I love being European, but sometimes I feel very, very ashamed

[Gawain of Orkeny]

Firstly, I do not want to be told off by some sargent, I am not a recruit, and have no desire to take orders from military unless at war.

Secondly, there is no justification whatsoever for being rude.

Thirdly, my personal travels are mine. I am not a US citizen, and I am to be presumed innocent until proven otherwise, right? I have nothing to hide, but I don't walk around naked either. I think this is, again, basic privacy and crossing it without invitation is rude.

None of this has anything to do with our immigration policies. It does have to do with obtaining Visas and an who is interviewing you it seems.

So if more immigrants wish to come to the US, the ridiculous control procedures must be placed to discourage applicants?

Be specific. Exactly what what immigration law should be relaxed? What again should we change? Dont you think your being cheated having to go through all this just to visit while a Mexican can just walk across the border?

Perhaps if the procedures were relaxed, more people would immigrate legally, and would have a better opinion of american law abroad.

Thats like saying if we legalize everything we would cut down on crime.

[SwordsMaster]

While it is a pain to go through all these procedures, I don't think a mexican 'just' walks across the border. I think it is a decision he takes quite seriously.

In any case, I think a decent approach would be to every year publish a list of all the jobs that have not been filled, and advertise it in the countries that provide most immigrants, with job applications taking place in their countries of origin, and then allowing immigration to those who have successfully passed through the process...

You could argue that a free market economy will do that for you, but I think that since it is a nation-wide problem, perhaps the government should take a more active part in the process.

Another possible solution is to offer higher salaries to qualified us citizens who emigrate to these countries, as this will both "free" space in the US, and add to the economy of the affected country therefore increasing the quality of life.

For example. I'm not an economist or a politician, and these are just off the top of my head.

And you are right, perhaps my view of US immigration is worsened by the I had to deal with, but imagine what those poor mexicans have to deal with.

[Gawain of Orkeny]

While it is a pain to go through all these procedures, I don't think a mexican 'just' walks across the border. I think it is a decision he takes quite seriously.

Well its a lot simpler than what you have to go through. Once he makes up his mind its pretty much that easy.

n any case, I think a decent approach would be to every year publish a list of all the jobs that have not been filled, and advertise it in the countries that provide most immigrants, with job applications taking place in their countries of origin, and then allowing immigration to those who have successfully passed through the process...

Do you know anything about our policies?

but imagine what those poor mexicans have to deal with.

Mostly this

EDIT: You need to host pictures yourself, not link directly to them, I'm afraid. Note to readers: It was a picture of Wile E Coyote. BG

[SwordsMaster]

Do you know anything about our policies?

Not a lot, I must confess. I do know a bit the european ones, which is what the topic was about initially. It doesn't change the fact that having thousands of people die at the border is unacceptable. Whichever country owns the border.



Nice

[Gawain of Orkeny]

Our immigration policies are anything but humane, they're ludicrous. Indeed, its harder to get to the US and involves more paperwork and fees and fines than 80% of the world can afford.

Your right. Filling out paper work and charging fees is inhumane

Try getting into Canada sometime.

Not a lot, I must confess. I do know a bit the european ones, which is what the topic was about initially. It doesn't change the fact that having thousands of people die at the border is unacceptable. Whichever country owns the border.

We have quotas involving education and jobs. We look to have people immigrate here in the fields we need. Dont believe all that bunk written on the statue of Liberty. The french wrote that. Keep are you damned poor and unwashed right where they are. Send us your best But really we have a program much as you suggest.

[Tribesman]

Dont believe all that bunk written on the statue of Liberty. The french wrote that.

[Gawain of Orkeny]

Im glad you saw the humor in it. I wasnt serious.

[Tribesman]

Im glad you saw the humor in it. I wasnt serious.

[Grey_Fox]

The reason there's a strict immigration policy in Europe is because if the borders were opened the social welfare systems of most of the EU contries would totally collapse.

France already has something like 15% unemployment and Germany something like 20%. We've already seen some of the effects of this in the riots last year - imagine if the numbers were to substantially increase.

[Gawain of Orkeny]

Im glad you saw the humor in it. I wasnt serious.

I know it was written by Emma Lazarus and inscribed on the statue but I dont know if shes French . I can never tell if your laughing with me or at me

[KrooK]

I think I will never buy Maltanese tunea.


Anyway have you heard news from Russia.
18-year-old russian guy killed 37 people from Caucasus because he wanted clean Moscow from "Mongols".

[Lorenzo_H]

It's nice to see the Italian navy picking them up.

How did they survive clinging to that net without any fresh water?

