount of migrants in the post war era greatly dwarfed the amount of Syrian migrants; in addition, they had less places to go; in further addition, most of those places had been freshly fucking destroyed, so yes, you are completely wrong on your assessment of comparing numbers.

Then you say that lots of them (the post ww2 migrants) were intelligent and educated. Many Syrians are intelligent. They may not be educated, but they are certainly intelligent. And that doesn't matter compared to what they might be asked to do, which is a) learn a language and b) work at a not-so-great job. Any asshole can clean a toilet or push a broom, be a construction labourer, etc.

I live in a country where 1/5 people were not born here. One in five. And the people who have freshly come from other countries are not always fully integrated. They have jobs - many of them get their own places to work, making local cuisine and stuff, many work night shift at McDonalds or clean the toilets at a local school. Their kids? Their kids are almost uniformly Canadian.

Nobody has anything to fear from immigrants - they should fear their own attitude towards immigrants more than anything. Welcome immigrants with open arms and honest attempts to help, and watch them carve out society. They'll change the places they settle to reflect home, a bit, sure. But then the overall fabric of our nations changes constantly.

Or, as I pointed out in Sweden the other day - do you really think kebab is a traditional Swedish dish? Do you really think everywhere invented pizza and hamburgers?

It doesn't fucking matter where people come from. It matters that they're people and the second anyone places concerns about things like culture and poverty and fear of integration vs. non-integration ahead of the lives of living, breathing people, they need to go back and look at what they're saying.

Right now, we have an election, and our conservative, fairly xenophobic Prime Minister is pretending the reason Canada isn't taking any refugees is because of security concerns. He can't say he wants to protect Canada, because in Canada, the second you are afraid of immigrants you are a complete and total racist. These European attitudes I sometimes find very hard to comprehend.

They're human fucking beings. Let's all work together to make sure they get treated like them.
 
LooseCannon said:
They may not be educated, but they are certainly intelligent.
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There's a large number of educated people that were employed at secondary/tertiary job types. A lot of refugees have good clothes, devices, and a bunch of money with them. The migration costs - about a 1000 eur just to get safely through Turkey. These are people with real work skills that took their possessions, savings, and fled. I'd even say that there are more capable and educated people (in average) in those bunch of refugees than what's total Syrian average. More people from rural zones remained than those that were living in urban environments with 8 to 4 jobs.
 
LooseCannon: Hmm, I do not know :-) The european countries were not able to solve their no-go zone problems so far. I do not think they will be able to handle immigrants better. From your description of Canada, it seems that immigrants are willing to integrate/adapt there, but it does not seems to be so in Europe and I think that it is not surprising that we expect the immigrants to be the same as those human fucking beings in no-go zones. Considering we were not able to integrate Gypsies in the years since the end of WWII here in the Czech Republic, I do not think we will be able to give immigrants the chance to prove their worth. We're just too afraid and that is hard to change/overcome.

At least I will not expect to save enough money to buy a Ferrari in a year when I get to Canada when running from the islamic Europe :-)

One funny thing - it's interesting that there are no problems with workers from Ukraine, I think. Actually, one of my work colleagues is from Ukraine. So why such problems with Gypsies or muslims? Prejudice? Could be.
 
Seriously. Where are these European no-go zones, and if they exist, is it anything to do with refugees or immigrants and extremism, or are you talking about downtrodden areas of big cities? People in other parts of Europe may be able to enlighten me, but I can't think of anywhere that police don't dare to go. There are bits of London - as with pretty much all large cities worldwide - that aren't very safe to walk around at night, but that's nothing to do with immigrants.
 
Belenor said:
One funny thing - it's interesting that there are no problems with workers from Ukraine, I think. Actually, one of my work colleagues is from Ukraine. So why such problems with Gypsies or muslims? Prejudice? Could be.
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Migrant workers from Ukraine had a terrible reputation in Leeds a few years ago.
 
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