AIBU to think Europe should let refugees in

[Gin96]

Surely Europe has room for these people?

www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/world-news/eu-accuses-turkey-of-using-desperate-migrants-for-political-purposes/07/03/

So what about all the economic migrants hanging around Calais wanting to get into the UK

I think I've posted here saying exactly that no country can take a large number of refugees or economic migrants at the same time, but that overall recipient countries do benefit from immigration.
Ready made workforce and consumer base without the investment.

The language in the UK makes it attractive for most people. Particularly from countries formerly colonised by the uk. It's the price to pay for the Empire, I.e. exploiting other regions.

We only benefit from refugees if we take the ones from the survival of the fittest march rather than a cross section of the camp population.

What I genuinely don’t understand is why MNers are so against allowing people in from war torn countries, yet the same MMers have spent the last 3 years wailing about Brexit and how important FoM is.

Why is it such a great thing when it enables your DC to get a job in Paris and go interrailing but so terrible when it means someone from a poorer country might be able to come here and make a better life for themselves?

Yes let’s send them to Saudi Arabia where LGBT people are stoned, women’s rights are nil and wealth is even more concentrated than it is in Europe. Great idea!

Many from the MENA would feel right at home sadly.

The Yazidi as a population are tiny

And?

media overreported the yazidi atrocities because a lot of these girls are blonde haired and blue eyed

Wtf is wrong with you? Being an ISIS sex slave is about the worst thing I can imagine. Targeted for their religious beliefs on top of all that too

except that quiet work done in the camps doesn't provide quite the same touchy-feely "we've all got to do something" potential

Except that people are still in camps. Would you want to stay?
Camps should be for emergencies. Not to live for years.
The solution is not to take food and medicine to camps. It's to get people to live their lives productively and safely.
Not easily done, but let's not quiet our consciences that we are not letting people die as much in camps.

@LastTrainEast - the challenge of supporting better economic and social equality is a complex one, especially at nation state level. I have not advanced a solution but I think a combination of sustained development programmes, redistribution of wealth, fairer global economic practices as well as emergency intervention to help retrieve those in immediate danger could nudge us in the right direction.

My post was aimed at your statement that the people currently living in Europe who have enough food are the people who planted it. They have to keep on planting it to keep eating. I find that a gross over simplification of otherwise complex dynamics, which affect hundreds of millions of people.

My parents did not live in a dictatorship because they weren’t hard working, motivated to achieve change or good people. My grandparents weren’t displaced, imprisoned or tortured because they were less capable than yours.

It isn’t about the contribution of individual people or families.

It is that collectively some countries have created functioning stable democracies and some haven’t.

The solution to that isn’t to move all the people who don’t live in stable democracies into them.

When I was younger, we took in young men from Iraq, Kurdistan and another place I can't remember. All but one was very nice. I'm pretty sure they were foreign exchange students in their 20s and 30s and my parents did it for quite a while.

I know it's different to taking on people who are fleeing war etc, but it helped me to grow up knowing the majority are just the same as me. They cooked us their family recipes, bought us presents and treated us kids as if we were family. we all got a lot out if it.

I'm not saying we should let everyone in without a second thought, but I do think fear and a lack of understanding on both sides holds us back so much.

It's not just a UK thing, different cultures don't want to mix full stop. There is prejudice on both sides and I do think sometimes it's easier for people to say the uk is racist, end of story. Its more than that. Everyone is prejudiced when it comes to protecting their own. It shouldn't be like that, but it is.

If people flee only to the nearest safe country, doesn't that burden the border countries like Greece and Turkey to the advantage of those further removed countries, simply because of an accident of geography? How are those countries supposed to cope with the huge influx of refugees?

It isn’t always about protecting your own. I don’t prefer my neighbours to a French family. In fact often my neighbours are intensely aggravating.

But I have made an agreement, a democratic agreement, that I am responsible for my neighbours having some basic standard of living, medical treatment, schools for their children, rehabilitation after their criminal behaviour, removal of their rubbish. We have formed a democratic community.

We have not formed such a community at the same level of responsibility with the entire world. Nor has the entire world said that it wants to participate in such a community with us.

What about prevention? Rather than hand wringing and making a blanket statement about eradication of borders, why not be a force for good?

Petition the UK government to stop selling arms to KSA, which are then used to bomb the shit out of the poor Yemenis.

Make waves about the GERD project. If you are concerned with famine and the displacement of native populations this brings, this should be a big issue for you. We're staring in the face the potential for Egypt to be starved of water. There's your next refugee crisis, but only the USA cares at all.

The reality is absorbing a large amount of individuals with different languages and religions will always cause issues on the ground. How will you educate them? Provide enough interpretation services to allow them all to access services we take for granted? Provide housing, health care, and psychological services? How about more mundane issues: where will they pray? There are areas of this country where there are no mosques. This pushes Muslim refugees to areas which are densely populated.

The harsh reality is that we can't save them all. That we won the birth lottery. There is only so much we can do on an individual level. Governments need to make fundamental changes to their arms and diplomatic policies in order to deal with the underlying issues. Elect better leaders, run for office yourself, start or engage with charities where the money is used appropriately rather than paying CEO salaries.

Sadly, a blanket policy of letting everyone in will just end with a slide in our own standards at home as services reach breaking point. Having this discussion at all is from such a place of privilege. We think nothing of allowing others to use our services or move here because we can't envision a world in which we won't have these things.

Absolutely disgusted that 78% think we shouldn't be helping these people. The othering and them Vs us is despicable.

I really hope the 78% have all run out of loo roll.

