Dutch elections

[Tamas]

Swedish comparable school results are in the gutter in comparison to similar countries. Natives are some of the best pupils in the world.

Ok so that's a very chicken or egg situation. If teachers decide non-white kids are dumb Fs their grades will suffer.

When we had our kids relatives couldn't visit at the hospital at all, due to experiences with the behaviour of immigrant families.

I'll stay away from that one otherwise I'll launch into a tirade over our maternity ward stay in Slough which would among other similar stories include my experiences of suffering through a speaker-phoned conversation between a happy grandmother and a relative in Pakistan, both yelling over the noise of the construction equipment nearby on the Asian end, in their native language. That was a bit before I asked the same grandma to turn down her native music since my newborn is trying to sleep on the other end of the curtain, and a while before new neighbours from another ethnicity turned the bed next to ours into a happy family event with loud music snacks, and wide-ranging conversations. I'll just skip the rest of the memories of those 7 days.

[Tamas]

See. These don't sound like problems with immigration.
They are exactly of the sort of problems moderate parties should be really focusing on rather than just calling for the far rights attempt to blame everything on immigration.

Take housing for instance. In the UK population growth rate in recent degrades has been broadly similar to the 50/60s.... Except we didn't have such a problem in the housing system then.
Why? We built houses. We didn't sell off social housing. We didn't have the same setup of predatory buy to let land lords.
I completely understand why immigrants make a great scape goat for housing. It all seems so logical. More people = fewer houses available.
But this ignores the fundamentals that more people also means a bigger economy which means more capacity to build houses... If the government actually tried to solve the problem that is rather than just doing the politically convenient thing and blaming immigration.

To support Threviel's point - the registar office where we married in the UK was plastered full with leaflets over how you cannot be forced into a marriage and ways to ask for help and protection. Are these warranted because of 20th century British customs, or?

[Threviel]

That's just wrong, one millionish  people that are a financial drain on society has to live somewhere, without them there would be more resources to build houses.

[Sheilbh]

The trouble with this "x% increase in people with foreign roots!" take is it always assumes/implies they're a monolithic mass, an orgsanised invasion, rather than big a super diverse bunch.

I'd also add that I think this is in part a problem with the framing in some continental European countries, because there is an (understandable) reluctance to talk about race and fear of communitarianism etc.

Because of that the phrase is normally "people with foreign/migration background". I think it's a problem because the phrasing emphasises someone's "foreign-ness"/their ancestor's migration rather than opening up to hyphenated identities. But also from a public policy perspective I think it's probably even less helpful than BAME.

Edit: Separately I agree with Threv here:

Trying to find good arguments that Sweden should help and aid refugees and have a generous immigration policy, but from a utilitaristic perspective there are precious few arguments. The only argument that's strong is the humanist one, we are rich and we should help others.

But I'd argue it's possibly disastrous as an immigration policy. There is a moral case and duty on refugees. But I'd argue that for a successful immigration policy (that is capable of achieving public support) the priority should probably be about economic migrants and students.

Sometimes it can double as both - I think Syria's middle class no longer lives in Syria. But that's an extreme (and tragic) example. It probably won't be like that if you're (as countries should) working to re-settle refugees within the UN framework.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Wether or not foreigners are a monolithic block or not is irrelevant. Same on whether or not they're invading or 'invading'.
They're not part of the native population, and if there's too many of them at once the native society will be in trouble trying to assimilate the newcomers.

Add to that virtue-signalling, usually left-of-center, people behaving like the my were last century's priests preaching from the pulpit that you need to follow their dogmas and you end up with the effect that problems in society can't be mentioned (elephants in the room) resulting in problems that can't be tackled.

And then they have the gall to call the people, often of the poorer classes, names when they've had enough.
It's not without reason that many traditional socialist party voters left the left, resulting in parties that are even more gauche-caviar and/or islamogauchist.

[Legbiter]

Yes - and on that "mass migration" point I do always think it can be slightly undermining. I know people mean well when they say England's always been a country of migrants (which I'm not really sure is true, I think it's just something we've picked up from America) and then give examples like the Vikings. I'm really not sure it helps the argument they think they're making

King Knútur had no Viking problems during his reign as king of England. 

[Josquius]

See. These don't sound like problems with immigration.
They are exactly of the sort of problems moderate parties should be really focusing on rather than just calling for the far rights attempt to blame everything on immigration.

Take housing for instance. In the UK population growth rate in recent degrades has been broadly similar to the 50/60s.... Except we didn't have such a problem in the housing system then.
Why? We built houses. We didn't sell off social housing. We didn't have the same setup of predatory buy to let land lords.
I completely understand why immigrants make a great scape goat for housing. It all seems so logical. More people = fewer houses available.
But this ignores the fundamentals that more people also means a bigger economy which means more capacity to build houses... If the government actually tried to solve the problem that is rather than just doing the politically convenient thing and blaming immigration.

