African migrants - what is to be done?

[LadyinCement]

I see in the news that millions are trying to cross the Med to reach Europe. I visit Italy frequently to visit family and it is no exaggeration - there are huge groups of young men hanging about with no status and no purpose. They are lying about in parks/by the sea all day. At one major station I had to pass armed guards linking arms at the barriers as otherwise the men try to board the trains to ride round. They receive an amount of money every day and accommodation, but there is no hope of work - Italy has very high unemployment. Of course they want to reach Germany/Sweden/Britain and don't want to be in Italy at all.

What is the solution? Europe cannot possibly absorb vast numbers, especially lone young men.

I know that feminists were angry too. They were right to be. My point was that there are those on the far right who are disgusting hypocrites and want to use women's bodies as a weapon against minorities, and that these idiots make tackling those issues much harder.

And I don't want to see the attitudes you described above gain traction in Europe, but nor do I want to tar everyone of a particular race or religion with the same brush. The problem with vaguely referring to unnamed "cultures", is that it is hard to know exactly who you are talking about. You could say "the cultures that do this" or "the cultures that do that" and we could both agree that those things are terrible, but we might each have a slightly different idea of exactly who we are talking about. And if you mean all Muslims/people from specific Arab states/everyone from the middle East/everyone from certain African countries, then I think you are wrong. Sweeping generalisations make it too easy to demonise innocent people by lumping them all into one big group. Big, vaguely defined groups of people are automatically de-humanised.

If you look at some of the European governments who are most opposed to immigrants, and most protective of their indigeneous culture, you may notice that they are also very regressive when it comes to women's rights. Look at what Poland's government are trying to do (opposed by many, of course). It would seem that the "national values" they want to protect do not include the values that many of their more moderate citizens hold dear. And that is one of the reasons why I am suspicious of media outlets and politicians who talk about defending British values - which British values are they talking about? Mine? Probably not.

You're making a rather tenuous link there. It's entirely probable that Eastern Europeans look at Western Europe and think "no thanks" to the social cost and security risks of certain kinds of immigration a few decades on. Also, eastern Europe has a history of defending themselves against the Ottomans for centuries, they have a different perspective on Islam.en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_wars_in_Europe

Yes there are some misogynistic attitudes in tone UK possibly but why would you want to make the problem any worse. I think The Eastern European countries are sensible.

Because shutting the door to immigrants will not protect us from regressive social movements within. In fact, becoming more nationalistic and inward looking is likely to be more of a threat to our "values" than a minority within a minority ever would be. If you are looking to nationalist movements to protect rights and socially progressive values, you are looking in the wrong place. Eastern European countries like Poland are not merely standing still in terms of women's rights, they are moving backwards. Russia is another country where the rights and protections of women have moved backwards in recent years, as an authoritarian nationalist leader has strengthened in power.

Find me some recent examples where rising nationalism HASN'T gone hand in hand with an attack on socially progressive rights and then tell me to trust the nationalists and isolationists.

How is it going to help our economy and our housing situation here. That is my concern. I see things in a pragmatic way.

So do you think we should let any African migrants in woodhill?

A few but we have taken loads of migrants in already. It's very noticeable in the South East.

And I don't want to see the attitudes you described above gain traction in Europe, but nor do I want to tar everyone of a particular race or religion with the same brush. The problem with vaguely referring to unnamed "cultures", is that it is hard to know exactly who you are talking about. You could say "the cultures that do this" or "the cultures that do that" and we could both agree that those things are terrible, but we might each have a slightly different idea of exactly who we are talking about. And if you mean all Muslims/people from specific Arab states/everyone from the middle East/everyone from certain African countries, then I think you are wrong. Sweeping generalisations make it too easy to demonise innocent people by lumping them all into one big group. Big, vaguely defined groups of people are automatically de-humanised

I think this is absolutely true, but as with so much of the discussion around immigration, race, religion and culture, it has become excessively difficult for people to talk honestly and openly about issues and to state which groups are relevant to a particular issue.