[Sir Moody]

on these boards we often see quite a few posters who believe the capitalist form of civilization is a great benefit and there is nothing wrong with it - this story shows how wrong this is, as with any capitalist society a life has a price tag - the tuna were worth more than the immigrants and so the captain chose the right choice (by the capitalist view point) - any civilization that values a item (the fish in this case) less than a human life is in severe need of a shake up - currently no government would reimburse the loss's the captain would have taken if he had delivered the immigrants and so the fish are far more valuable...

[PanzerJaeger]

They should not have broken the law. What happened to them is no one's fault but their own.

[Papewaio]

The maritime captain broke the law. Pity he isn't swinging from a yardarm. All his catch should have been impounded and the profits go to Italy for doing the right thing.

[Adrian II]

Illegal immigration is a major problem for us in Europe, but surely we can still think of these people as human?

Horrible as it may be, that tuna net was the captain's decision, not EU policy...

[Banquo's Ghost]

Horrible as it may be, that tuna net was the captain's decision, not EU policy...

You are right of course, but the EU's abysmal policies on immigration lead to these kind of decisions being taken. That captain is just one among many - at least he gave them a tuna net to cling to, most sail on by. The story illustrates not just one instance of inhumanity, but the bankruptcy of Europe's immigration policy.

The northern countries which are the destination of many of these migrants put enormous pressure on the frontier countries and the Magreb, without an awful lot in the way of practical support. Indeed, they mostly get condemnation, as happened to Spain a couple of years ago for granting an amnesty. Everyone blames everyone else, so it's no wonder that the more unscrupulous think that landing their tuna is far preferable to the blame game.

The flow of migrants is not going to stop - with desertification and economic disaster encroaching around the Sahel, it is only going to increase. Instead of trying to shape a Fortress Europe policy that is bound to fail - politicians should look at a map of Europe for once and measure the borders, alongside a consideration of the enormous courage human beings can show to overcome adversity - we need to be imaginative.

Most importantly would be to set up mechanisms whereby it is attractive for people to stay in their own countries, and pathways for workers to immigrate legally and without relying on traffickers. The economic costs of uncontrolled immigration are high and getting higher - it would be worth our while investing in such proactive measures. Politically however, it gets harder and harder to sell the idea, as more politicians grab the populist, anti-immigration placards and in so doing, make the immigrants faceless and inhuman.

At its hardest, the suggestion made earlier to rescue, feed, process and then deport back within 24 hours would at least have the merit of humanity.

Hoping that they will all drown and thus go away is a policy only PanzerJager would be proud of.

[Fragony]

Sucks to be them, but hey it's getting kinda crowded. Let's not forget that they are victims of the human-trafficking industry, a very cynical industry that costs thousands of lifes a year.

[Hepcat]

This is not totally related, but the Spanish teacher at our school (who is actually Canadian but lived in Spain for 15 years) was telling us about one time when she was living in Valencia (I think it was) she was called out in the middle of the night by Spanish authorities who wanted a French translator because they'd found an illegal immigrant from Africa hidden in a shipping container.

So she went down and it was a young African boy and all she could see was his teeth and eyes through the slit in the shipping container since he wasn't allowed out. She said it was one of the hardest things she'd ever done telling him how he wasn't allowed to get out of the container and was going to be sent back to his country.

Yes I am in favour of open borders. I don't see why people should suffer just because of some silly fear of a hostile takeover. We get lots of immigrants here, particularly from Asia, particularly in Auckland. My mother helped teach a really nice Sri Lankan lady English and helped her gain her citizenship. They are very good friends of our family now and some of the stories she has of the civil war there are quite unreal.

They say Auckland is turning Asian, and to some extents that is true, but I'm not worried. Reading the Aeneid in Classics this year and it is a story of refugees who end up settling in a new land and making it great.

There can be positives to immigration as well people! For starters Sri Lankan food is really nice.

Anyway, that's my 10 cents worth.

[Fragony]

We don't have enough houses, not enough schools not enough work. There is nothing for these people here. And each and every one of them takes the place of someone who may actually need shelter, the real refugees, the ones we are doing it for.

[AntiochusIII]

We don't have enough houses, not enough schools not enough work. There is nothing for these people here. And each and every one of them takes the place of someone who may actually need shelter, the real refugees, the ones we are doing it for.

They are refugees, in a sense; escaping economic disaster rather than a political one.

No offense, and not directed to Fragony, but Europe really needs to get over its racism and inertia.

[Grey_Fox]

As I said before, the social welfare and health systems would be overwhelmed and collapse unless there were major reforms (read: major cutback in expenditure). 50% of female black refugees who gave birth in University College Hospital Galway had either AIDS or HIV - who's going to pay for their treatment? It's not going to be them at any rate.

