To think it’s easier to want open boarders if you’re privileged?

[Theselfishsister]

Having an ongoing conflict with my sister regarding refugees, she’s very ‘let everyone in’ I would say I’m somewhere in the middle.

She’s given up spare bedrooms to refugees, spends weekends in Calais helping them and is posting everywhere on SM about letting them all in. As well as attending protests regularly for the last 4 years or so.

What strikes me is that her and her other friends going to all of the events are white, MC (although she is by marriage, we grew up very WC) and live incredibly comfortably. She’s a SAHM and her husband owns his own company, they have never needed benefits or social housing and her children are privately educated with all of them receiving private medical care.

A massive increase in people here are unlikely to ever have much affect on her life, she won’t have to fight for jobs or wait for a house or deal with benefit cuts when too much is paid out, as well as the increase in waits for Medical care and school admissions. Whereas for someone like me, this is obviously a more worrying factor and the thought of just opening our borders to everyone does scare me. As much as I would love to be able to take every person fleeing a great life, it just causes me worry and I don’t think I could support completely open boarders.

She obviously just thinks I’m a selfish heartless bitch for not protesting to remove our borders or similar. When I asked why she let refugees sleep in her spare rooms but never the homeless man on the road behind her (who’s been in the same spot since she moved there 5 years ago!) she called me a racist!

So AIBU to think it’s easier to want open boarders if you’re privileged or am I just a selfish cow?

We all have to face up to the responsibilities of our pasts, personally and as a countries

Perhaps I should seek reparations from or appropriate punishment of the descendants of the men who killed my great-grandfather and his four brothers in WWII. They weren’t alive at the time and didn’t know the men responsible, but they still bear the moral guilt of his actions. Makes perfect sense by your logic!

I'm sorry but we all as a country benefit form the wealth of Empire.

This childish belief that 'it wasn't me' is alarmingly simplistic.

The country - as I have said before - the buildings, the infrastructure: railways, bridges, canals were built from money made during the IR. The companies founded during the Victorian age - built on money made from Empire. Empire was funded by slavery. Well all benefit from Empire.

Do we all benefit the same, no we don't. Were the working classes exploited by the capitalist system, yes the absolutely were. Are ordinary people being exploited in the U.K. and countries around the world today yes they are.

This is an argument for international socialism.

As I have said we all have responsibility for our past. Running away from your responsibility is shameful.

In relation to Germany and WW2. It was in part Merkel facing up to Germany's role in killing and displacing millions that caused her reaction to the migrant crisis

All very fine, but does that settle the score in your mind now? Should their guilty conscience be soothed? What Germany did was dreadful, yes - can they feel slightly less guilty now they’ve let in a million migrants? Is that supposed to make it all better?

Some wrongs can’t be righted. Time passes. Appalling things happened in the past, but the answer isn’t vengeance and punishment for those generations later who had nothing to do with it. It’s totally illogical.

Yes it is our fault. Our fault as individuals as well as as a nation. In the same way as any of our privileges are also our fault. We continue to take what we can to the detriment of others. It’s easy to say ‘people are just going about their business’ but the day to day of us all involves shipping our garbage into their countries smothering them, wearing clothes made by their bleeding and murdered fingers and taking resources from the world that could and should have been allocated to them.

We aren't talking individual reparations for national acts. As a nation we are responsible for our past.

As individuals we are responsible for our own pasts. If you killed someone 30 years ago should you be let off the crime because it was a long time ago?

As a nation we made decisions which have had long lasting, negative implications. They were bad for other countries but made our country rich. Do we therefore have to do everything they want clearly not. However, we need to be aware that we have some level of responsibilities.

It's wasn't me, I didn't see it, I didn't do it, you can't blame me is the type of comment you get from a lying child when caught with his hand in the sweet jar.

@Moussemoose

Simply put, do you believe in punishing children for the sins of their fathers? Do you believe those children bear moral guilt for their fathers’ deeds?

As a nation we are responsible for our past

Of course we’re not! We weren’t alive! We’re only responsible for our own, present actions, no one else’s!

@MrsAriadneOliver you want simple answers to a complex problems. Germany did X so Y is resolved. If only life and geopolitics was that simple.

It is a complex multilayered issue.

As individuals we take personal responsibility for our own actions.

As a nation we take national responsibility for the actions of our nation.

To try to reduce it to simplistic 'sins of the father argument' is ludicrous.

The issue is we have all been screwed over by rampant capitalism, nationalism and imperialism. The working classes from Syria, the U.K., Eritrea are fighting over scraps. While we fight each other we aren't fighting the real enemy.

You keep repeating that it’s ‘our’ fault. No, it is not. It’s not the fault of the everyday person who’s just trying to get by in life, row their own little boat and keep a roof over their head! Why do you insist on apportioning blame to the ordinary British people who are suffering, instead of blaming the corrupt, low-rent politicians who make these decisions? The average person has so little bearing on politics. Wars are demonstrated against but fought even if we don’t want them to be. Those in the higher echelons are insulated from the resulting problems by their wealth - you’ll only be penalising those at the bottom of the social scale who are already suffering. Virtue signalling of the highest order. So much sympathy for everyone else in the world and none for our own.

virtue signalling? How do I have no sympathy for 'our own'? The difference between us is that I also regard refugees as Britain's responsibility because it was Britain's actions that put them in this position. And yes, is it completely ludicrous to have a smidge more sympathy for those who are literally running from a war zone than someone living in a hostel?

