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Refugees Everyone has seen the pictures

#1 User is offline   EmperorMagus 

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Posted 03 September 2015 - 07:13 PM

A huge number of people are trying to move from Africa and Syria into Europe due to the wars going on in the region. A lot of them are dying. I am curious what people think other countries should be doing to help the refugees or create a better environment in their home countries to solve the crisis. I'm also wondering what the long term effects of the large numbers of refugees moving into Europe is going to be culturally and economically.

I am personally torn between what other countries should/can do for the refugees. Helping them seems the only logical option at first glance but what happens after taking them in? Who is going to provide basic necessities for them or provide employment, who is going to teach them the local language or help them settle in the society, and what is going to happen when a large number of the refugees and their children will have to live in poverty for the foreseeable future. I don't think Palestine style refugee camps are going to be much better for the people whether they are in Jordan or Hungary, Admittedly, they are better than war and ever present threat of violence.

Furthermore, I wonder whether the large number of refugees will cause increasing civil strife between minority and majority populations such as the Neo-Nazi groups we occasionally hear from in Germany. The opposite is completely possible too, people living together in peace. I find the second option unlikely.

I decided to start this conversation after I talked with my mother about this news. She believes that anyone who truly cares about human life will not allow these refugees to drown or die in Syria/Lybia/... . She is a survivor of the Iran-Iraq war and told me about how when the war started, her father drove to Abadan (a very large/rich city near the border) and brought all their relatives living there to live with them. That means more than twenty people living in a house mean for six.

So I don't know what can or should be done, but I really want to hear people's thoughts on this issue.

PS. I think Stephen Harper's idea that taking refugees is fun and all, but we have to bomb Assad more to solve the problem is stupid, the source of the problem is bombing people in the first place.
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#2 User is offline   Tattersail_ 

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Posted 03 September 2015 - 07:23 PM

You have to accept them. That's what is to be human, to offer help to your fellow man.

That's my first thought.

However, why are they fleeing instead of fighting for their country. Why flee to Europe instead of other countries?

Who's to blame? In my opinion America and the UK are to blame. Syria and Libya were great places to live and work a few years ago. When a couple got married they git funding off the government to buy their first home. My uncle lived there for years until recently. My wife's best friends are from there and they are lovely.

Why did we arm a group of people to help over throw a government when they weren't a threat to us? The very people who we armed that gave those weapons to Isis?

What's more, little old me has to sit back and do nothing because one man can make no difference. This is a big problem caused by us.
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#3 User is offline   EmperorMagus 

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Posted 03 September 2015 - 07:30 PM

View PostTattersail_, on 03 September 2015 - 07:23 PM, said:

You have to accept them. That's what is to be human, to offer help to your fellow man.

That's my first thought.

However, why are they fleeing instead of fighting for their country. Why flee to Europe instead of other countries?

Who's to blame? In my opinion America and the UK are to blame. Syria and Libya were great places to live and work a few years ago. When a couple got married they git funding off the government to buy their first home. My uncle lived there for years until recently. My wife's best friends are from there and they are lovely.

Why did we arm a group of people to help over throw a government when they weren't a threat to us? The very people who we armed that gave those weapons to Isis?

What's more, little old me has to sit back and do nothing because one man can make no difference. This is a big problem caused by us.

I don't think assigning blame helps to be honest. Right now people need to solve the problem. I can't deny that west had a part in this but I mean there are people doing the fighting and killing in Syria too.
They are fleeing to nearby countries a lot more than they are fleeing to Europe. It just doesn't get publicized because there isn't enough data or journalists. For example, I believe there were more than two million Afghan/Iraqi refugees fleeing to Iran after US invaded their countries, but no one hears much about it because Iranian 2 head devil Mullahs will kill refugees before letting them set foot in their country.
Refugees in Iran
Turkey
Jordan

Edit: So currently more than 2.5 million Syrian refugees in Turkey and Jordan only. I don't know about other neighbours.

