We need immigration; the way it is done is the question. I was raised in a very mixed society and always had and have good friends of all sides but those were all 2nd+ generation immigrants if from Africa, Middle East, China. Never saw the difference with myself and they for many things did not either. But a first gen I can understand is very delicate, but we do need them... so better find a way.
My roommate at uni was an Iranian girl studying law and she was very smart and nice and very western; one day she went away visited her family in Iran and after a while the landlord called where the rent was. Never heard of her again... there is that...
For Germany, absorbing 1000 random people yearly is an easy task. A million that came in 2015 was already quite a challenge. Ten million coming in a year would overwhelm even Germany.
(But that is a theoretical scenario; in practice, they wouldn't get there, because Germany is pretty far from the Middle East and the border countries like Greece, Turkey and Italy would sink into complete chaos if tens of millions really came.)
Agreed, but we need a certain influx we can handle and we should handle. More is... a problem. And a problem we need to solve as a world. Most of this is very complicated and geopolitical going back a long time. We are just trying to put out the fires (and without water, literally in this case).
Who says if and how many "we" need? No one seems to be asking the actual people living there (e.g European), it's all arbitrary decisions made by Germany or some E.U council.
Last time we actually asked the people in a referendum what they want (Brexit) we were all surprised. Let's not assume we know what the majority wants.
But why would one ask the people this directly? This is more complex. Asking the people will get you populist reactions and that was not surprising. More surprising how close it was to people who were not just 'against everything' but lost.
The majority does not to die in a ditch (let's assume) so the chosen gov is supposed to prevent that. I do not know of other ways, currently in the EU, than work per hour and that needs people and our workforce is declining without immigration.
Why not ask the people this directly? It's a major decision with real impact on the region. Also, there is a growing resentment among people that the EU leaders don't really pay any attention to the problems the average joe is facing on his daily life. You know stuff like job security, house prices, gasoline prices and all that has really deteriorated in most places. Instead they see their bills go up because of green energy transition. Many people no longer feel like the system is working for them (see this great article https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-how-capitalism-needs-refo...)
If the EU continues "not to ask" them because it is "complex" the resentment will only grow.
Well, in most countries here so far the democracy works through elected parties. So sure you can have your vote but what follows is determined by the parties which you voted for.
We can only try and see what happens but direct people voting in referenda has a strong immediate feedback response which does not take into account anything that is actually happening as most people only hear what they read only on their favorite channels online (which can be 100% fake). It is a snapshot of the now: as has been shown after that many Brits would have not voted brexit if they were fully aware of all the (mis)information.
This has nothing to do with calling people stupid or ignorant; it has to do with some powers that be being very clever getting information out people act on and the EU rulers, so far as incredibly bad at this. They seem to be incapable of explaining long term benefits or what is happening at all to all the populous. This is a big problem. But even if it would be solved; the channels to reach are vast and diversified so if you just ask people to respond immediately, they will and you will get a very skewed look.
And yes, agreed, there is a lot wrong but a lot of it is also miscommunication or actually no communication from the German and Brussels towers. That is wrong but asking 'Joe on the street' about immigration, I can predict their answers based on who you ask, even if this is not in their best interest.
I cannot see how this will win anything; it will surely break up the EU, which could be good in some universe, but yeah, it was not great before the EU (to say it mildly) for many member states, so what data do we have things would improve? People have never experienced this prosperity: I cannot see, unless directly asked in a moment of angry 'took ma jubbbbs', how anyone besides Germany or France would benefit from leaving and they do not want to.
> as has been shown after that many Brits would have not voted brexit if they were fully aware of all the (mis)information.
The misinformation was abundant on both sides; I kept reading on and on about how poor Brexit will make the UK, how tech will collapse in London and tons of jobs will move away. It has been blown out of proportion.
Politicians and technocrats on both sides lie or exaggerate to get what they want.
> But why would one ask the people this directly? This is more complex. Asking the people will get you populist reactions and that was not surprising.
“Don’t worry simple villagers, me and my intellectual friends in the city went to University. We learned that multiculturalism is always better and anything else is ignorant racism. We know what is best for you.”
Edit: cute that this is being downvoted. This comment must hit a little too close for some of you, eh?
No, we (and it is easier now to do remotely even) vote to elect parties and party representatives to take decisions on our behalf. But that is not a direct 'how about letting 10000 immigrants in vote yes/no on this link' : that is something very different.
