Transporting several millions of people yearly and cheaply(these people don't pay for extra leg room) is not really rocket science.
Right now it's so expensive because the government is as always disconnected from reality. They are deporting each individual on case by case basis using. air flights. The gov is even allocating one or two officers for each immigrant. Now consider boarding all the illegal immigrants on a big livestock carrier. It may take a while to reach its destination(s) but it will be cheap and surely the immigrants(at least most of them) would not try again the adventure. One big immigration camp in a single trip.
Where have I seen this before? Ah yes, trans-atlantic slave trade.
Because some white men drew them on maps....
Sykes-Picot was a disaster for the middle east.
You dont know anything about slavery today.
Your beloved private sector literally sells slaves to construction companies in Dubai.
The only complains I've heard are that you can't get citizenship. What I like most is that people doing "funny" business are quickly deported. You don't see homeless people or beggers on the streets either.
I wonder, why Europe can't do that? I don't think there would be much push-back against migrants if we would have an efficient deportation system(i.e deport them after visa expiration or when they get involved in criminal activities).
What if they don't have papers? What if their country hasn't registered them? What if they lie about their name and birthdate, so their home country cannot identify them? What if the home country doesn't want them back? People don't go to UAE because life will be worse there.
Your encouragement argument has no base in reality. You live your well informed western perspective. These people have no idea where they are going, what life will be like here in the EU (terrible for many). They take the risk because they have nothing to lose: famine, natural disasters, never ending wars, dictators. They don't do this because they are encouraged somehow, except that they can't stay at home anymore. That is the "encouragement" indeed.
The journey is not "hard". It's insufferably hard. Everything you have will be stolen. You may be kidnapped to do slave labour. You may get raped, killed, or see your mates get killed in front of you. And that is before you step in a small boat with tens of people to cross a sea with no navigation, not enough food or water.
When you enter Italy and see your refugee status rejected, you enter the human void of being "illegal", undocumented. You live by the day, no future lies ahead of you.
If you get accepted, you may have lost seven years living in some kind of open prison, no language lessons, nothing to do all day.
Talk about "encouragement", but this doesn't stop people either. So why would this encouragement argument only work one way? Because the discouragement measures do not work at all.
Not our problem? Not our problem, and not our problem. Keep them detained in the meanwhile.
> These people have no idea where they are going, what life will be like... They take the risk because they have nothing to lose: famine, natural disasters, never ending wars, dictators.
It's an inconsequential act. "Nothing to lose" that they know of. I take it being more of a fad (certainly fueled by propaganda) than anything else
> The journey is not "hard". It's insufferably hard
"Everybody should know that" by now. They can't see that perspective. As I said, it's more of a reckless act than anything else.
And in the best case they'll be an overworked refugee with barely no perspective
> You live your well informed western perspective
Having come from a 3rd world country, let me tell you that the naive views from the 1st world about this abound.
Especially thinking mass immigration like that will solve anything about labour shortages
I think that's how the US justifies it (and I'm certainly not defending the way they do it).
Asylum shouldn't be a "immigrate for free" card. And abusing the system hurts the legitimate claimants more.
Exception, and that got abused often, held in psychiatry in case of imminent risk of self harm and / or harming others.
Update for clarity, My point here is to point out that you cannot technically just "Keep them detained in the meanwhile." without doing monstrous actions at industrial scale.
Keeping people detained is absolutely our problem, even if you disregard their humanity, because it costs a lot of money.
> If you want asylum the least you can do is be honest.
You can be honest and still have not been registered in your home country, or not wanted by your home country… or worse: they do want you, so they can kill you.
> Having come from a 3rd world country
Which one? There's a big gap between South Sudan and Egypt, but both are technically "third world". (Even more pedantically, Ireland, Sweden and Switzerland are also third world, but nobody would use the phrase today to refer to "neither NATO nor Soviet Bloc").
How would you know? And is this a fair comparison?
I've heard that the country relies heavily on South Asian labourers with terrible working conditions, as well as housemaids who are effectively imprisoned by their employers. It's a huge section of the economy. I wouldn't be surprised if the government makes it pretty easy to enter legally, or if a bunch of labourers are flying under the radar without the government caring.