Edit2: I realized I didn't answer your question about why flee instead of fight. They ar either married and with children in which case fuck all of idiots fighting I want my children to live or they are young and somewhat educated in which case fuck the Sunni ISIS and Alawite Assad and the other tribes fighting for reasons we don't care about. You need the understand, people are not fighting for freedom in Syria, they were demonstrating for freedom but when it gets to fighting all the different forces fighting are either religious or tribal.

This post has been edited by EmperorMagus: 03 September 2015 - 07:53 PM

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#4 User is offline   Solidsnape 

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Posted 03 September 2015 - 07:57 PM

Of course we should be offering sanctuary to all those affected by this.
I thoroughly believe all the European governments involved in this do have the resources to house, educate and employ these people.
That's what governmental states do. (Should do at least)
This is is just an extension of the media/state xenophobic paranoia that is being thrust upon us. Making us think about jobs, money, resources.
Comfort.
These people are dying en masse.
The threat to our 'comfort' shouldn't come into it.

Of course there's an underlying problem, but until (and I don't believe this will happen in my life time) we (the west) stop our rapacious and warmongering collective foreign policies, the mass exodus of people across borders is just a symptom of this approach.
A symptom we're bound by guilt, to address.
So regardless of who's directly (we are) and undirectly (we are!) responsible, the symptoms exist, and wether or not you decide to got for the root cause, the symptoms must still be addressed.

Give these people a home and a chance. They're no less deserving of it than anyone of us.

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#5 User is offline   Tattersail_ 

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Posted 03 September 2015 - 09:34 PM

I agree with both of you. Help them. I laughed earlier on the news that the mayor of Liverpool will accept 100 people. 100. 1 fucking 100. That's ridiculous. He should have said he'd accept people and not put a number on it.
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#6 User is offline   Solidsnape 

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Posted 03 September 2015 - 10:02 PM

Yeah, don't say a number you fool.
Idiot.

Found this.
Ha.
Spoiler

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#7 User is offline   Itwæs Nom 

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Posted 03 September 2015 - 11:47 PM

In Czech most people (assuming from facebook) are against accepting refugees because they think theyre all shrouded muslim bombers and that soon there will be more of them than us. One of the politicians, president candidate few years ago, is going very hardly against refugees and our government which accepted them and hes getting mostly positive feedback from people. I dont remember exactly what his arguments (some culture and shit) are but they fucking contradict the fact hes Asian.

If it was on me I would just divide their numbers and split them between as many states as possible throughout the world, so no state would be really impared so much.

This post has been edited by Charlie Nom: 03 September 2015 - 11:47 PM

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#8 User is offline   Terez 

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Posted 04 September 2015 - 03:27 AM

View PostCharlie Nom, on 03 September 2015 - 11:47 PM, said:

In Czech most people (assuming from facebook) are against accepting refugees because they think theyre all shrouded muslim bombers and that soon there will be more of them than us.

This is not true, but it is true that militants will more easily find their way into Western societies (including Oz/NZ) the more refugees are accepted.

In Mississippi, we just had a weird ISIS case where two kids who had been raised in MS decided to go join them. One was a young American girl, star student, who converted to Islam and planned to marry her friend so that she could travel freely through Syria. I think many ISIS sympathizers are (like them) probably crusaders who would rather conquer the Muslim World (and the disputed Holy Land) than do terrorist attacks in the West. But we will still get some terrorists. We just have to find it in our hearts to accept that possibility as a risk worth taking.

This post has been edited by Terez: 04 September 2015 - 03:30 AM

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#9 User is offline   LinearPhilosopher 

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Posted 04 September 2015 - 03:54 AM

View PostTattersail_, on 03 September 2015 - 09:34 PM, said:

I agree with both of you. Help them. I laughed earlier on the news that the mayor of Liverpool will accept 100 people. 100. 1 fucking 100. That's ridiculous. He should have said he'd accept people and not put a number on it.


by putting a number you show a commitment to helping the situation while at the same time not putting too much strain on your own cities/coutries.
https://en.wikipedia.../wiki/Liverpool

But a city of 2.2m...