To support Threviel's point - the registar office where we married in the UK was plastered full with leaflets over how you cannot be forced into a marriage and ways to ask for help and protection. Are these warranted because of 20th century British customs, or?

Yes. This is a bad thing.
But again it's the crazy ivans of the world who are to blame for this - both their brothers from a deprived immigrant background who want to do this, and they themselves who see everything as about immigration and stopping the Muslims.
If it wasn't for these people trying to use stuff like womens rights as a cynical ploy to attack Muslims when it suits them (how riddled far right groups are with paedophilia is another interesting one..) then people who actually do give a shit about women's rights as their primary goal would have better luck tackling stuff like forced marriage.
If we didn't waste so much time and energy panicking about a few thousand guys in dinghies, then maybe we could put some political capital into actually building far more houses than these refugees might take.

Also needs noting. This isn't as big an issue as the amount of reporting about it would seem to reflect. Read a piece on the BBC lately how even arranged marriages with foreigners had fallen off a cliff with Bradford Pakistani community never mind forced marriages.

[Threviel]

Yeah, but the immigrant crazies wouldn't be here without immigration and the posters would not have been posted.

[Josquius]

Yeah, but the immigrant crazies wouldn't be here without immigration and the posters would not have been posted.

They're here already. That's done.  It wasn't forseen when the decision was made to import large numbers from Punjab and Kashmir that heavy industry would collapse and there would no longer be a need for large numbers of low education workers in these places.
However had the government made more of an effort to transition the economy in these towns and provide opportunities for young people growing up there, then the social problems of a culturally diffetent low educated high poverty rate population wouldnt have came to be.
And its here that the solutions lie. Not whinging about current immigration which tends to come from completely different groups with different cultural norms and people with a generally high education level.

[Threviel]

High education might be the norm in the UK, but very much not in Sweden.

As I said, my observations are on Sweden. Countries with functioning immigration policies are different.

[Admiral Yi]

So Pakistani immigrants engage in forced marriage because shipbuilding and steel shut down? 

Squeeze, you're playing seven degrees of Kevin Bacon but instead of Bacon it's Tories.

[Sheilbh]

High education might be the norm in the UK, but very much not in Sweden.

As I said, my observations are on Sweden. Countries with functioning immigration policies are different.

It varies a lot in terms of education. But broadly Indian, Bangladeshi, Black African and Chinese kids have above average educational attainment - and above White British kids. Pakistani and Black Caribbean still have below average attainment.

It's probably because there's multiple factors and the interaction of ethnicity, wealth and regional inequality is complicated and not super-clear. Broadly there are regional disparities, there's a performance gap between the richest and the pporest (depending on the measurement this might have narrowed in the last year), ethnic inequalities have shifted hugely in the last 50 years but haven't levelled out. The only consistent trend is girls broadly outperforming boys.

I'm not sure there's necessarily a link with eduucation and forced (or cousin) marriage though.

[Josquius]

So Pakistani immigrants engage in forced marriage because shipbuilding and steel shut down? 

Squeeze, you're playing seven degrees of Kevin Bacon but instead of Bacon it's Tories.

More the textile industry. But basically yes.
Limit a person's outlook and opportunities and they tend to stick to what they know rather than questioning and finding their own way.
It's well observed that if you want
 people to integrate that economic integration is core to this.

And yes. Basically everything does come down to economics. Which in the UK basically means tory mismanagement :p

[Jacob]

Wether or not foreigners are a monolithic block or not is irrelevant. Same on whether or not they're invading or 'invading'.
They're not part of the native population, and if there's too many of them at once the native society will be in trouble trying to assimilate the newcomers.

Add to that virtue-signalling, usually left-of-center, people behaving like the my were last century's priests preaching from the pulpit that you need to follow their dogmas and you end up with the effect that problems in society can't be mentioned (elephants in the room) resulting in problems that can't be tackled.

And then they have the gall to call the people, often of the poorer classes, names when they've had enough.
It's not without reason that many traditional socialist party voters left the left, resulting in parties that are even more gauche-caviar and/or islamogauchist.

I have to agree that issues have been left unattended and as a result they seem to have gotten worse...

I have some questions for you, if you don't mind:

From your perspective, what is the solution? What are reasonable actions that can be taken to enact that solution?

Do you make any distinction between types and categories of foreignes and immigrants - and do those distinctions matter to your proposed solutions? When it comes to Muslims, from your point of view is there any reason to distinguish between radical Islamists and other Muslims? From your perspective are there "good Muslims", and if so how does that figure into the actions you think we should take?

Basically if we accept your framing of the problem and your general analysis, what actions and policies do you propose? And how fine-grained or broadly do you think we should apply those actions and policies?

[Barrister]

Squeeze, you're playing seven degrees of Kevin Bacon but instead of Bacon it's Tories.

Admiral Yi, meet Josquis.

Josquis, meet Admiral Yi.