Refugee situation / EU response - rolling news

indefensible really

surely europe, as the OECD said yesterday, has the experience and capacity of rising to this challenge??

or you know, maybe not!

that's what i don't get about the immigration deniers, the keep-em-out crowd - surely the nation you love so much is strong enough, generous enough, flexible enough, robust enough to handle welcoming thousands of new workers, taxpayers, citizens?

and if not well maybe your country isn't quite as hot shit as you think it is!

mate we're full up. workers? scroungers more like. etc etc

Well, y'know, that's why anti-immigrant sentiment, and really, most types of racism, at least in Europe, flare up during tough times, as Europe has very much had since 2008. And why so much anti-immigrant sentiment comes from the working classes, under attack from globalization for decades, and in competition with these new people for the few remaining paychecks. Like, I don't want to defend them too much, they're racist assholes, but they're also already suffering from the globalized capitalist system.

But really, my response is that whether or not our beloved states are strong enough to survive the multi-culturalist future, they definitely aren't strong enough to keep refugees out, not without losing ourselves in the straight up fascist methods that would be needed. The job is to create a multiculturalist society that doesn't just result in lowered wages for the workers, and more exciting cuisine for the middle classes.

(xp) TINY ISLAND etc

the supply of jobs is not fixed! welcoming 50K immigrants would result in a LOT of shit needing to get built, staffed and supplied which..... wait for it....... CREATES JOBS!!?!2111eleven!!!11!

and just so we follow this full circle, the people in those jobs.... pay....... TAXES!!!!!!111!1!eleventy111!!!

but no, let's not borrow at historically low interest rates and gas prices to do this, that would be MADNESS

that's what i don't get about the immigration deniers

similarly the proudest american patriots who exalt their country above all else and whose goal is to transform out of all recognition

like, our country is the greatest. except it is so feeble that it can't grow and change. and if gay people marry each other it might fall apart. other than that though we are the HOTTEST SHIT

we are experiencing an unprecedented upheaval in the make-up of a country once united by ties of language, history, creed and patriotism don't forget

Not to mention immigrants are good for the growth of the all-sacred Small Businesses.

Over the last 20 years, the number of small businesses grew 58% – from 3.1 million to 4.9 million – and immigrants started about 540,000 of those, or about one-third, over that period. And more than half don’t even have a college degree.

http://business.time.com/2012/06/15/immigrants-outpacing-the-rest-of-us-in-small-business-ownership/

The aging German population is one of the reasons the government has been so keen to bring more people in.

It's going to be substantially worse in CEU if they are not going to be open to any immigration. Everyone talks about the decline of the Russian birth rate as having reached crisis point but it's higher than every EU accession country in the region. They have also probably lost 5-10% of their populations to intra-EU emigration in the last ten years and that's not likely to stop any time soon. It's a demographic nightmare.

A small indication of some of the 'astonishing and grotesque' barriers put in the way of those trying to start a new life in the uk:

https://www.freemovement.org.uk/approach-of-home-office-to-nationality-case-astonishing-and-grotesque-rules-high-court/

Still happening daily this, just not getting anywhere near the top of the news. http://news.yahoo.com/38-missing-aegean-migrant-boat-sinking-102457060.html

At Least 18 Asylum Seekers Are Tied to New Year’s Eve Assault in Cologne
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/09/world/europe/cologne-new-years-eve-attacks.html

The good news is, there's a massive feminist backlash against people making this a race issue. Massive as in "crowds of young women standing around in public spaces, having spontaneous debates concerning the menfolk." Because if it hadn't been for the theft and pigmentation, the victims would have been expected to laugh it off.

It was my impression that the victims were being expected to laugh it off because and not despite of the "pigmentation" involved. It's a very inconvenient story for Merkel's policy goals.

The reporting on this "assault" -- which is basically a series of unrelated crimes in the middle of a shitshow near the Bahnhof and made possible by some very shitty policing and crowd control -- has been awful. I have yet to read an entirely coherent description of the night's events -- much contradiction everywhere, including what the police say and what has been attributed to police sources. The Pegida crowd of course attributed reticence to report on an as-yet-unclear story as part of the massive Gutmenschen media conspiracy to thrust Sharia law upon us, and the media has since been responding as stupidly as you'd expect.

I don't think you need a Sharia law conspiracy to understand motivations to ignore this story -- they aren't trying to establish Sharia Law but Merkel does believe that bringing refugees into the country is both a compassionate policy and a productive one. This kind of thing undermines that policy. You don't need to be a conspiracy monger to understand why this might be an inconvenient story.

And it's not a coincidence that at least 18 asylum seekers were tied to the assault. They are coming from a region where the oppression of women is pandemic. You can't bring in a large number of people from a vastly different culture w/ vastly different values and then act surprised when they don't immediately sign onto egalitarian Western values. It's not a series of unrelated crimes (which isn't to say there's a refugee conspiracy) and it's not the fault of the police and crowd control. That's just more shifting the blame to avoid the awkward facts.

xxxpost - This was p much business as usual for a NYE, groping, rape and all. Only news is, they weren't drunk white guys.

Egalitarianism does not apply to girls in Germany btw. Pretty much everyone accepted this until NYE.

Acc to the NYT German police called this an unprecedented number of reports for NYE.

Taking advantage of the New Year’s Eve street party, hundreds of young men broke into groups and formed rings around young women, refusing to let them escape, the authorities said. Some groped victims while others stole wallets or cellphones.

Witnesses described the atmosphere around the city’s central train station as aggressive and threatening, with firecrackers being thrown into the crowd. The women who were attacked screamed and tried to fight their way free, a man who had struggled to protect his girlfriend told German public television.