Come on. Most countries are giving numbers in the tens of thousands.

http://www.cbc.ca/ne...rants-1.3213772

And this just happen to happen in an election. This is one heck of an election curve ball, doubtful itll change anything but that's more for the canadian politcs thread.

This post has been edited by LinearPhilosopher: 04 September 2015 - 03:54 AM

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#10 User is offline   Morgoth 

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Posted 04 September 2015 - 07:47 AM

View PostTattersail_, on 03 September 2015 - 07:23 PM, said:



Who's to blame? In my opinion America and the UK are to blame. Syria and Libya were great places to live and work a few years ago. When a couple got married they git funding off the government to buy their first home. My uncle lived there for years until recently. My wife's best friends are from there and they are lovely.

Why did we arm a group of people to help over throw a government when they weren't a threat to us? The very people who we armed that gave those weapons to Isis?

What's more, little old me has to sit back and do nothing because one man can make no difference. This is a big problem caused by us.


Syria was a relatively well functioning country, but it was also a brutal dictatorship. The uprising that happened there cannot be blamed on anyone but Assad, and it was his response that initiated the civil war. Now, the US (and possibly the UK, I don't know about that) have certainly meddled a lot after, and may very well be responsible for the direction of the civil war. It's hard to say just how much their presence have influenced the rise of ISIS, but there is blame there, yes. However, the civil war is on Assad, I don't think you can seriously deny that.

Libya was never a great place to live. It was better than it is now for sure, but it was never remotely close to great.
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#11 User is offline   Puck 

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Posted 04 September 2015 - 12:44 PM

As EmperorMagus already pointed out, most refugess flee to countries close by. Turkey is currently at the top of countries who have taken refugees in, with 1.59 million as of the end of 2014. The numbers some other European countries are whining about are nothing compared to that. Also, it's not like this happened overnight and nobody could've forseen it. Until very recently, as in 'as recently as 2014', european countries such as Germany did not even figure among the top 10 or 12 countries with the most refugee intake.

Initially people fled to neighbouring countries hoping they could wait until the war ended and then return to their homes and rebuild. I think that's important and gets overlooked a lot. Nobody truly wants to leave the place they were born at; it's home, it's where you have family, friends, memories, your language, your culture, etc. It's, for example, the reason my brother stays in eastern Ukraine despite having no job, no running water, or anything, and people getting shot during protests, even though he's highly educated in a field that could find a job elsewhere. Again, nobody wants to leave their whole life behind unless there are damned good reasons. The threat of being bombed, or killed by your own people over some tribal/religious spat, for example.

And the people actively engaging in the war in Syria are primarily tribals and religious fanatics, because let's face it, the west may be directly or indirectly responsible for what's happening, but if people were truly happy and peaceful and everything, those weapons would be collecting dust, not getting used left and right. The waves of refugees right now are those who have given up hope of being able to return/rebuild, and when you have family, the last thing you want is to stay and fight for a cause you have nothing to do with. I'm sorry, Tattersail, but that statement just makes me angry.

Another thing: Syria was a dictatorship (as has already been pointed out), and no matter how okay it may have been to live there, a dictatorship is always in danger of tipping over into something far worse. If there was no danger, things would not be in need of change.

As to the neo-nazi situation, at least here in Germany.. it's always been present, but lying dormant, but right now they're not bothering to hide anymore. There's been over 300 registered attackt on refugees this year already, and that includes setting fire to shelters. As I said already, I doubt anyone truly wants to leave everything behind. Also, this constant slinging of so called facts needs to be put into perspective. Germany has been having problems with people leaving the country for good for a couple of years now. Until the refugee wave started in 2014, more people were leaving than were moving to Germany. Of course, there's the financial problem of having so many people flood in, but at the same time it's not like everyone's a terrorist.
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#12 User is offline   Tsundoku 

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Posted 05 September 2015 - 02:10 PM

Cross posted from the groove messing thread:

http://forum.malazan...ost__p__1198663
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#13 User is offline   Una 

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Posted 05 September 2015 - 06:41 PM

I've been looking up how to go about sponsoring a family under the refugee program in Canada.

