IMMIGRATION thread

[Husar]

For your consideration Husar, it doesn't adress everything you say, and often agrees with you, but mostly not http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...o-1519875.html Good read.

Sorry, just have tme to skim the article, may read it a bit closer later. From what I read so far:
I think Africa needs the right kind of aid where it is warranted. The current situation seems more like throwing money at the problem, hoping it goes away. This money can both undercut the local economy and also end up in the hands of people who make the problems worse. On the whole, Africa seems to be improving, as does South America, but both parts also need to address the social inequalities. It does not help much if the wealthy and the upper middle class raise the national average by becoming even richer while the poor still have nothing. There might actually be some trickle down (since it is also impossible to have anything trickle up when the poor have nothing), but if there is, it is apparently very, very slow.

I agree that we can't just invite all the poor people to "make them rich", we have to help fix the problems in their countries in a way that actually fixes them. Throwing bombs and money at them almost indiscriminately only seems to work in very few cases since it tends to hit the wrong people as well or result in unexpected/unwanted outcomes.

I think we should have been more hands on in the first few months after Gaddaffi fell, got the transitional government to let us station a small a number of NATO troops in the capital and in particular a disproportionate number of military engineers to quickly repair roads and other infrastructure to get people's lives back to something as close to normal as we could, as quickly as possible.

Perhaps, I'm mostly just saying that we are dealing with the consequences of our past mistakes and maybe we shouldn't whine as much or try to blame the people whose forefathers we turned into puppets and tried to make them willing slaves rather than foster a democratic process/culture, which they now lack.

In any case, Syria gives the lie to the charge that Libya is "our fault" because there's every chance things could be worse there now had we not bought the high intensity war to a close quicker.

Or maybe we supported the wrong people in both cases. Or maybe we shouldn't have supported the dictator in the first place. It depends on what you want. Gaddafi did stop the immigrants from taking off for the most part. On the other hand he was maybe not the best ruler for his country. And that there was no real political opposition in the country was amybe also the fault of us supporting him and his predecessor, who were both autocrats. Oh and before that they had a queen somewhere far away, not exactly a democratic or democracy-supporting "form of government" either. Maybe if these countries had just been trade partners for us, they would have developed in a completely different direction, and possibly have far more natural national borders than the often straight lines drawn in arbitrary places by their former overlords. But hey, let's not assume historical development could have any impact on how things are today, after all if you had not gone to school, you would have learned to read and write naturally.
It all depends on what you want though, do you want puppets who keep the poor in place or do you want them not to be poor? At the moment we seem to switch from the former to the latter, or rather, we try and find out it's not so easy. In a way we are also paying for our past mistakes. We can either whine about it or try to deal with it and improve the situation for the future.

As regards turning ships back - we should be doing it as close to the African and Levantine coast as we can manage, legally, because that's the minimum distance travelled for these deathtraps and it offers the best deterrent.

Importing refugees en masse just imports all their social problems, we should be taking practical steps to stem the human flood and to stabalise the countries they're fleeing from. Historically we did that last part by propping up Tyrants, I think that was a mistake but it's hard to find another solution.

Then what should Kenya or Jordania say? They house millions of refugees and don't seem to whine quite as much as Europeans currently do. I think that our preparations and the way we deal with the isue are the major problems. And I wouldn't give all refugees citizenship either. But look at Germany, in 1935 it was so easy to build huge barracks for people noone wanted in order to murder 6 million of them. Nowadays a few thousand already cause "problems". How about we build them some simple but effective shelters, house them there until we have maybe helped improve/secure their countries and then send them back when it is safe again? If they just fled for financial reasons, send them back as well and stop exploiting their countries or supporting those who keep them at bay with weapons supplied or financed by us. This may not fix everything but maybe after 50 years you can actually say the lack of development is their own fault because at least you're not supporting this lack to keep the wages in the diamond mines low or something.