That poll only surveyed areas where at least a fifth of the population was Muslim. From my experience growing up as an Orthodox Jew, areas with a higher concentration of an ethnicity also tend to harbour the more extreme views. Whether that's because extremists tend to only want to hang out together or because hanging out with only your own kind makes you more extreme is irrelevant - that poll isn't an accurate reflection Of British Muslim views or any of the British Muslims I work with.

http://m.huffpost.com/uk/entry/uk_570badf0e4b0fa55639d65a9

But also consider this:

a) Immigrants tend to adopt the mainstream culture over time b) By stopping people from immigrating, you're just keeping homophobia away from you, you're not preventing it existing. A gay child Of Muslim parents is better off in the UK than Pakistan even if his parents are going to continue to be homophobic. I'm not a fan OF NIMBYism.

NIMBYism is rationalism. It is irrational to think you can/should have policies in your system to serve people from a separate system. It presumes that you can establish a metric for right and wrong that applies to others, which is really just jingoism.

Edit: wrt your 'A', there is a massive amount of things not said about how immigrants take on the values of their new country. Cato has published a few papers on that and it is always in the context of large aggregate stats dominated by immigrants from similar cultures (some might disagree, but Mexico is VERY similar to the US; Syria not so much)

Economics is rationalism. Literally.

And economics has no concern about the well-being of any social group.

If another social group creates more wealth than yours do via immigration, guess what? Your social group dies.

If a bunch of marauding dark-skinned anti-gay Muslims practicing Sharia law creates more wealth than sweet, huggable white libertarians with flowers in their hands, guess who's going to dominate?

There's no faking it in economics. Adapt or die.

And white nationalists are going to learn the hard way that immigrants are what creates wealth in this country, since they work hard and have a lower crime rate than natives.

White nationalism doesn't exist. This is just a label invented to explain why the Democrats have lost influence among middle-class America in places like Wisconsin, Indiana, Iowa...

The left, however, is a real thing. When I worked with Obama's people, I worked with people that identified as "anarcho-socialists" that openly discussed entitlement expansion as a means to break the system. I could not invent the crap I heard these people say.

I agree that white nationalism exists, especially with white-nationalists like Bannon in control of our government. They are truly a dangerous group that doesn't represent America's multi-cultural values.

We have to make sure that white-nationalism is purged from this country, and an open-borders society is probably the best way to fight-off white-nationalism.

We need to make sure a Sharia-law supporting Muslim is able to freely immigrate into this country and sit freely and peacefully alongside a Brazilian transgendered activist on our subways.

That is the multiculturalism that we Americans want.

You do a lot of virtue signaling in your commentary and presume to speak for "the masses". It is... amusing.

I get that you have an opinion and it is fairly orthogonal to mine. Your opinion doesn't offend me or make me feel threatened, but the presumption that you speak for anyone beyond yourself is awkward.

I want to understand your side, but your presentation is pitting you against good taste... I feel like I'm talking to that guy at the gym who went off his bipolar meds.

Tone down the preaching of universal truth, perhaps?

>That poll only surveyed areas where at least a fifth of the population was Muslim.

At the time, yes. But if TFA author's idea ("boundless immigration for everybody") was allowed, that could very well include all areas of UK, no?

>that poll isn't an accurate reflection Of British Muslim views or any of the British Muslims I work with.

Perhaps because as an white programmer (I suppose, not sure about the former, but being on HN puts you statistically closer to the latter, and to higher incomes in any case) you tend to only work with progressively minded muslim people, from more affluent backgrounds? Which would be an even less representative sample than the one in the poll?

>Immigrants tend to adopt the mainstream culture over time

Only when there's assimilation, and when their numbers are small. E.g. in the US, any particular immigrant group was still a relevant minority compared to the rest (though even today WASP ideas and power are prevalent in US culture).

If the mainstream culture is not what it used to be (UK is no longer an empire of any sort, and it's not even "Swinging London" anymore), and the numbers of immigration population and the ease of communication with their originating country/culture, the internet, global TV programming etc make it much easier to stick to their original culture. Younger generation that look to upward mobility tend to adopt mainstream culture more easily, but that's not something many people, even from the "native" population, realistically aspire to anymore.

>A gay child Of Muslim parents is better off in the UK than Pakistan even if his parents are going to continue to be homophobic. I'm not a fan OF NIMBYism.