A few initial thoughts:

1. It's not actually that expensive. You are expected to set aside enough money for them (housing, food, transportation, etc) for 1 year or until they find employment, whichever comes first, after which your obligation ends. The amount is supposed to be set as whatever a comparable family would have received as welfare in any other situation. For a family of 4, they estimate $27,000 a year. They expect you to do this as a community organization or you can get a group of 5 people together, so that's $5400/member. I don't actually think it's THAT bad. It sounds like a good chunk of change, and I wouldn't expect a poor student or working poor on minimum wage to have that much to spare, but I have patients who spend that much on a handbag! Every year! So it's doable for many. I spent almost that much on laser eye surgery for myself a few years back, and this is much better karma. I'd totally do it if I can find a group to help me out and I'm looking into it. I kind of wish I were religious, because then I could just go to my church and offer to organize it. I just need some like minded people. As suggestions about how to find some people? There's lifelinesyria.ca, but that's only for Toronto. Anybody found anything similar for Vancouver?

2. The thing I'm going to have the most difficulty with is that you have to be responsible for finding them a place to rent, find them a family doctor/dentist, help enrol the kids in school, sign them up for English classes, arrange their transportation to and from appointments (sounds like getting them a bus pass and teaching them to use the bus counts, but I didn't look far enough into to to know if that means you have to accompany them to absolutely everything, or just for the first few months.). That's going to be the tough part for me. I'm doing the single, working mommy thing and relying on family for child care because there aren't enough daycare spots. I don't feel I can impose on them anymore than I already am just to run more errands. I can barely get that stuff organized for my own family. But again, if I had some other people and we shared, I could consider it my volunteer work and it wouldn't have to be quite so all-consuming. I think it would help to partner with someone who has done it before, just for advice on how to do it smoothly and to find out where the resources are.

3. Holy crap! The paperwork involved is insane! And I work in healthcare, so I know paperwork. No wonder that poor kid's aunt couldn't get her family sponsored to Canada and the application got rejected as "incomplete". You would have to be a lawyer to fill this in right! This stuff is clearly designed to make it impossible to fulfill so that the government can basically say "no" to everything. And it sounds like that's what they've been doing. I didn't know until it exploded in the internet that we've only taken about 2,300 refugees in 2 years. That's pitiful. I think part of the reason I'm so galvanized right now is that I honestly thought we were doing more. We have done in the past. We can do it again.

4. F*ck that government bureaucracy! They're saying it takes 36 MONTHS to process the application, but sometimes it takes longer. I need to point out that this is a refugee program. You know, for global emergencies like suppressive regime crackdowns and wars and genocides. 3 YEARS? Everyone's going to be dead! That's like calling 911 because your house is burning down with your family trapped inside and being told that they can't send a fire rescue unless you mail them a request for an application package, and if you fill it in just right, and they'll get back to you in 8 weeks to let you know if your application for request for assistance has been reviewed and accepted.

5. I think at the very least, I'm going to write a letter to my MP and the Immigration Minister. I've never written a letter before, only signed petitions. I don't like attention and I generally keep my head down and stay out of politics, other than doing my civic duty and casting my vote when the time comes around. I think this government is going to do dick-all, but supposedly this is how our system is supposed to work. It's something I can sit down and do in a weekend and it's a step up from reposting stuff on Facebook . The research above is going to have to take a little more time. If anybody has an resources for how to get something going in BC or Vancouver, I'd be grateful if you could pass it on.

This post has been edited by Una: 05 September 2015 - 06:52 PM

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#14 User is offline   Gothos 

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Posted 07 September 2015 - 07:30 AM

Allright, this topic... there's a lot of heated debate, and very onesided at that.