I decided to search for some facts and found the following:
* Immigrants, particularly from India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, comprise over 90 percent of the country's private workforce [0]
* In 2013, the UAE had the fifth-largest international migrant stock in the world with 7.8 million migrants (out of a total population of 9.2 million) [0]
* About 65,000 unauthorized migrants — including those who entered the country illegally, visa over-stayers, migrants working on tourist visas, and others — currently reside in the UAE, according to official estimates (unofficial estimates run up to 135,000). [0]
* An unknown but likely significant number of migrants lack any identification papers after having “absconded” or abandoned abusive employers who withhold their passports [0]
* More than 10,500 illegal residents were prosecuted in the UAE in 2022, according to authorities.[1]
* In December 2012, the government announced a two-month amnesty program allowing unauthorized migrant workers to regularize their situations or leave the country without punishment.
* In August 2018 the government repeated this amnesty. [3]
* The UAE Government exempts fines for Illegal Foreigners/residents, under these conditions: your Emirates ID or Work Permit has expired, you are Workers who run away from sponsors and violate employment contracts. [4]
[0] https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/labor-migration-unit...
[1] https://www.khaleejtimes.com/life-and-living/visa-and-immigr...
[2] https://sojo.net/articles/how-united-arab-emirates-country-9...
[3] https://www.stalawfirm.com/en/news/view/illegal-immigration-...
[4] https://kemlu.go.id/dubai/en/news/7262/illegal-foreigners-ex...
Do Europeans not realize the sheer number of refugees that Turkey is sheltering in place of them?
It's all it's ever been about, and the UK is not alone in this capitulation.
Because as a result of the events from 1933-1945, everyone has the individual right to claim asylum in Europe. Despite the far-right working hard to abolish that, we won't.
Besides, for countries like Syria there's a deportation ban in place by the European court system.
As an American, can I go vacation in Europe and then toss my documents and claim I'm seeking asylum with a succesful outcome of being granted permanent residency and the ability to work?
On the other hand, it might be technically possible for you to meet one of these country's criteria for "refugee", "displaced person", "asylum seeker", etc. but it is _remarkably_ unlikely.
I suppose it also depends a little on what you want to do. In the UK it takes months to process asylum claims but while you wait we'll put you up in a nice hotel, give you food and spending money. So if you just wanted to visit the UK for an extended period of time, it wouldn't be a bad idea.
> The right to asylum is guaranteed by Article 18 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. Article 19 prohibits collective expulsions and protects individuals from being removed, expelled or extradited to a state where there is a serious risk of death penalty, torture or other inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/about-parliament/en/democracy...
Also, you don't need to "toss [your] documents", I'm not sure why you think that's required to initiate an asylum process lol
Someone versed in EU law can chime in, but I imagine that being literally undocumented would only make the process harder (though it would be abundantly clear that you're an American)
No need to toss your documents
Also, they wil check your identity, so using a false name is almost certainly going to be a reason to be denied asylum.
The problem fundamentally is living in a nice place and not really contributing to making the place so nice. Everybody wants this privilege and there is of course the market and the price for having it.
Real answer is the same as with drugs — be the mafia yourself
Plus most dont have papers and can easily claim coming from war place (which many do, but I suspect most are economical migrants). This isnt easy to solve, look what Australia is doing (detaining immigrants in Papua IIRC in bad conditions to scare others).
Well, it actually isn't that hard a choice, but still.
It is as if the younger generations have no clue what they are voting for.
When they discoverer, it will be too late.
They know exactly what they are voting for.
I dont have an answer. I personally moved away from my home country (Slovakia) almost 2 decades away, thinking far right is probably the biggest long term threat with causing some civil war with our big Roma population. Oh boy was I wrong, far right is now completely managed by russian troll farms now, they literally jump as russians whistle (an expression back home), having some utterly illogical positions.
You look left, there is a guy completely interwined with 'ndrangheta who probably will win, murdering journalists, managing economy so badly that Romania took us over. Right is this above. Both love russia in fact. Nothing competent in between. People voted last time for cca new face and he turned to be some bipolar less than useless freak who just pissed off literally everybody left and right.
The mass immigration policies of the left has created a burden on some (while creating a boom for others).
Plenty of unhappiness can be created from left policies. Mass immigration cause job loss and wage reduction. Increasing taxes creates unhappiness. Spending more today than you have creates unhappiness tomorrow.
And if you really believe that migration, and not union busting and unchecked capitalism, lead to lower wages, well, I don't think there is anything I can say that might make think about those things more critical.
That's why it's even more important to go vote this time, and for a party that will likely make the cut. For all intents and purposes, votes for the everybody-knows-they-will-be-<5% parties are lost votes, with the only difference to "not voting" that there's a buck or so per voter for those parties' piggy-banks.
