IMMIGRATION thread

[Tuuvi]

Just as one might object to a comparison to last days of the Roman empire, one might object to a comparison to the US.

The most obvious difference is that the US is nation of immigrants. With the exception of 'native' Americans, most Americans can say that their ancestors came from this or that European or African country at that or that time. That means new immigrants don't look that out of place in the US. In comparison, my own ancestors (minus some Danish ones) might have come to this area ~ 10 000 years ago. Most of the population in Europe have a connection to the countries they occupy through thousands of years. This creates a schism between new arrivals and ancient arrivals, unless there is assimilation.

Some other things:

- Europe is filling up - both literally and non-literally. Some places really are getting crowded, but there are also national parks (and more rural areas not legally recognised) that people want to preserve, necessary farmland, opposition to further urbanisation and areas that are simply inhospitable. I imagine things looked rather different in the US over a 100 years ago; both physically and in terms of attitudes.
- there is still a significant split in the US population between the original natives, the population of European origin and the population of African origin
- the cultures where the immigrants came from were typically not too different from the cultures that the current Americans themselves came from

That latter point seems especially relevant. I am not aware of Europeans not integrating properly in other European countries being a common problem (international criminals are a problem, but that's largely a separate topic - they take advantage of the open borders), despite there being significant migration internally in Europe.

As the picture shows some Americans felt the same about immigrants as many Europeans in this thread do today. It was believed that Southern and Eastern Europeans were incompatible with American culture and values and that the new wave of migrants threatened to destroy American society. We can look at the US today and see that the these immigrants were able to assimilate just fine but at the time Southern Europeans were seen to be as alien as Muslims are today.

I agree the two situations aren't exactly comparable, and as I said before I'm not trying to make an argument for unrestricted immigration, but the sentiments expressed by turn of the century Americans and modern Europeans are so similar I think they warrant consideration. Basically what I'm trying to say is Middle Eastern immigrants might not be as scary as we think they are.

Yes, take in mind that only very few are from minorities that are at actual risk, some are. But most 'refugees' are sunni-mislims who aren't hunted down by fellow sunni-muslims. We should help the Kurds, the christians, the muslims of a different persuation.

The Assad regime has been systematically murdering dissidents for years, and it bombs rebel held civilian areas to make them uninhabitable and force the residents to flee to regime held areas. Being a Sunni Muslim in Syria is no guarantee of safety. Not to mention the risk of getting caught in the crossfire that anyone living in a war zone faces.