The problem with central/eastrn EU countries is less about the cost (seriously, it's not that expensive to get 2,5k refugees in shacks and clothes for a country of 38M), but their integration into society.
Now, you could say the media is to blame or whatever, but to the "average Joe" in Poland, Slovakia, Hungary or the Czech Republic, a muslim immigrant looks like this:
Spoiler

So, looks scary and behaves accordingly. To the "average Joe" in Poland, this guy will immediately demand a mosque to be built, sharia law to be implemented and start assaulting locals who don't adhere to his "code". We see what's happening to Paris, London, Berlin, Stockholm... and we want none of it. We do not want any "cultural enrichment".

Another thing of note is that these countries have no tradition of cultural exposition to peoples as alien to us as Arabs. We've had our cultural "enrichment" with germans, russians, ruthenians, tatars, czechs, slovaks, wallachians and hungarians... but all these are pretty similar to our own culture. Now, countries like France and the UK have a long tradition of contact with vastly different cultures, and developed the, perhaps, right mentality to deal with it. There is way too much xenophobia in Poland to facilitate a peaceful integration at this point. We are not prepared. Most of us don't want to be.

It's also a lot about our future as a developed country. We look at the UK, Germany and France and we see nothing but trouble. We look at the largely monocultured Japan and South Korea and we see lack of said trouble. We carry no colonial or slave-related historical guilt. The pressure right now seems to us like the West trying to force their immigration policies on us.

Another factor is that it is seen as insulting and wrong if a refugee would receive more aid than our own countrymen can count on from the state. We don't have much in the way of unemployed benefits. Certainly not enough to support a, say, 4-child family. As scarce as work is to come by, "giving" refugees work while we have so many of our own unemployed would also look like treason.

Now, please remember all I've written so far is the polish "average Joe", not my own views. I just want to maybe explain what's happening and why.
Myself, I'd say we should take them in, but place them in "camps". Why? Because if they were put with the local population, it wouldn't be long before an incident would happen, and that could turn into a massacre.
No, we should give them a place to stay, food, clothing... teach them polish (hahah, that would be the day), get them a craft... if they want to work, then keep them. Those who'd just want to sit on govt benefits and "play the naive europeans", well... The fear of economic migrants posing as refugees is strong. Fear and hatred.

I would like to add that even my rather conservative stance is itself a liberal minority. This could be trouble.

This post has been edited by Gothos: 07 September 2015 - 10:40 AM

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#15 User is offline   Gust Hubb 

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Posted 07 September 2015 - 03:30 PM

I am surprised the capitalists haven't swooped in. Such masses of people seem like an ideal opportunity to build vast industries (not old school sweat shops, but true new industries using the culturally unique population injected into the Western Society). For instance, why not create a new brand of Starbucks except built off of what ever tea/coffee/hot drink shop present in the migrant's home country? It could be franchised and would at least make money off of the incoming populace if not the native populace. There are so many directions these possibilities could be taken.

Personally, I have trouble with people in general. I get paranoid of having even family stay with me (people are inherently messy and unpredictable. It's hard enough living with the one's you love let alone strangers). We are currently letting a homeless family from my wife's church stay at our place while we are on vacation, but even that safe venture makes me nervous.

So I can't see letting refugees stay at my own place. But where should they stay then? In my home city, we barely are keeping up with providing housing for all the people who want to live there. We could construct projects I guess, but look how those went in Chicago...

And let's say we find a way to create housing (fill up the surrounding National Park camp sites?), what then? Jobs? Food? Money? Transportation? Waste removal? Water usage? Health care? Etc?

I can understand balking at such an endeavor. Just imagine yourself for a sec. Think of how long it took you to get a job and get settled in. Think of what you eat and where you get your food. Think about how often you spend money and what on. What about how frequently you drive a car, and if you have kids, how much coordination is needed? How much trash do you create in a day or a week? Do you know what your impact is on local landfills? And for those in California, what happens when the water needs increase dramatically (not just people living in houses flushing toilets and watering plants, but the farming needs to feed said people)? I also ask, how long does it take to get a doctor's appointment where you are? And to those who say volunteer medical care is the solution, ask yourself how that has been working for your homeless population?