The Cologne police added that they had received 90 complaints from victims, including one who said she had been raped. No arrests have been made.

like if this is a normal NYE in Germany the country is far more fucked than i realized

I am saying, Mordy, that there is very little evidence that this was AN assault, and very little evidence that there is any connection among the various assaults except time and place (and when the time is New Year's Eve and the place is the Domplatz, that's less of a connection that you normally think), and very little produced in the way of comparisons to last New Year's Eve in Cologne (my friends there tend to get the fuck out of Dodge), and to run with this as if there are policy questions to be analyzed and fought over before the facts are at all clear is, well, entirely modern and still dumb.

x-post: German papers, especially the local ones, have not been very good at distinguishing official sources from "my cousin Larry the racist cop" sources in reporting what police say, and the Times prints All The International News We Can Translate In Time.

Again, victims of sex crimes are, or feel like they are, routinely shamed into not reporting assaults. If they get mugged or assaulted by foreigners, they ARE expected to report the crime. Feminists claim that's why the number of reports is so high, and not because of immigrants' exuberant criminal and sexual energy or w/e.

Again, it's not about the immigrant's exuberant criminal and sexual energy. It's about them coming from a culture that regularly degrades women - forces them to cover themselves sometimes from head to toes, that has honor killings, that does not believe in marital rape, that allows children to be married off, etc.

What, every single one of them comes from the same place? Do we know where they come from yet?

xpost - Apparently the ladies feel like things aren't going so well regarding the domination of women in our own culture?

The 31 people linked to the violence in a police report have been identified by name and include nine Algerians, eight Moroccans, five Iranians and four Syrians, said an Interior Ministry spokesman, Tobias Plate. Two German citizens, an Iraqi, a Serb and a United States citizen were also among those linked to crimes that night, Mr. Plate said.

xpost, You're right though, they need to see things in perspective :3

A US citizen! Bro culture!

At last carnival in Aalborg, much smaller than Köln, there were four attempted rapes over a couple of hours, two succesfully. This wasn't really groping attacks, but organized burglaries / assault, it seems to me from reading. Gangs from Düsseldorf. To put it on different cultural values seems massively simplistic, though of course debating the problems of women in MENA along with our problems is always good.

Wes, I will not deny that Western culture is far from ideal in terms of full egalitarian rights and protections for every member of our society. But comparing women in the West to women in the Middle East as though to suggest there's some kind of parity is slightly disingenuous don't you think?

comparing "the treatment of"*

It's about them coming from a culture that regularly degrades women - forces them to cover themselves sometimes from head to toes, that has honor killings, that does not believe in marital rape, that allows children to be married off, etc.

This covers all of those countries of origin, does it?

Mordy conveniently forgot to include the following paragraph from the same article:

He said that a vast majority of the 32 criminal acts documented by the federal police on the night had been linked to theft and bodily injury. Three were related to sexual assaults, but the police had no names of suspects tied to those acts, Mr. Plate said.

Wes, I will not deny that Western culture is far from ideal in terms of full egalitarian rights and protections for every member of our society. But comparing women in the West to women in the Middle East as though to suggest there's some kind of parity is slightly disingenuous don't you think?

Do you share those egalitarian values? Do they apply to all human beings or just Westerners? Or just your favorite Westerners?

What are you arguing? That this isn't a real issue? Merkel thinks it is. Norway thinks it is. I suspect anyone who isn't ideologically committed to avoiding it thinks it is. It doesn't mean that the borders need to be closed, or that the refugees all need to be shipped home, but it does mean that there's an issue that needs to be addressed even if it's inconvenient.

Wes, please be more specific about what you're asking. I share egalitarian values. I think they should apply to all human beings, including Westerns and including my favorite Westerners. Who do you suppose my favorite Westerners are, though? John Ford?

I was hoping it would be Hawks.

If you were truly egalitarian, you wouldn' try to separate people by ethnicity, nationality, or behaviour at all. Period. Because treating people different makes them different, and nothing else.

If you can't think that way, please don't call yourself an egalitarian. It's misleading.

That's silly. Egalitarians favor equality for all people. Being egalitarian doesn't mean ignoring the very real differences in various cultures and communities.

They are less serious than you think.

I'm a freshly converted Christian nutjob, so don't mind me.

For instance: "Everyone should have the right to perform their own cultural practices." Excellent egalitarian statement - everyone should be equal to behave according to their traditions. Except that some of those traditions include honor killing which isn't an egalitarian practice at all but rather a horrifically misogynistic one. So in cases where two aspects of egalitarian faith collide (belief in respecting all traditions, belief in women not being murdered to cover the shame of their being raped) a real egalitarian picks the one that fits their values.

xp oh well that makes sense then

fwiw South Carolina doesn't believe in marital rape, not sure about honour killings.

So what do you think should be done, Mordy?

I think there a few things. I think that programs like Norway's to educate refugees as a way to speed up the acculturation process are essential. I think allowing refugee communities that are distinct from the general pop is a disaster and new arrivals should be seeded into a variety of already established communities, also to speed up that process. I think that on the deterrence side host countries need to aggressively investigate + watch recent arrivals, both before they come (w/ the understanding that intelligence gathering on refugees coming from a war torn country will be difficult) and certainly after they arrive. I think there should be a no tolerance policy for anyone convicted of a crime (or at least certain kinds of crimes should be cause for immediate deportation). I'm sure there are other good ideas as well. Ultimately if you're going to accept refugees into your country - something that is morally desirable (and possibly even desirable from an economic/demographic pov) you need to be v hands-on in how you integrate them into your society.