The rumor that invalidating the ballot makes any difference makes a reappearance every few years, so for clarity: The same applies to invalid votes, which end up being just a line-item in some statistic nobody cares about.
So why is this happening? Isn't it a sign that they are proposing ideas more attractive to more and more people? Or alternatively people are becoming skeptical about ideas and policies realized so far by current government over the years?
Huge numbers of economic migrants make their way illegally to Europe. They have little education and no useful work skills. WTF are we supposed to do with them?
The correct solution is to send illegal migrants right back to Africa. However, only the far right parties dare say that - hence, the increasing support they are getting, despite their other positions.
In case you're unaware, the reason Europe has its current asylum standards largely because of what happened between 1933-1945. So would your proposed solution be:
1. Deny asylum to anyone and everyone, even those fleeing genocide ("Sorry that happened to you, we don't have room here!"), or
2. Implement a color chart a la Family Guy [1], so only the "right people" can come in?
[1] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/family-guy-skin-color-chart
I will add, this isn't terribly surprising in Europe. In Italy, due to flaws in their political system, you have had politicians parachuted in from the EU repeatedly to run the country...I am not sure what people expect. If you place significant limitations on democracy and then ignore public opinion, people will get annoyed.
Don't worry, to the rest of the developing world, Western democracies are already considered to be a bunch of moralizing hypocrites, looking to impose their erstwhile colonial tendencies in other ways. Oh, and you guys are a laughing stock with the recent immigration issues, what with Lampedusa being showcased front and center of the news.
You guys ship your garbage to other poorer countries in some sort of wretched don't ask, don't tell policy, then blame those same countries for polluting the earth. Meanwhile a bunch of clowns in your countries inconvenience the rest of the populace by sticking themselves to the roads as a "sign of protest". To quote Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed, the UAE foreign minister, "the next generation of terrorists will be from Europe and the West".
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-dV4m43xZmY
Get over it, you guys are already a joke, already on the decline. Get out of your city shells and walk the rural areas a bit to see how your fellow countrymen actually feel about the policies of your government. Of how the common man has been continually shafted while you preach and vacillate about human rights.
I look forward to the amount of PhD dissertations that will study the decline of Europe and the West over the post-GFC decade. Rant over.
The reason why I believe it’s irreversible is because of the power of the media. Too many people still believe the global warming narrative and are open to mass immigration. Not to mention the fact that the USA has succeeded in convincing many Europeans that Russia is to be an enemy instead of an ally.
All of this will greatly increase the cost of living for the common man while at the same time the welfare state is being destroyed. Europeans will face much hardship the next decennia and I don’t think they’ll be able to recover.
I know this will be an unpopular opinion, but I’ll voice it here anyways :)
Believe me, there are many in the liberal sphere who do not support unlimited mass migration. Open borders are not compatible with a welfare state.
As for denying the changing climate and supporting Russia's invasion of Ukraine, I don't feel anything I can type in short order would enlighten the reader if they don't already see the injustice after a few hundred thousand dead.
Maybe you liberals shouldn't support neoconservative conflicts that drive the migration in the first place. Hillary's State Department did such a great job in Honduras, Libya, Syria. The same is happening now in Ukraine. These conflicts are all about preserving American hegemony, nothing more.
Should tell the Russians that they seem to think the war in Ukraine is about fixing the “mistake” of Ukraines independence.
I am just quoting what the Russian media said in there accidentally posted victory article early on in the war.
But I agree it is super delusional.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220226051154/https://ria.ru/20...
>> Russia is restoring its unity - the tragedy of 1991, this terrible catastrophe of our history, its unnatural dislocation, has been overcome
I suggest you read the article i think you’ll find the word NATO doesn’t even appear in it.
> they just don't want NATO setting up shop on their borders
Then they have already failed as the Russian border with NATO is now longer then it would be if you included Ukraine and Ukraine isn’t even in NATO.
I don’t think it was this though as Germany gave Russia assurances before the war that they would veto Ukraines NATO application.
> NATO has spent the years since the dissolution of the Soviet Union breaking all of their assurances to Russia that it would not expand, literally encircling them.
There was never any formalised agreement to not expand NATO, so no promise was ever made.
Regardless of that Russia has multiple international agreements with Ukraine (that are formalised) that say they will never threaten their sovereignty.
Why doesn’t Russia have to follow those?.
Another question one might ask is why Russias neighbours want to join NATO it’s probably because Russia has invaded nearly all of them at some point in time.