And that brings me to the crux question:

How has your social programs been working for your native homeless population?

If the answer is "we've done just fine," then certainly have some refugees. Otherwise, how can our countries cope with influxes of new people when we can barely care for our own?
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#16 User is offline   Puck 

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Posted 07 September 2015 - 08:32 PM

View PostGust Hubb, on 07 September 2015 - 03:30 PM, said:

I am surprised the capitalists haven't swooped in. Such masses of people seem like an ideal opportunity to build vast industries (not old school sweat shops, but true new industries using the culturally unique population injected into the Western Society). For instance, why not create a new brand of Starbucks except built off of what ever tea/coffee/hot drink shop present in the migrant's home country? It could be franchised and would at least make money off of the incoming populace if not the native populace. There are so many directions these possibilities could be taken.


Do we have a facepalm icon? I cannot find it.

We are talking about people with no money, no jobs and nowhere to go, and the first thing you can think of is Starbucks and how to profit off them? Really?

People ARE profiting off the refugess - those people who queeze what money they have out of them to illegally smuggle them into Europe. Not two weeks ago, on the Austrian border, they found 71 people dead, stuffed into a truck sealed airtight because it was made to transport frozen products. They simply suffocated in there. And probably paid for the privilege, too.

It's not like I don't understand anyone's concerns, I think most here do. Both in financial and cultural regards. This is what makes the whole issue so difficult. But, uh, really?
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#17 User is offline   Gust Hubb 

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Posted 07 September 2015 - 08:51 PM

Do we have a vaguely insulted icon?

You did see the comment about avoiding sweatshops, right?

Anyway, I was more talking about why couldn't the refugees be brought into the field by utilizing their cultural specialty (much like ethnic restaurants). The thought of jobs was providing them with a living, not exploiting them. You instant assumptions of maleficence is insulting Puck.
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#18 User is offline   Illuyankas 

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Posted 07 September 2015 - 09:44 PM

For a start, they have no capital to actually do anything other than flee their homes because they are literally refugees. Why on earth is your first idea 'how do we make money off them'?

Besides, there wouldn't be enough of a profit margin to suddenly start paying wages for thousands of people on the offchance their local cuisine is suddenly a smash hit, so no one sociopathicgreedy enough to take your less than well thought out idea seriously would be up for it to begin with.
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#19 User is offline   Una 

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Posted 07 September 2015 - 10:05 PM

I sort of thought that GH meant something along the lines of how certain international charities will facilitate things like selling handicrafts made by women in impoverished nations for a good price and having the money go back the the village they were made in, so that these people don't have to move to the city to work in sweatshops for pennies and also get the benefit of having some measure of self-sufficiency and not having to feel like beggars lining up for food aid. Only bring the people in to our countries to do it. Like, some businessman investing the start-up costs for a restaurant or grocery specializing in Middle Eastern food and hiring a bunch of refugees to run it, with the eventual aim of getting them ready to run it themselves, take his cut as the investor, then open more restaurants, thereby hiring more people, maybe promoting some of them to franchise owners. Locals would go to try it because it's exotic. Those for the old country would go because it's a taste of the home they left behind. Everybody wins. It's what good, old school capitalism was suppose to be, but stopped being a very long time ago. I'm not even sure it even really was, or it was just something from black and white movies, maybe.

It could have been phrased better, certainly. Also, I know nothing about business. It probably doesn't work that way except on paper.

