Immigration... yet again

[Scipio]

My dad being allowed to immigrate at age 7 allowed him to do something many children his age did not have an opportunity to do in the Baltics: live to age 8.

Also, he was able to go to college, get married, help NASA engineer solar cells, and presently be the vice president of one of two surviving sheet metal fabrication shops in Michigan.

[Slargos]

To inject new talents and capital into a country.

To compensate for declining birth rates and pay for state pensions.

To fill up uninhabited lands.

To add variety to the hottie pool.

You forgot "To increase the number of exotic restaurants and to spice up the bland local cuisine".

That has to be the most retarded argument ever used in championing the cause.

"Kebabs and Zlatan" is one of the catchphrases of the idiots here, but if we only got a dish they're able to serve in other countries without also importing a million stinking arabs and one mediocre football player, it's a bad fucking deal.

Tongue, meet cheek.
Irony, meet Slargos.

And Ibrahimovic is not mediocre at all. Did you see his goal against Real Madrid last sunday? Amazing! If it wasn't for him and Larsson, both with inmigrant roots, nobody would be able to name a single Swedish player. 

I realized as much when I read it again, but people actually use that argument seriously around these parts.

And Ibrahimovic may be a good player, but consider this: He only sparingly applies his talent in our national team, and he currently lives and plays in Spain. By current swedish standards of what constitutes a swede, he is no longer swedish but spanish.

Thus we are left with the kebab, and if the price of getting rid of a million parasites is never getting another kebab in Sweden, it's a cost I'm willing to suffer.

[Warspite]

As I see it, there are several dimensions to immigration, which complicate the argument.

Firstly, political. This is basically the granting of asylum to entrants that society, for whatever reason, has decided should be afforded the protections it offers. So for example Britain will allow in those who can show they have suffered unjust persecution - or would do so were they to return - to stay in the country. I would assume this is grounded in a universal conception of human rights and the belief that to deny someone refuge is to actively have a hand in whatever harm comes to them afterwards. (However, there are cases, such as defection, where a political or security advantage is gained from immigration.)

I would think we would compromise our fundamental principles if we pulled this form of immigration; although there's a vocal community here that rails against "bogus asylum seekers" (they have moved onto bashing economic migrants in recent years).

Then you have your economic migrants. People who move for the hope of a better and richer life. This can be a Brit who graduates with a starred first from Cambridge and goes on to build a new career in the United States. But it can also be a Senegalese slum-dweller who knows that he and his children have a better chance if he becomes a cleaner in Paris. People tend to not worry about the skilled migrants moving.

But the thing is without immigration you would struggle to find cleaners, cab drivers, and so on; the professions many "natives" would thumb their noses at. Or you wouldn't have them available at a price that, say, the middle classes could afford. I guess there's an implicit deal here; you scrub the loos for £5.75 an hour, and your children have a better shot at things. When you don't get this, I'd imagine you have scenes of rioters burning cars in Paris.

Then you have combinations of the above - my mother's family is an example of this. Relatively speaking Yugoslavia wasn't a poor country, but there was simply more opportunity elsewhere. My uncle in particular kept getting into bust-ups with the authorities: he was simply not the kind of guy that could live under Communism. So he moved to Canada in the 1970s and now owns a successful business (still sounds like he got off the plane yesterday, though).

My mother, however, had more of a cultural attachment with Britain that developed through her studies. So I suppose this is the third category (there's that chap at EUOT who wanted to become Swedish because he loved the culture as an outsider). Her motivation to move her was, in a curious way, as much to do with her love of the language and literature as it was to do with any political or economic constraint (her marriage to my father, ironically, meant she would spend much time outside of the UK  ).

What has always interested me is when state borders really started to matter for where you could live - when did the movement of populations start to become managed in such a way?

[The Larch]

And Ibrahimovic may be a good player, but consider this: He only sparingly applies his talent in our national team, and he currently lives and plays in Spain. By current swedish standards of what constitutes a swede, he is no longer swedish but spanish.

Cool, can we naturalize him then? He'll come in handy for the World Cup. 

[Slargos]

And Ibrahimovic may be a good player, but consider this: He only sparingly applies his talent in our national team, and he currently lives and plays in Spain. By current swedish standards of what constitutes a swede, he is no longer swedish but spanish.

Cool, can we naturalize him then? He'll come in handy for the World Cup. 

The self-satisfied little fucker doesn't perform to anywhere near his real standards when he deigns to participate in the national team, so as far as I'm concerned, you're welcome.

[Warspite]

And Ibrahimovic may be a good player, but consider this: He only sparingly applies his talent in our national team, and he currently lives and plays in Spain. By current swedish standards of what constitutes a swede, he is no longer swedish but spanish.

Cool, can we naturalize him then? He'll come in handy for the World Cup. 

