But this is exactly what they want to cause, chaos and civil unrest, so these same people who benefit from selling weapons to war zones, can push in more laws like the TTIP during times of civil unrest, to support their militant and money based control systems.
Americans are one party, it is the Iraqis and Syrians themselves who are responsible for much of the mess, and let us not begin with Qatar, Saudi, Kuwaiti funders and Iran and its proxies.
The nice simple narrative to bash the America is much more fun even though intellectually lazy.
Have I missed something about the word "migrant"?
> Have I missed something about the word "migrant"?
In Europe, in past couple of years, 'migrant' has almost become a synonym for asylum seekers and refugees.
Doesn't mater how you paint the picture the moment these guys ended up in Turkey and kept going west they became economical immigrants, and they don't even stop at the first European country they get into they strive to go deeper and deeper to countries that (they think) will give them more benefits.
Heck as we speak you have anywhere between 75,000 and 300,000 "migrants" holding their fort in France (Mainly in places like Clais, Dippe, Rouen etc.) waiting to get into the UK and constantly avoiding registration in France in order not to get "stuck" there.
And the fact that you can hardly have an open discussion about this without being labeled as a racist is just mind boggling and the worst part is that it will make things 100 worse down the line because the pressure that the left imposes on everyone will just means that the whole situation will literally explode when it will reach the boiling point and were not that far off.
> this guy wasn't really a migrant
> he was pretty close-minded in regards to integrating into a new
> culture/diet/environment
1. Take in all the refugess
2. ...
3. Integration done.
> 2. ...
Learning Finnish won't solve every problem of integration, but without it, I would suggest that integration is impossible.
This is such an important point - I'm German, living in Australia, and the Germans here tend to hang out almost exclusively with other Germans, same goes for the Chinese etc. I haven't yet seen a good solution for that "insulation" - It takes real effort and motivation to step outside of your comfort zone, you can't force people to do so, they'll quickly bounce back.
I have a Greek acquaintance who lives in my city's unofficial Greek neighbourhood. Everything from groceries to bakeries and cafés, it's all Greek and he doesn't like to stray much from his routine in these shops. All the owners and patrons know each other personally. They get to feel like they're still back home. It keeps them sheltered a bit too much from the rest of us, but hey - they have a real community versus me that doesn't know the first name of anyone that serves me in any of the shops I frequent.
Honestly, it just comes down to being open minded, which has to happen on an individual level. I'm open minded by necessity, because there are very few of my race in the USA, much less my current city.
There are values that are the same across all Europe and those should be the focus of integration. Learning local language is not one of them.
Also, chances are Finland doesn't teach asylum seekers Finnish while they await that verdict. That makes sense if that process doesn't take much time, but it is hard to make due process take little time if there suddenly are many asylum seekers.
It's an uphill battle for any country that relies on sweeping issues under the rug instead of managing them up front.
If you're going to talk about "integration" (read: assimilation), it's worth remembering that they were there first, and it's the Chinese immigrants who are now the majority that has sidelined them.
You can look into Iran, Iraq and even Afghanistan. Unfortunately they didn't have a Lee Kuan Yew to draw in the line. My mum told me how no one cared about Halal only sections in Iran, my dad said the same about Iraq even though they would identify as muslims.
It worked well enough for the influx of Vietnamese refugees too.
Edit: For half a decade I was an expat in a monocultural country. Being open-minded (giving in more often than demanding) and member of a too small community to be considered a threat I could enjoy peace to a greater extent than everywhere else before - even as a member of the majority group in my own country. Probably that's why I'm very bearish regarding multiculturalism.
http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/[email protected]/Latestproducts/3412....
With 28% of our population being born overseas, we're doing integration okay (21% if you discount UK and kiwiland - and our #1 country of import in recent years is China). For comparison, the UK is 12% and the US is 14%. If you look at the current migrant rate (migrants/1000 pop/year), there are only two sizeable western countries higher than Australia, being Norway and Spain. If you exclude conflict areas, there are no other large countries higher than Australia[1].
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_net_migra...
Basically, the WAP is dead as a dodo as of 40 years ago. The idea that Australia is an insular country afraid of immigration is clearly a myth once you look at the stats. Of course, that doesn't sell newspapers.
In short, no, we haven't gone backwards. We're actually a success story, it's just that we have a very visible wart on our nose at the moment (thank you, politics).
--
[1] this data is from 2014, which is before Germany took in 1% of it's population in the form of Syrian refugees
I don't think a secular government is a new concept for Syrians or Iraqis. Saudis, Afghans? Sure. But Syria and Iraq have been under secular governments pretty much since the fifties.
