IMMIGRATION thread

[Husar]

Husar, I'm not saying we have had no influence on these places, but in the case of North Africa and the Levant the people there have spent most of their history quasi-autonomous under a distant "Imperial" government of one description or another and, in fact, Europe has had far less influence than the Turks in the preceding centuries.

Our influence was during the time where a lot of countries turned democratic, even Turkey got onto a democratic path, but the countries that were under colonial governments all did not, nd quite a few of their attempts to break free were silenced with lots of blood. My point was that this suppression prevented them from even developing a sense for democracy or national unity as they were on one hand not allowed to do so and on the ther hand, their foremost concerns were not about how to govern themselves after colonial rule but how to get rid of it in the first place. And when that finally happened, the natural tendency was to accept the strongman who prevailed through all of it instead of having elections. In Europe the whole democracy thing didn't develop out of nowhere either.

At the end of the day you either treat these people like adults or you don't. If you aren't willing to treat them as adults then you either leave them to it until they grow up or you invade and take over to "parent" them.

Yes, but telling them that they have to do this or that in order to get money from you that they desperately need or bribing their leaders is hardly treating them as adults. Treating them as adults may also mean treating them as equals. Unless by treating them as adults you mean to use your power as much as possible until they fight back or succumb to it.

Also, Kenya and Jordan DO frequently complain about the refugees flooding over their borders - but that's their problem unless they and we want to work on a common solution.

So if we crete a problem, then the result of it is their problem. If by that you mean all surrounding countries around a war zone could just not let any refugees in and watch them get slaughtered or starve at the border fences, then we can also just sink all the boats at sea and call it an act of charity as we end their suffering. I suppose this is not what you want though.

I repeat, the first duty of a government is to its own people, then we should look to helping outsiders.

I think the first duty of any human is to help other humans who are in need. And no, I do not give money to all the homeless people I see, but I expect my government to help where it can and make sure people stop being homeless (even a problem in Germany). I pay taxes so that the government can decide who needs the money. Of course I do not decide this alone, so I may not always like the result, such as bailouts for banks while other people have to sleep in the streets even though helping them would require only a fraction of the money spent on the banks.

You want those few thousands live under conditions good for 1935. Would you be satisfied with them?
I believe they have such conditions back in their home countries and they are one of the reasons that makes them flee in droves.

Way to misinterprete my point. Which was that our country is capable of quickly building housing for a lot of people if it wants to, even more so today than it was in 1935. Yet nothing like that is done while cities complain that they have no space for the refugees. Meanwhile we have a problem with increasing rents anyway as not enough new houses are built. There are students who have to take very creative housing because there are no open homes for them. The ones who profit are, in simple terms, the haves not not the have-nots. As usual.
Meanwhile we earned 100 billion € from the Euro-crisis while we still haven't paid a cent, only given guarantees for Greek debt. And the Greeks are often left to deal with the refugees as well. Is Germany a wealthy country that could afford to help out now or not? If yes, what is stopping us? And I'm still not talking about giving them all citizenship, just for reference.