No. You don’t have the right to tell people who have lived in the same way for 100s of years in small, rural communities how to live and force them to take in incompatible, ward of the state refugees.
You do not have the right to destroy their culture and way of life because you “know what is best”.
This is a local issue. If you’re so certain your political party is “doing the right thing”, then allow those migrants to live where they are accepted and by people who want them.
You are not special, smarter, or more morally superior than your rural countrymen because you parrot party indoctrination about forced multiculturalism. Put your money where YOUR mouth is, not mine. Stop forcing others to pay for your virtue signaling.
> No, we vote to elect parties and party representatives to take decisions on our behalf.
Kind of, but only to a limited degree. We vote for administrations that should deal "in our interest", but there's e.g. no legal mandate for them to decide to give up democracy and choose a King. Many EU-states recognized that and went for referendums on large items, e.g. on the European Constitution.
A large-scale change of the nation is certainly not within the mandate given to them in any normal election.
I understand the hesitance regarding direct democracy, because it's inconvenient. You have to actually convince people, and not broker a deal behind closed doors where you bribe people and they say yes "on behalf of everyone who voted for them". It works great in Switzerland though, they're peaceful and happy and free, and have been doing it successfully for quite a substantial amount of time.
Way better than 10 rich wolves and their 200 expert advisor pet-wolfs deciding for 350 million sheep, which is the "solution" to the "big problem" of majority rule.
Not trying to defend someone I don’t know, but I know a lot of students get a single entry visa and being from Iran, there’s a chance that she couldn’t either get out or was denied entry. It’s just a possibility among other possible scenarios of course.
Edit: My assumption was that you’re talking about US, if that’s not the case then I could be wrong.
No, we don't. This is a mantra that keeps being repeated without much substance.
Housing affordability, job quality, public finance sustainability won't get any better with immigration. Maybe salaries keep being depressed, consumer demand increases, and that's good for profits. But I can't think of much more!
We are not making enough babies in the EU ourselves to take care of the elderly... so yes we do. Or we need some other revolution that does not depend on work per hour.
We already here are doing our best, not really successfully, to get the ultra rich to chime in and to get foreign companies to pay more than peanuts. Also the AI overlords are, in all practical ways, very far away (and mostly benefitting the very rich).
> We are not making enough babies in the EU ourselves to take care of the elderly... so yes we do [need immigration].
Amazing.
That's right up there - identical premise - with the ever popular HN refrain: but who will pick the strawberries if not for the immigrants. Inevitably stated in most every thread on immigration.
Philosophically it's perfectly aligned with the big business types that also want cheap labor for exactly the same reasons: more people to take advantage of, more people to cast into cheap labor roles of servitude to the aging/dying/lazy/entitled affluent classes.
But how will we prop up our collapsing entitlement systems, which were poorly managed and poorly funded and poorly thought out, if we don't import massive volumes of labor to pay taxes so the entitled classes can pretend their system isn't failing and so those immigrants themselves can get screwed later on when the entitlement systems they're brought in to prop up are bled dry.
> That's right up there - identical premise - with the ever popular HN refrain: but who will pick the strawberries if not for the immigrants.
In my experience people making that argument are more often than not the type that think manual labor is "beneath" them. The type that would rather collect unemployment for months at a time than take a job they don't like. It says much more about them than they think it does.
> We are not making enough babies in the EU ourselves to take care of the elderly
Any source for that? Is that what this is all about - cos I'm sure we can pay more for caregivers and more people will want these jobs. The problem is it doesn't pay well.
100% this. As long as there's substantial unemployment, there's no labor shortage, but the jobs are hard, the hours are long and the pay is bad. Pay more, and people will take the job. Or don't pay them more individually, but add more people, and you'll also get more applicants, because the job will be less taxing on all fronts.
The problem is that (the current form of) immigration doesn't solve that issue. I'm not intimately familiar with other countries, but Germany has very high unemployment among immigrants. At the same time, they need resources, and when they age, they're going to need to be taken care of as well.
That increases the problem and puts more load on the systems that are strained to begin with. That would look totally different if it was a different group of immigrants, but we have to look at reality, not a theoretical ideal.
You are talking populist millennial vs baby boomer (I am not) but I am referring to existentialist issues for people over 50 now and in the future while you are talking the happy few %. When people like you or me are elderly, this will look like a shitshow if we do not fix this, is the point.
My roommate at uni was an Iranian girl studying law and she was very smart and nice and very western; one day she went away visited her family in Iran and after a while the landlord called where the rent was. Never heard of her again... there is that...