Seems pretty reasonable to me to want to defend yourself from what at this point seems like a likely future invasion,
The word NATO appeared in every diplomatic negotiation about the Donbas preceding and subsequent to the war. Don't waste people's time with nonsense-- I can find an article in US media that also puts forward every conceivable position if I try hard enough.
>Regardless of that Russia has multiple international agreements with Ukraine (that are formalised) that say they will never threaten their sovereignty.
Why doesn’t Russia have to follow those?.
You mean like the Minsk accords that Zelensky failed to implement? The Ukrainian people put their faith in him to end the war, but he caved to the Right. Turns out actors don't make good presidents, as we know in the US as well. https://harpers.org/archive/2023/10/the-tragedy-of-volodymyr...
It’s not nonsense it’s russias own position on the war straight from there own kremlin approved propaganda outlets.
I know it’s an inconvenient article as it dispels the narrative of this war being about NATO and shows it for what it really is, russian imperialism.
> You mean like the Minsk accords that Zelensky failed to implement?
All the agreements I speak off predate the Minsk accords by years to decades.
russia didn’t follow any of them so why should we have faith they would follow anything new?.
It’s not like russia obeyed the Minsk accords either (shocking I know).
russia doesn’t appear to follow international agreements when it doesn’t benefit them.
So once again I ask why does russia get to ignore and violate all the formalised agreements it has with Ukraine.
Where as everyone else has to obey vague not in writing promises that where never formalised?.
Putin is a monster on the same scale as Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot. Your support for him is disgusting.
You may not owe monsters better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
How silly to try to talk about a handful of climate protestors who actually give a shit about the planet in the same breath you talk about garbage exports (citing... Nothing) and then using that to excuse China and India using rivers as their own garbage disposal.
As for the climate hypocrisy argument, sorry to hurt your preconceived notions, but it's already proven that most of the waste that ends up dumped in Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-malaysia-environment-plas...
https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Environment/Philippines-sl....
https://e360.yale.edu/features/plastic-waste-imports-recycli...
But go on, vacillate and down vote in your self righteousness.
Your argument comparing climate protestors and governments who ship garbage to developing countries is bunk, though. Ever thought about who those protestors are angry with?
An intelligent conversation can be had about failing democratic institutions in the west, the need to disincentive wasteful consumption, and (as happens already) what levels of support developed countries owe to developing countries to dissuade the latter from ramping up fossil fuels consumption.
But your finger wagging still doesn't make sense in the context of thinking India or the developing world is any better.
I never implied that India or China are doing any better (although India has taken massive strides which is usually ignored by the West). My gripe is with Western countries criticizing the global south for environmental neglect, when they don't do anything about it and simply ship away their problems.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/30/climate/oil-kenya-africa-...
Stop being a parasite and return to India if you hate Europe that much. But no, no, you people seem to hate the places you run off to but don't want to return. Same with Russians enjoying the "decadent gay West" while claiming they hate it and supporting Putin. Same with Turks living on German welfare while loving Erdogan.
Put your money where your mouth is and go back to India. Then you can complain.
He is free to hate the West while living in it. He's not going to prison for it (unlike he would in the countries he likes, ironically). He's not getting deported from the West despite claiming to hate the West or anything.
But I am also free to call him out on it. I have the same freedom, no? Why would he have the freedom to insult me (and you, since you said "our western") but not us to insult him back?
He can call me a hypocrite for West not being perfect and not solving all the problems of the world, and I can call him hypocrite for hating the West and its values yet still living in here for want of luxury. Is it a useful conversation? Not really, honestly, but it is fair.
But more importantly, look up paradox of tolerance and philosophy following from it. You can tolerate a lot, but tolerating too much is suicidal, because the intolerant will eventually take over. This is a general principle - welcoming people in the West is fine, for example, welcoming people who hate the West and want to destroy it is not.
Absolutely anyone under any regime—British or Iranian—can say “then leave if you don't like it”.
Instead, his retort was to tell me to pack my bags and eff off.
"Stop being a parasite." Sure, I will. This is exactly the kind of attitude displayed by hoity-toity Europeans that has led me to this position. Curse on all the immigrants who actually struggled to create a life for themselves, which includes me and a number of my employees who also migrated (mostly from Eastern and Balkan Europe) in search of a better life in the West, by virtue of their talents and skills, while you import the best "doctors and engineers" from across the Med. You can tell my one of my Croatian employees to "stop being a parasite", even though he can't get a house to rent in his preferred locality by virtue of being from a Balkan country, in spite of earning 4x the median wage of the country. Yes, we're the parasites and cockroaches, and like any of those, we'll find a more inviting home (incidentally the US and Singapore are already being touted as options).