[Gawain of Orkeny]

Some people really need a reality check.

[ajaxfetish]

believe it or not before i joined the army I actually worked for INS as it was changing over to BCIS. i left a pretty good government job to enlist into the military after 9/11. Our immigration policies are anything but humane, they're ludicrous. Indeed, its harder to get to the US and involves more paperwork and fees and fines than 80% of the world can afford.

Fact: There is plenty of living space in the United States, vast swathes of the West and Central Plains are virtually uninhabited. That argument is simply fear-mongering.

There's a slight difference between simply having room to fit more people and having the resources on hand to support those people. Granted, there is a lot we can do to to make it work anyway, but the western US is mostly desert, and in many places is already supporting more people than it really should (for example, the Colorado River doesn't have a mouth. The entire thing is used up before it makes it to the sea, and people still fight over who gets a bigger or smaller share of it.)

Ajax

[Husar]

I don't always get the economic argument because if we need more houses and more food, we also need more building companies and more food companies, which will create more jobs, so these people can get jobs and pay for their houses and their food and become rich and buy TVs so we need more TV factories etc. Sounds more like a booming economy, most of our economies depend on there being more kids than old people but we don't breed enough, so we end up paying more for old people than the younger ones can earn, with young immigrants,we might be able to fix that, the only problem being that sometime in the future, we'd really be overpopulated. So the only real solution is birth control in poor countries which are overpopulated. Poor families get 10 kids so that those kids can care for their parents later, but if all 10 of those kids will never get a job, why do they still breed that much? And on a sidenote, this "let's breed kids so they can generate money for us"-attitude some people in the third world have, is not much better than any other capitalistic attitude IMO.

[HoreTore]

There can be positives to immigration as well people! For starters Sri Lankan food is really nice.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I would have starved to death if it wasn't for immigration. Norwegian food tastes utterly crap. If I hadn't had access to the indish, pakistani, turkish, etc food, life wouldn't be worth living.

[Adrian II]

You are right of course, but the EU's abysmal policies on immigration lead to these kind of decisions being taken. That captain is just one among many - at least he gave them a tuna net to cling to, most sail on by. The story illustrates not just one instance of inhumanity, but the bankruptcy of Europe's immigration policy.

Great post again, but a hard act to realise.

Some people will behave callously in any economic system (capitalism is no exception) and within any political entity. Maritime law is rather ambiguous when it comes to rights and obligations on the high seas. There is no effecient mechanism that would compensate for the loss of the fisherman's tuna. I agree with you however that on European territory (including European territorial waters) we could and should do more.

Proactive policies are already in place, but they are often counterproductive in the sense that projecting European wealth and lifestyles into poor areas invites more migration rather then less. Controlled migration may be a solution, though I fail to see how the public would swallow this without severe restrictions that make it practically redundant (for instance a clause that controlled migration should fill a demonstrable shortage of labour in the host country).

Yes, we need to be imaginative, Banquo's Ghost. I guess I just lack the imagination right now. Many productive policies are impossible to sell to the mass of Europeans with their present attitude, as exemplified by some posts above.

[Incongruous]

They are refugees, in a sense; escaping economic disaster rather than a political one.

No offense, and not directed to Fragony, but Europe really needs to get over its racism and inertia.

Dude, c'mon, think about reality!

[Grey_Fox]

I don't always get the economic argument because if we need more houses and more food, we also need more building companies and more food companies, which will create more jobs, so these people can get jobs and pay for their houses and their food and become rich and buy TVs so we need more TV factories etc. Sounds more like a booming economy

Yeah but who's going to pay for the houses to be built? Generally refugees and immigrants in general don't have a whole lot of money on them when they enter their new country and the cost of housing them is passed onto the social welfare system, and the amount of money a nation has access to is finite. Taxes would need to be increased in order to pay for the increased number of immigrants.

[Adrian II]

Yeah but who's going to pay for the houses to be built? Generally refugees and immigrants in general don't have a whole lot of money on them when they enter their new country and the cost of housing them is passed onto the social welfare system, and the amount of money a nation has access to is finite. Taxes would need to be increased in order to pay for the increased number of immigrants.

One point that Banquo's Ghost made is that migration will inevitably continue and that we should think of ways to make it a productive instead of a wasteful process. In that way migration would at least partially pay for itself. It already does in may ways which we refuse to recognise. Not only is the contribution of legal migrants to European GDP considerable, but so is the contribution of the so-called black labour market of illegal immigrants. Employing migrants actually saves taxes for both big and small companies...