The self-satisfied little fucker doesn't perform to anywhere near his real standards when he deigns to participate in the national team, so as far as I'm concerned, you're welcome.

Maybe you guys give crappy service to the forwards.

[The Larch]

And Ibrahimovic may be a good player, but consider this: He only sparingly applies his talent in our national team, and he currently lives and plays in Spain. By current swedish standards of what constitutes a swede, he is no longer swedish but spanish.

Cool, can we naturalize him then? He'll come in handy for the World Cup. 

The self-satisfied little fucker doesn't perform to anywhere near his real standards when he deigns to participate in the national team, so as far as I'm concerned, you're welcome.

Maybe you guys give crappy service to the forwards.

Yes, he'll be better served by Xavi, Iniesta, Cesc, Xabi Alonso, Silva and Mata than with any feet dragger the Swedish team can field. 

[Slargos]

And Ibrahimovic may be a good player, but consider this: He only sparingly applies his talent in our national team, and he currently lives and plays in Spain. By current swedish standards of what constitutes a swede, he is no longer swedish but spanish.

Cool, can we naturalize him then? He'll come in handy for the World Cup. 

The self-satisfied little fucker doesn't perform to anywhere near his real standards when he deigns to participate in the national team, so as far as I'm concerned, you're welcome.

Maybe you guys give crappy service to the forwards.

To be honest, I'm not much into football so I don't care either way, but I do know that he complains about his teammates a lot and if I recall correctly he was pretty much universally hated by them for having a really crappy attitude.

But the main point here is that using a single football player as a major argument for the relatively rapid infusion of over 1.5 million people is utter bullshit.

[The Larch]

But the main point here is that using a single football player as a major argument for the relatively rapid infusion of over 1.5 million people is utter bullshit.

Well, you're the one that brought it up. 

[Slargos]

But the main point here is that using a single football player as a major argument for the relatively rapid infusion of over 1.5 million people is utter bullshit.

Well, you're the one that brought it up. 

Only as an addendum to the food-argument. Though yeah, I guess I have myself to blame.

[Iormlund]

To inject new talents and capital into a country.

To compensate for declining birth rates and pay for state pensions.

To fill up uninhabited lands.

To add variety to the hottie pool.

1) Rarely happens. The overwhelming majority of immigrants lack even basic education (Argentina being somewhat of an exception - I've worked with a couple engineers from there).
2) I seriously doubt it is worth it. Uneducated, their jobs pay very low, while mass immigration generates a lot of spending in prisons, police, courts, education ... Increasing retirement age is a much more reasonable solution.
3) Not much of that in Europe. With the exception of temp workers in agriculture, immigrants end up in big cities anyway.
4) Sadly, my experience is that most are quite ugly. Especially those from Latinamerica and China, who often look stunted, as if they had been undernourished as kids.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not a hard core anti-immigration guy. I'm all for welcoming quite a few. But I don't think it makes sense economically speaking, especially not absorbing 20% of your population in a decade as has happened here.

[Iormlund]

But seriously, I'm generally cool with immigration as long as it's controlled.

Is that even possible?

[Jacob]

The purpose of immigration:

- To seek a better life for yourself, your family and your children.

From the PoV of the State:

- To support some ideological point of view.
- To gain access to labour, skills and motivated population (i.e. tax base) that otherwise would be unavailable.

From my PoV:

- To piss twats like Grallon and Slargos off.

[Grallon]

...

- To piss twats like Grallon and Slargos off.

Now now Jacob, no need to become personal.  

The fact I oppose immigrants from certain areas doesn't mean I oppose the principle of immigration.  I'd take immigrants like you by the boatloads.  Unfortunately this isn't what we get is it?  Think of the Khadr family who came from Afghanistan - whose father and sons died fighting for Al-Quaeda, and whose last son is in Guantanamo; model citizens yes?  But it makes us all aglow inside to open our arms to such as these...

Anyway, immigration has one purpose only: to strenghten the host society.  When it fails at that than it's harmful and should be revised.




G.

[Jacob]

The fact I oppose immigrants from certain areas doesn't mean I oppose the principle of immigration.  I'd take immigrants like you by the boatloads.  Unfortunately this isn't what we get is it?  Think of the Khadr family who came from Afghanistan - whose father and sons died fighting for Al-Quaeda, and whose last son is in Guantanamo; model citizens yes?  But it makes us all aglow inside to open our arms to such as these...

I think we get way more immigrants like me than we get people like the Khadrs.  We just don't hear much about it in the media because it's boring and when the government tries to bring it up we get screams that they're wasting money on propaganda.

Anyway, immigration has one purpose only: to strenghten the host society.  When it fails at that than it's harmful and should be revised.

I can't really disagree that that is one of the primary purposes of immigration; where we differ is in our assessment of the current condition.