But you go on, you poor thing, and keep insulting us from your high and mighty "Europeanness". After all, it's only a few decades now till the end of twilight.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email [email protected] and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
I am not the original commenter, but let me add here my own observation. In the USA we have a lot of laws and regulations that are supposed to prevent industry from polluting the environment, exploiting child labor, unduly endangering their workforce, etc. You cannot produce a product to place on the shelves of Walmart if you violate these rules. I think most Americans support most of those regulations. But we do not impose those rules on companies from China or India.
This means that a product produced in the USA can cost significantly more than an identical product produced in India. Naturally, USA industry recognizes this and shifts their production out of the USA. You could characterize this as "ship your garbage to other poorer countries." That is, don't allow USA rivers to be polluted but make your money by polluting rivers outside the USA.
I don't suggest that the USA removes its prohibitions from USA industry. I suggest that they impose the same prohibitions on non-USA industry with respect to markets inside the USA. And by this I don't mean raise tariffs. I mean that if a company in Iowa is not allowed to put a product on the shelves at Walmart because their smokestack is too dirty, then a company in Qinghai should not be allowed to do so if their smokestack is too dirty by the same standard.
Oh my goodness, “brash talk”. We Westerners give out a whole laundry list of things that we do contary to our “proclaimed values” and then in the next paragraph say “anyway, if we don't get our act together the third-worlders might stop looking up to us and our values”.[1] It's farcical how arrogant that is.
[1] Mock quote.
Anyway, there is nothing good that came from the last NATO led interventions, did it? Which is part of the problem.
But report me if you want. I'm sure all of us on this site would get banned because we (“we” as in HN, lest you accuse me of misreading again) constantly disagree about how we interpret each other here.
For some reason, it is literally the same people who say that massive limitations need to be placed on native authority by international agreements, by courts (in some countries, depending on the legal system), etc. AND they say it is shocking that our police aren't sovereign...really? We cannot have it both ways...either you trust local authority or you trust the authority of foreign governments...it cannot be neither.
I fail to understand how Modi (and likely Erdogan), who are elected representatives, are at the same level as the UAE or Qatar.
"Look at the human right violations they've done!"
Not defending them, but then would you add Bush/Obama/Trump to the list (between Guantanamo Bay/all the middle east military "interventions") Or how Assange is still being treated by the US?
I'm not trying to flame-bait, but if a leader is a democratically elected rep is conflated with autocracies that's not a sound argument. Especially when it's something more countries do than don't. (Disclaimer, am Indian)
https://www.dw.com/en/kidnapped-by-the-cia-the-case-of-khale...
Your police has no issue harassing regular citizens of the wrong accent nor do they mind mass surveiling people, even those from allied countries, for no reason other than ethnicity, and all with the blessing of the law and your society. Germany needs to be exposed for what it is, and sure enough, it will happen soon. And is not what western democracy would be.
Because I never said racism doesn't exist here, because it does. As do other bad things. Your claim went a lot further than that so.
One of these is not like the others - India is a real democracy, even if it has issues.
That ship has left the barn long, long ago. We can't provide military resources to a known fascist totalitarian-authoritarian dictatorship, so they can enact genocide, and still proclaim ourselves on the 'right' side of history.
The illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003: same. The funding and arming of ISIS. The destruction of Libya.
We lost our moral altitude long, long ago - and its not coming back. As this story demonstrates, we in the West have gotten far, far too complacent about totalitarian-authoritarianism, such that we just accept it when it happens to us, at the airport, etc.
But yes, the Western values always have been over valued (no pun intended). Just how much over valued becomes clearer by the day. Still, democracy is the best available form of government, and there have been serious progress in tue last decades. I just wished tze West would wake up and start to live those proclaimed values (which aren't bad at all) and not just so lip service.
But what do you expect from a government, Germany which just so happens to be mine, that sees no problem in letting others do the dirty work of repulsing migrants in the Mediterranean, to their death sometimes, not intervening when the US intern German citizens in Guantanamo for years. Most of it out of fear of the far right since the refugee crisis in Europe. With great success regarding the containment of the far right, they poll quite often on second place now. Oh, I forgot, while our police isn't holding journalists, or people threatening and harassing others for that matter, they happily use similar powers to lock up climate activists for a couple of days without trial.
Rant over. If Western democracies don't start to stand up for our proclaimmed values, we will loose what little soft power we have left.