Refugees get resettled more quickly than you think. There was an article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, which I can't find any more, probably because I tend to read the paper copies and toss them in the recycling right after. It was saying that compared to other classes of immigrants, refugees are much less likely to go on social assistance and use up less health care. They integrate faster, learn the language faster, and find employment faster. It's totally counter-intuitive at first. I was a bit puzzled myself. They usually don't speak the language and that is a HUGE disadvantage. But after I thought about it, I think there might be some reasons why that is. They're motivated as heck. They're also younger and healthier than, say...family reunification class immigrants, who are mostly grannies and grandpas who are past their working years, are too old to learn a new language, and require lots of medical care. Probably because the sick, elderly, and infirm really don't survive things like fleeing on foot, being snuck past the border packed into cargo trucks, and being tossed on the ocean in a boat with no food or water, which is sad, really. Refugees may have been employed, even educated, in their home country and used to being stable and productive, when all hell isn't breaking loose, so they are eager to get back to that as quickly as possible. Unlike Canadian-borns, they often grew up up in places where social safety systems are practically non-existent. They don't stay on social assistance once they don't need it because they aren't even really used to the idea of it. It didn't exist where they came from. The sponsorship system I alluded to in my above post probably helps a great deal with cultural integration, because newcomers arrive to a built in support system, with families that are more than happy to invite them over for Thanksgiving dinners and introduce them to the joys of Nanaimo bars and butter tarts. And they are grateful in a way that others aren't. Unlike investor class immigrants, they aren't flying back to "do business" for 6 months of the year as soon as they get their papers (That program got axed last year. It wasn't really working, obviously. Posted Image ) , so they really invest all their energy towards setting down roots in the new place. (Like if anyone asks my ex-father in law if he'd ever go back to Vietnam, since it's so nice there now for vacation and it's cheap, he say, "Hell no! We almost died trying to get out of there. No way I'm voluntarily going back."

This post has been edited by Una: 07 September 2015 - 10:08 PM

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#20 User is offline   Terez 

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Posted 07 September 2015 - 10:18 PM

View PostGothos, on 07 September 2015 - 07:30 AM, said:

To the "average Joe" in Poland, this guy will immediately demand a mosque to be built, sharia law to be implemented and start assaulting locals who don't adhere to his "code". We see what's happening to Paris, London, Berlin, Stockholm... and we want none of it. We do not want any "cultural enrichment".

Another thing of note is that these countries have no tradition of cultural exposition to peoples as alien to us as Arabs. We've had our cultural "enrichment" with germans, russians, ruthenians, tatars, czechs, slovaks, wallachians and hungarians... but all these are pretty similar to our own culture. Now, countries like France and the UK have a long tradition of contact with vastly different cultures, and developed the, perhaps, right mentality to deal with it. There is way too much xenophobia in Poland to facilitate a peaceful integration at this point. We are not prepared. Most of us don't want to be.

It's also a lot about our future as a developed country. We look at the UK, Germany and France and we see nothing but trouble. We look at the largely monocultured Japan and South Korea and we see lack of said trouble. We carry no colonial or slave-related historical guilt. The pressure right now seems to us like the West trying to force their immigration policies on us.

I have noticed from following Polandball comments (I can't help it) that the homogeny in Poland is a great point of pride for a lot of people, and that casual, blatant white supremacy is a lot more common than it is in similar American milieu. (American racists have honed the art of dog-whistling.) I have a friend who is an attorney in Kraków and he always tries to put a good face on it, insisting there are a lot of people like him, especially young people, blah blah blah. I have another friend who is a translator in Warsaw (from Białystok) and she says the open-minded people are way outnumbered, and she often displays cultural and racial biases herself, presumably without awareness. I'm sure we all do that, even me, but there have been some instances that seemed stark from an American perspective.

This touches on the discussion we had recently about the relatively unconfronted racial tensions in the Netherlands vis-à-vis the blackface magazine art and the racial slur in the headline. We get criticized a lot for our racial tensions in the US but honestly Europeans often serve well to remind us how far we have come. Our relatively extreme racial history has forced us to confront this issue continually.

View PostGothos, on 07 September 2015 - 07:30 AM, said:

Now, please remember all I've written so far is the polish "average Joe", not my own views. I just want to maybe explain what's happening and why.
Myself, I'd say we should take them in, but place them in "camps".

Nice. You have a few of those lying around, don't you? :p I get your reasoning, but for the love of god, consider the optics.

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