Only if the number of homophobic immigrants are not greater than the number of gay immigrants. Which, depending on the country of origin, might be a hard thing...

I don't agree with the notion that if the UK opens its borders it'll be flooded. They said that about the EU, and it didn't exactly pan out like that. Sure, there's immigration, but it's not like we all speak Polish.

And I'm not advocating opening borders immediately - just move in that direction and relax controls a bit.

>They said that about the EU, and it didn't exactly pan out like that.

Well, the EU never really opened its borders.

>Sure, there's immigration, but it's not like we all speak Polish.

That's because Poland has seen significant increase in local opportunities and no instability recently.

Not the same as most parts of the world people want to immigrate to the EU from...

I very much agree with you. Spreading western values by taking in immigrants is not a bad idea. Even if it doesn't change everyone in the world, it still shows that it is possible for the values to include everyone.

It does assume integration though. If you take in immigrants, but isolate them and/or treat them badly, might it not be that you actually radicalize them further?

(Of course we shouldn't isolate them, but if that effectively ends up happening it has to be considered.)

>Reality of mass immigration from Muslim countries into the UK has been a lot more people in the UK support Sharia law and want to ban homosexuality.

Based on this:

http://www.migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings...

The majority of immigrants are likely non-Muslims. Only two Muslim countries appear in the top 10. Of the top 44% of immigrants, 8% are from two Muslim countries.

Likely a larger percentage of local non-Muslim Americans want to ban homosexuality than do immigrants to the UK. I wouldn't be surprised if in the US, immigrants are more open to homosexuality than US citizens.

I've been following Madeline Sumption on Twitter for a while. I think she has a political motivation and I don't consider the Migration Observatory to be a valid source. Sorry.

Everyone has political motivations. You're going to entirely discount a group that studies migration from the most esteemed university in the UK because you don't like what someone puts on their twitter feed?

Yep. It suggests bias in the methods used to collect and publish data.

This is perfectly rational. Do you trust political polling from pollsters with party affiliation? I hope not.

Who do you know who's genuinely not political? People have biases all over the place. They're not going to disappear - understand them, acknowledge them, interpret them. Don't just shrug your shoulders and say "nah I don't like that". They're not publishing opinion pieces - it's research.

Now we're making progress: I don't.

Over the last couple years, I've started mentally putting a "P(BULLSHIT)" next to every source I read. The estimate keeps growing.

While you might want to make this an ad hominem attack, all I can say is that my probability estimates are pretty darn bipartisan.

>from the most esteemed university in the UK

Isn't usually the most "esteemed" establishments that are closer to the party line?

That's par for the course of being "esteemed".

>I've been following Madeline Sumption on Twitter for a while. I think she has a political motivation and I don't consider the Migration Observatory to be a valid source. Sorry.

I don't know them, but I'll take your word for it. However, will point out that it is in no way worse than the source you provided (no source)

How about Migration Watch?

https://www.migrationwatchuk.org/statistics-population-count...

Compared to the total non-UK born population, Pakistan + Bangladesh are a tiny blip.

Another source:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/general-election-2015/politi...

More from the ONS:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign-born_population_of_the...

These figures are similar from 2009: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057%2Fpt.2009.5 from Population Trends March 2009, Volume 135, Issue 1, pp 20–28 by Amy Ellis Office for National Statistics.

What figures do you believe are accurate?

But you think Channel 4 is better when it comes to academic honesty and not biasing their polls?

I agree. It reminds me of the quote "Civilization is built on what men give back to the society, not what they require from the society." While I know it can improve standards of living for a ton of people if they were allowed to immigrate out of their current situation, it also means the benefit may only be one sided and not to the society receiving them. The author fails to sufficiently argue this part. In that sense, having some sort of merit and cultural compatibility system makes sense. Without it, original society can lose it's identity and could also devolve into an irreversible mess.

The problem with your argument is that it can be applied to births as well; if we allow mentally disabled people to be born, could we not then argue that the benefit is one sided and not the society they're born into?

Basically, what you're arguing is that a person's right to pursuit of happiness is lower than a society's right to flourish. And, also, that the society has the right to choose what types of people are undesirable (by criteria that goes beyond "do you follow the law", because merit and culture includes so much more).

