EU Immigration Crisis Megathread

[Zanza]

A clear majority of Germans now thinks that Germany can't handle the migrant numbers (60% vs. 46% in December). Similar figures for Merkel personally.

Will be interesting to see how much she'll have to give in to appease her party members. I wrote a couple months ago in this thread that it would eventually get ugly. There are elections in three of Germany's states on March 13th. Let's see if they will act before that or only after.

The right wing AfD which started out as an anti-Euro party but has turned into an anti-immigration party is expected to win double digit support in each of the states. This could mean that they'll establish themselves as a permanent party right of Merkel's conservatives for the first time in postwar history.

In federal polls, Merkel's party still gets about 38% (last election 41%), so I would not expect her to be replaced anytime soon. There are just no alternatives in her party or in the opposition.

[Zanza]

[Josquius]

Using the native Americans as an example for why modern uncontrolled and sustained mass-immigration is bad-           /       

corrected that for you. The bleeding is strictly on your account.

So your hate is based on the typical far right flawed assumptions.

Even were that true, the analogy is still a load of bollocks. What got the native americans wasn't that foreigners were coming in, its that the foreigners were several thousand years more advanced than them and carried a bunch of rather nasty diseases with them.
Isn't it your lot who usually like to make a big deal about how muslims are stuck in medieval times?

[Martinus]

denial is not just a river in egypt it seems.

Is the word "Military invasion" and "migration" the same word in Flemish or something?  Cause they aren't in English.  It makes you sound like an ignorant bigot as opposed to one who knows what words mean.  Keep in mind that if you are serious about your "war of religion" then it's very likely the US military will "migrate" into Belgium and shove missiles up your ass, just like we did when you jackasses decided to rid your self of the "Semites" three generations ago or you know, when the Serbs tried to get rid of the Muslims back in 1990's.  We take a real dim view of that behavior.

I think he is right in that successful military invasions are usually followed by migrations.

However, I believe one can define four types of migrations, by using two criteria - whether the migrants are more or less advanced than the indigenous population, and whether the migration is hostile or peaceful. Muslim migration into Europe right now is the latter on both criteria. So if we want to use historical analogies, they should be appropriate - we should compare this to, say, Goth migration into the Roman empire, and not Spanish migration into Mexico. 

[The Brain]

As we can guess from the graphic the Sweden Democrats are well on their way to becoming the biggest party in Sweden. I don't know why for instance the conservative Moderates didn't compromise on immigration and go for the top spot. Instead they gave government to the Reds and Greens.

[Maximus]

So if we want to use historical analogies, they should be appropriate - we should compare this to, say, Goth migration into the Roman empire, and not Spanish migration into Mexico.

I don't think that's a useful analogy as neither the migrating population nor the target host are organized anything like in the analogy.

Europe is not the Roman Empire: they don't have the same strengths, the same weaknesses or the same values.

A horde of refugees is not the same as the Gothic migration which, if I understand correctly, moved with mostly intact communities and political stuctures.

[Maximus]

It is unclear what this is trying to show. If it is trying to show a relation between refugee impact and populist support then surely it would be more relevant to proportions of refugees to population or GDP rather than absolute numbers. Also "populist parties" is a really vague term.

[Martinus]

Also, it's a stretch - Syriza and Podemos are hardly anti-immigration.

[Berkut]

The attempts to compare to historical migrations is missing the basic point I was making, which was very specific:

If you think Western, liberal culture is so weak that it cannot withstand immigration, you have a very tepid view of the viability of Western, liberal culture. And I cannot thing of a single instance in history where Western culture was subverted by migration, rather than the migrants largely adopting western liberal culture.

How anyone can argue that migrations between non-western cultures is relevant to that point is beyond me - you cannot make such a comparison without at least implicitly suggesting that in fact western liberal culture is in fact weak and susceptible to regression via migration.

The historical record shows very much the opposite. Even the cases where we note that it has not worked as well as we would like, there are still no examples of where the host western nation has seen any kind of significant cultural reversion.