Edorgan has made many threats to in his words "flood Europe with a swarm of refugees". His words. He has weaponised these refugees. A small proportion are Syrians fleeing war. Bangladeshis? Ethiopians? Nigerians? In turkey? Oh and the wee boy who drowned? His father had a place in Canada, but wanted free medical care in Germany, and was involved in people smuggling. How did the boy manage to get buried in Syria - where he had fled from?

Everyone saying we should let people in, at the moment we are short of 1 million dwellings.
We need to provide homes for the people we already have before we accept more people to end up sleeping in doorways.

Surely we should be helping their countries be less shit instead of taking in masses of people we physically, socially and economically can't cope with?

I think when you see images like this it feels instinctive that the kindest thing is to let people in.

I don't believe that's really the kindest thing in the long run however, either for them or for us. As a small country we can barely look after and employ and house the people we have now, let alone extra thousands of likely unskilled/low skilled, non English speaking economic migrants.

Migrants like these end up at the bottom of the ladder, particularly during a recession which might very well happen because of this Covid thing. We should be responsible about who we bring in and only allow immigrants who have a chance of decent life while here.

I agree with others who say we need to adjust our foreign policy. Lets stop selling weapons for a start.

(designing a society that would make it possible to live comfortably)
is not something only Europeans can do and we were not even the first so why people think others in the world are incapable I don't know

Many are very far from being incapable, but it suits some to think they are for any number of complex reasons

It's usually around now that colonialism gets dragged in, and it's true that some of the benefits we still enjoy are the result - but it's certainly not the whole picture, and for all the evils of colonial days it also ignores local geopolitical issues which have nothing to do with us

Unfortunately there's a certain mindset which, no matter what we do, what we spend or how good our intentions are, will blame the west for absolutely everything, and while it no doubt helps with the chosen narrative it bears little resemblance to the reality

32ByeMF that's it though. We have limited resources, there is a real issue with overpopulation. Today we run out of loo roll (= laughable 1st world problem) tomorrow we run out of drinking water (because we build homes in flood plains and drain the water into the sea.) Some areas just can't support an forever increasing population.
But, the 78% could help and support countries like Syria through informed political decisions. Which in return could stem the influx of migrants into Europe.

No. We have our own issues, particularly at this time.

My paternal side is from that area of Greece. They are from a little village in Evros. I live in London (Have a british passport) but we still have family there. I returned yesterday as we evacuated elderly Greek relatives that they were scared.

I’m a liberal, educated and have fought for human rights. I’m rather left wing, you can call me communist if you want. I’m not some “keep Britain British” Tommy Robinson asshole.
And here are the BUTs. 1) The people on the other side of the fence are not refugees. They are economic migrants. So far people from the area had helped people from Pakistan, Bangladesh and various African countries. Many were saying that they get flights to Istanbul and then they are trying to cross over to Greece. They stay in Greece for a while and then go underground before Greeks had a chance to deport them.
2) Unfortunately, Turkey and it’s corrupt and imperious leader are using them as pawns to piss off Europe and Greece. His hatred of Greece is well known and while you don’t read in the news, they are invading Greek aerospace and waters on a twice daily basis. Next time, you holiday in Greece ask the locals. To top it all, Greece might claim 11million Greeks but an enormous amount work outside of Greece. We are a tiny David and we don’t feel like we want to be obliterated by Turks. So no, Turkey is not small, innocent or poor.
3) Once, these migrants cross the borders, which if you try and google some news, they were attacking the actual land borders between Turkey and Greece by bulldozers with the help of the Turks. Once, in Greece, Greeks need to help them.
They are a poor country, with high unemployment and they honestly can’t afford to keep all these people here.
Not a single EU country wants them.
NOW TELL ME ALL YOU “NICE” PEOPLE HOW GREEKS SHOULD OPEN THEIR BORDERS TO LET THEM IN?
There are still camps in Calais and Britain doesn’t allow them in. How do you expect Greece to let them in?
Even me, that I’m living my awesome life in London, can have opinions about those “poor refugees”, but unless, you’re willing to take them inside your home, to help them, please, do be quiet.

Camps should be for emergencies. Not to live for years

I totally agree, and it's one more reason I wish a better way could be found to distinguish between refugees and economic migrants - precisely so that we could make more provision for the former

The solution is not to take food and medicine to camps. It's to get people to live their lives productively and safely

I agree with this too, at least as an ideal, but it involves a major caveat around the difference between offering aid (which will often be wasted) and being seen to tell other cultures how to live (which, as said, will simply create screams of colonialism)

However much we might want to, it's sometimes worth remembering that we can't always make things right, all the time, for everybody

Migrants like these end up at the bottom of the ladder, particularly during a recession which might very well happen because of this Covid thing. We should be responsible about who we bring in and only allow immigrants who have a chance of decent life while here.

Precisely. And if most people are unwelcoming, forcing refugees upon them will create an environment in which refugees and their children feel disaffected at best, and menaced, at worst. And how easy is it to radicalise the disaffected who feel hostility from people who do not want them here. And imagine their anger at finding themselves living in the country that is biggest supplier of arms in the conflicts from which they have fled.

It is perverse. The UK cannot be both rescuer of refugees and supplier of arms and expect to have peace at home. For all those saying we have to accept them, you are being naive and disingenuous.

And I will say it, as unpopular and reactionary as it may appear: We don't need any more religious male chauvinists in this country, insisting on controlling women. We have enough of them already of all religious persuasions.

I would also wager that most would not have had a problem taking in Yazidi girls

Yes because they are female and Christian. Male Muslims who are conditioned to think all Western women are whores, not so much.

The Yazidi aren’t Christian.

But where does it end? How many people is "enough"?

There are always conflicts in the world and there are always people who see moving to a European country as the promised land. That will not change and the flow will never stop. It is not a solution to let them in, it is a failure to address the problem.