If you want to benefit from the UK and be a part of that country, use its free healthcare, use the protection it gives you, benefit from the democracy that we have here, then you also have to accept that this nation has done bad things in other countries that has caused people to suffer.

It's absolutely ridiculous that you think the government should abandon all these people because it was not the general public that is responsible. It was not 'ancestors' that caused this, but recent history. Why should the government not try to rectify its mistakes? What right does this nation have to walk away from the millions they have affected? That would make this country an immoral country, a selfish country, a bad country. This nation should not be one to abandon people that they have disrupted.

You can't just tell the government that they're absolved of blame and they don't have to do anything because it's been a few years and they don't have British citizenships! 'Charity starts at home' is bullshit. The British government have equal responsibility to help Syrians as they do us. Surely not even you can deny that they've fucked up Syrian lives far more than they have for us.

the buildings, the infrastructure: railways, bridges, canals

I take it you don’t use any of these then. That you wish you didn’t have them and your ancestors hadn’t acted in such an way as to be able to build them. Or if you do use them, do you wear sackcloth and ashes and flagellate yourself while doing so?

If you were brought up in the U.K. you have benefited from Empire. The roads you walk on, the sewers underneath you, the business you buy from, the schools, the universities, the hospitals all built with money from the past.

Where did this wealth come from? You are happy to accept the benefits but not the responsibilities that come with this.

Yanbu op

you want simple answers to a complex problems

Patronising much?

If only life and geopolitics was that simple. It is a complex multilayered issue

You don’t say!

Where did this wealth come from? You are happy to accept the benefits but not the responsibilities that come with this

What responsibilities? To whom? Considering they’ve been built over the last two centuries?

Of course we’re not! We weren’t alive! We’re only responsible for our own, present actions, no one else’s!

Oh my lord. If the British government dropped a nuclear bomb on Africa, then hundred years later people were still suffering and needed help, would you say no, don't let them in, it was our ancestors!! We're not responsible, we weren't alive! We have no responsibility to help you, even though it was our country that did it! Charity starts at home!!!

Why do you keep putting arguments in my mouth? Are the points not your own assumptions.

I use and accept all the benefits. I am grateful that I was born in the U.K. with all the benefits that entails. I also accept the responsibilities that come with that. I am happy that some of my tax goes in foreign aid, I am happy to support asylum seekers, I support foreign policy that seeks to unite and not divide. I want the U.K. on a national level to work to bring other countries up to our economic standard.

I believe in redemption and forgiveness but that can not happen until you accept responsibility.

All countries and cultures have horrific pasts (and/or presents) but personally I pride in my country having LGBT rights, women's rights, children's rights, animal rights, and a great national health system, free education (by taxation), a democratic vote, benefits for the needy, etc. etc.

I think your people should be proud of the British culture as well (similar to mine).

Blaming people born in the 20th century for crimes of people born hundreds of years before them is quite ridiculous.

I certainly don't claim to have raped and pillaged anyone just because my ancestors were Vikings 😂.

Mental way of thinking.

Patronising ffs.

Your response to my points has been "no it's not"!

@TacoLover

Yes, I would. A century later!

Nobody is blaming individuals. What we are saying is if a country is responsible in part for causing a problem it has some responsibility to help resolve it.

No one is saying it is all our fault and we have to do everything. The U.K. is not totally to blame for all the issues. The U.K. can not be held responsible for everything bad in the world. We don't have to take every refugee from every country we ever invaded.

But we do have some level of responsibility and must accept that and work with it not avoid it and run and hide.

@Moussemoose

We’ll have to disagree then. I don’t think modern Britain and British people bear guilt for the Empire, in the same way modern Germany and Germans doesn’t bear the guilt for the Holocaust.

The immigration and refugee issue (i know they're different) is a red herring.

Scrabbling at the bottom whilst caring for disabled people and desperate for social housing makes no sense if things desperately needed by locals are being given away.

How warm and fuzzy would you feel if you had nothing and were being squeezed further?

Oh my lord. If the British government dropped a nuclear bomb on Africa, then hundred years later people were still suffering and needed help, would you say no, don't let them in, it was our ancestors!! We're not responsible, we weren't alive! We have no responsibility to help you, even though it was our country that did it! Charity starts at home!!!

Seeing as this is your response:

Yes, I would. A century later!

I have no words really. The idea that a country is completely absolved of blame no matter what level of devastation they have caused because it's years later. I can only hope that there aren't people as devoid of decent morals as you making the decisions regarding refugees. I hope in the unlikely event where you have to seek asylum, you willingly stay in your war torn country with your children because you don't want to annoy someone living in a hostel with your presence. Your attitude of abandoning people disgusts me.

We’ll have to disagree then. I don’t think modern Britain and British people bear guilt for the Empire, in the same way modern Germany and Germans doesn’t bear the guilt for the Holocaust.

You don't think the modern British government is guilty for actions they committed in very recent history that have affected millions of people like the devastation in Syria?? You realise this happened recently not 5000 years ago. You really think Britain should do nothing for the pain and grief it has caused for innocent people. I despair really.

You know what would really solve the problems? If everyone in the UK gave every bit of their cash and equity that takes them above desperation away. There's so much wealth at the top and they are all so keen to help that it's a great solution.