[Tamas]

yli may be right Berk.

But I just can't be that optimistic. I come from a country where the population has been divided between west and east for more than a thousand years, and the westerners always lost, eventually.

[The Brain]

The attempts to compare to historical migrations is missing the basic point I was making, which was very specific:

If you think Western, liberal culture is so weak that it cannot withstand immigration, you have a very tepid view of the viability of Western, liberal culture. And I cannot thing of a single instance in history where Western culture was subverted by migration, rather than the migrants largely adopting western liberal culture.

How anyone can argue that migrations between non-western cultures is relevant to that point is beyond me - you cannot make such a comparison without at least implicitly suggesting that in fact western liberal culture is in fact weak and susceptible to regression via migration.

The historical record shows very much the opposite. Even the cases where we note that it has not worked as well as we would like, there are still no examples of where the host western nation has seen any kind of significant cultural reversion.

As I said above Swedish culture has changed (I think for the worse) because of immigration in the past decades.

Edit:

In Sweden in the 20th century people could make fun of religion without other people trying to murder them. Now people have to tip-toe around (some major examples of) religion. That's just one example of how Swedish culture has changed, and it's a pretty negative change in my book.

[Berkut]

The attempts to compare to historical migrations is missing the basic point I was making, which was very specific:

If you think Western, liberal culture is so weak that it cannot withstand immigration, you have a very tepid view of the viability of Western, liberal culture. And I cannot thing of a single instance in history where Western culture was subverted by migration, rather than the migrants largely adopting western liberal culture.

How anyone can argue that migrations between non-western cultures is relevant to that point is beyond me - you cannot make such a comparison without at least implicitly suggesting that in fact western liberal culture is in fact weak and susceptible to regression via migration.

The historical record shows very much the opposite. Even the cases where we note that it has not worked as well as we would like, there are still no examples of where the host western nation has seen any kind of significant cultural reversion.

As I said above Swedish culture has changed (I think for the worse) because of immigration in the past decades.

I think anyone objective looking at Swedish culture and comparing it to where it was 30 years ago would conclude that there has not been any meaningful change for the worst.

Specific examples of where people have had their freedom to speak curtailed by threats of violence are certainly concerning, and should be vigorously fought against (as I have contended in the past) but I don't see that as a shift in Swedish culture, so much as a failure to stand up to radicals.

[The Brain]

The attempts to compare to historical migrations is missing the basic point I was making, which was very specific:

If you think Western, liberal culture is so weak that it cannot withstand immigration, you have a very tepid view of the viability of Western, liberal culture. And I cannot thing of a single instance in history where Western culture was subverted by migration, rather than the migrants largely adopting western liberal culture.

How anyone can argue that migrations between non-western cultures is relevant to that point is beyond me - you cannot make such a comparison without at least implicitly suggesting that in fact western liberal culture is in fact weak and susceptible to regression via migration.

The historical record shows very much the opposite. Even the cases where we note that it has not worked as well as we would like, there are still no examples of where the host western nation has seen any kind of significant cultural reversion.

As I said above Swedish culture has changed (I think for the worse) because of immigration in the past decades.

I think anyone objective looking at Swedish culture and comparing it to where it was 30 years ago would conclude that there has not been any meaningful change for the worst.

Specific examples of where people have had their freedom to speak curtailed by threats of violence are certainly concerning, and should be vigorously fought against (as I have contended in the past) but I don't see that as a shift in Swedish culture, so much as a failure to stand up to radicals.

Well obviously I'm not gonna argue about Swedish culture with you.

[Zanza]

Latest outrage in the media: A public pool in a German town instituted a "Keine Juden Flüchtlinge" policy after some refugee youth sexually assaulted a girl there.

[The Brain]

Latest outrage in the media: A public pool in a German town instituted a "Keine Juden Flüchtlinge" policy after some refugee youth sexually assaulted a girl there.

Is that legal?