Now living in an open, liberal society like those in Western Europe is a different thing altogether, but for educated Syrians it's not an impossible endeavour. I think most of those actually making it to Germany/Sweden/etc. are from the most "modern" parts of society, as the less educated and poorer ones are pretty much stuck in Liban or Turkey
This is a common misconception while the governments were secular they've enforced very strict "cultural" laws. In Iraq and in Syria it is perfectly legal to kill your sister for extra-mertial sex, homosexuals are also specifically targeted by either laws that outright make homosexuality illegal (Syria) or by laws that target extra-marital sex (Iraq).
So while you can have perfectly "well adjusted" individuals that might even be highly educated there is an almost insurmountable cultural gap that is almost impossible for anyone who isn't either from the region or had extensive contact with people from the middle east to understand.
You can literally be sitting over tea and talking with a young Iraqi, Syria, Iranian or w/e engineer about everything from mechanical engineering to democracy and constitutional law thinking to yourself wow these guys aren't that different after all until they mention in the same nonchalant casual manner as you would "hey did you see the game last night?" that they had to kill their sister or that they've reported their room-mate for being gay to the state.
Religion and culture aren't separate entities like it or not even by being say not even an atheist but an active anti-theist if you grew up in the west the 2000 years or so of shared cultural heritage which at some point or another was (and still collectively is) affected by judeo-christian beliefs, values, or what ever you want to call it (and vise versa) has been imprinted on you from the day you were born the same way it was imprinted on everyone else.
The true cultural shock isn't when the drinking, chain smoking, club going mid-20's Syrian law student comes to Sweden the cultural shock happens when the Swedes figure out that no matter what they tell him they still can't stop him from thinking it's OK to kill his sister for dating some one he doesn't like.
> I wonder, what is the percentage of those hundreds of thousands who do not have the same mindset.
Rather than wondering how many people do share that mindset you wonder how many do not share that mindset. This comes across (to me) as if you're coming from a starting position of "they all share this mindset" and are looking to see how wrong you are.
Islamism is an ideology -- or arguably a catch-all term for a number of ideologies -- that want to force Islam into the government, law and everything.
http://www.danielpipes.org/954/distinguishing-between-islam-...
The average Iraqi or Syrian isn't Islamist. E.g. the Alawites in Syria aren't Islamists, and the former Baath party in Iraq wasn't either.
How about we treat their opinion as "unknown" rather than a foregone conclusion (for either side)? Is this too much to ask?
Your sensitivity to it maybe illustrates that you are much closer to it politically and are easily offended.
This applies to a large segment of migrants and refugees from the middle east.
I can say this because I did immigrate from there.
It's hard to argue with people who have been brainwashed that everything good comes from gods who also demand all those superficial rituals and arbitrary cultural norms. Questioning their rituals throws their whole worldview and morality out the window and they aren't exactly appreciative for that.
There's also a sense of entitlement, because: "The destruction of our country is largely the responsibility of the West". This mindset is very prevalent. So instead of appreciation for being taken in, there's discontent because reality is not turning out like they imagined it to be.
Huh? Where did I indicate I want other people to pay the price? We live in a democratic society and I believe our government should use the money we give them via taxes to help take in refugees. If you disagree vote for a party that doesn't want to help. I'm not sure where you're from but if you're in the same part of the world as me you're not going to have much luck.
>> "That's the whole problem with this whole "social/ism" notion that it puts people in power to decide the fate and obligations of others."
Again - these people are voted into power to represent the views of the entire society. This is nothing to do with 'socialism'. If you find yourself consistently annoyed that your government is helping people instead of letting you keep your money (because screw everyone else, right) you're either living in the wrong place or you might want to take a look at what you place importance on because most of the people around you disagree with you, probably for a good reason.
This is not a zero-sum game, If government pays it via taxes they have to stop paying something else or increase taxes.
That is not what irks me most though. What irks me most is that we could help a whole lot more people, -and less fortunate people at that, if we applied the same resources in the neighboring countries instead of giving those resourceful enough to cross Europe "golden tickets".
I would be happy to pay a little extra tax for that, if I knew the money would be spent helping those poor souls that are now hunting cats in the ruins of those towns instead of the current golden tickets mostly to young men who leave their families behind,
That is literally the definition of a zero-sum game.
So, as a coercive state with guns, if I want to fund some program that costs $1M, I would need to tax much more.
Anyway, my larger point stands I guess.
Please understand that some people think that people that have "fled" through multiple safe countries might not be the ones who most desperately needs help.