> 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).
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[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.