> Seems like a very nice argument when isolated away from reality. Reality of mass immigration from Muslim countries into the UK has been a lot more people in the UK support Sharia law and want to ban homosexuality.

We have that in the US already, with the evangelists trying to do the exact same thing - strict religious laws and anti-homosexuality. Lots of gays/transgendered people being killed in the US, as well as domestic violence causing death among people that stray away from their family. And what good are laws against murder if the government doesn't enforce it, like the current US Attorney General is doing?

But, it doesn't matter since immigration isn't designed to influence culture. The US government isn't a Cultural Government. We don't even have a national language. Pretty cool, huh?

Immigrations instead is used to maintain economic welfare, as immigrants work harder than natives and have a lower crime rate. Otherwise, you have a stagnant economy like Japan.

You have plenty of other options to control culture besides immigration. Learn how to make a TV show, or speak in public.

So, the correct answer to everything is to make sure we have an open border. Let's work to make sure that happens.

I think, rather i hope, you forgot the /s tag.

I find it interesting that many purportedly non-americans seem to think that Westboro Baptist Church has widespread support, gays and undesirables are hunted down if they stray from the Safe Zone, and children recite the pledge every ten minutes while we burn a book written by a jew.

Good to hear that Germany is finally considering legalizing gay marriage, BTW.

So, do you think our current right-wing government will ban gay marriage?

If anything, they'll push it back to the states to decide. I put zero probability of a Federal ban on marriage equality.

My friends on the left always push for universal, top down rulings on social issues. In reality, there are really good reasons historically for why groups move and congregate within the United States - they get better treatment and opportunity in different places. States rights is a safety net against political swings like we're dealing with and we should all support it not because we like what Alabama or Indiana wants, but because we want California or New York to be able to represent and manage itself.

There is absolutely no defensible reason to not allow gay marriage. Who cares if some people have a religious reason for not approving of gay marriage? If they don't approve of it, don't do it. But freedom of religion should also be freedom from religion.

Yeah, no issue with gay marriage in my view. The issue is where the decision needs to be rendered. I argue Federal rulings on X create a premise for rulings on Y and while you might really like the idea of X, it doesn't really matter to your life and it invites a negative impact from Y. Let X=gay marriage and Y=a state's self-determination of immigration law.

Immigration law is a matter of non citizens rights in the US. The federal government has the responsibility to protect citizens constitutional rights. Any law that discriminates against one person because of another persons religous beliefs is prima facie unconstitutional.

Should the states have had the right to keep laws against miscegenation because someone objected to interracial marriage? What about states right when it came to Jim Crow laws?

To buttress what @fixxer stated: i do think it should be allowed for states to have horrible rules and laws (anti-miscegenation, anti-gay, anti-white, etc). People have, and will continue, to vote with their feet. More poignantly, companies will vote with their foot print. If a majority of people in Arkansas want to establish the state as a White Majority Zone, democracy dictates that it must be so. Ditto for any other region or color.

Maybe? I wouldn't want to live in those states and I think that would be pervasive. Ultimately, economics would drive progress.

All conjecture. If only social science was a real science and we could do independent trials.

Do i think the Federal Government will ban gay marriage?

No. What would the motivation be? What would be the precedent[s] cited?

Do i think the Federal Government would not mount an active defense of gay marriage if a given state sought to outlaw it?

Maybe. It would depend on the state and precedent[s] used to justify the endeavor.

May i pose a non sequitur query? What was the Women's March on the day after the Trumpnoguration protesting? What legislation, executive actions, or campaign promises were they seeking to highlight and defeat?

My friends who went to the March still have no idea what they were _not_ protesting. Saul Alinsky would be mortified to see how unfocused activism is today.

Don't forget that California is just on loan from Mexico. ;)

And that guns make people safer.

Although the author is a libertarian, I don't think his views express what libertarians in general think about it.

Libertarians recognize property rights and that property owners should be able to prevent people from "immigrating" to their property.

In practice that could materialize in a number of different laws and costumes, depending on the culture and society.

How that should work in the context of State regulation is a problem for which libertarianism has no solution.

Libertarians also have a lot of internal divisions. Noam Chomsky, for example, is a "libertarian socialist" and gets along as well with the Cato Institute as a Trump supporter at a BLM rally.