Grooming gangs are one of the clearest examples of this. It seems that the vast majority (90 plus %, I believe) of grooming gang cases brought to court are perpetrated by Muslim men, and of these the majority are of Pakistani heritage (for full disclosure, I have read that the majority originate from a particular region of Pakistan, but I don't know the details of this). For various reasons, it has become very difficult to state this, and instead the gangs are referred to as Asian, and for many years to avoid having to acknowledge these facts at all, the gangs in Rotherham and Rochdale were allowed to continue perpetrating hideous crimes against children, and thousands of lives have been blighted.

There is no easy answer, and I agree that avoiding talking about specifics can lead to really unhelpful generalisations. The answer to this, in my view, is to learn from Rochdale and Rotherham that failure to acknowledge specific issues with specific cultures or religions is not helpful and that, no matter how difficult, uncomfortable and challenging it may be, these issues need to be addressed.

What I am trying to say is that we have made it very difficult, when discussing problems in differing values between cultures or religions, for people to discuss specific cultures or religions. This leads to people talking in more generalised terms. This then leads to inaccurate generalisations about groups of people who have nothing to do with the issues being discussed. This does nothing to help fight racism.

I also believe that the belief that these difficult issues should not be discussed or aired because doing so gives fuel to the far-right (which was certainly part of the thinking behind Rochdale and Rotherham) as well as being totally morally abhorent (sacrificing the welfare of children for the benefit of community cohesion and to avoid difficult political situations is not acceptable) is completely counterproductive.

I think most people just want equal treatment of all and equal protection of all under the law. It is failures to do this (grooming gangs, FGM still rife in the UK and not one prosecution, the police turning a blind eye to hate speech when it comes from Islamist extremists) that is more likely to cause a reaction against the status quo and drive people to the right than dealing with these issues openly and fairly by our existing systems and laws.

I can't remember if it was on this thread or the deleted one that pp were confidently asserting that newly arrived migrants in Italy would not be able to travel to other EU countries for many years. Italy now planning to give 200,000 migrants EU visas to ease the problems in Italy:
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4699210/amp/Italy-EU-visas-200-000-migrants-send-north.html

Sadly we can't house all the people who want to move here without huge environmental impact. Fields around my home are being gobbled up for new houses and it is having a detrimental affect on our ability to grow food to feed ourselves and on wild life. Fields where I used to see all kinds of species are gone. This has all kinds of environmental consequences.

The CPRE reckon that 40% of total English countryside is now impacted by manmade
building. That's sight lines, light pollution etc.

We will lose a lot is our population continues to rise. I'm an immigrant's daughter, btw. The population was about 53 million when my mother came here.

quillette.com/2017/07/23/countries-much-richer-others-unjust/

I thought this article was an interesting read for people pondering on the nature of international injustices.

Very interesting article, thanks.

I felt it was a new and interesting slant on the subject that avoided the tired old chestnuts. Accusations about post-colonial responses to past imperialist exploitation have occasionally struck me as the default auto-response for many on the left.

Oh, how they are! It's quite wearing being constantly told that it's all our fault .

I would just like to move the standard of debate off the floor, frankly. So that cheap shots are not regarded as thought. And I want to move discussions to a point that the dialectic can take account of a right-ish opinion without decrying it as wishing to oppress or suppress an honestly held PoV. I think forums like this are going to shape the future opinion and mindset, so we need to resolve arguments that stand up, or get swamped by Momentum. And that takes lots of thought and reading.

Excellent article Osockorphanage. The truth is that there is less extreme poverty and war in the world than ever before, child mortality is down as are the numbers of women dying in child birth. Literacy rates world wide are also up.

More people are being born and surviving to reach adulthood in countries than there are jobs for them to fill.

The migrant crisis is not entirely down to people fleeing poverty and war its also down to people now having the money to pay tens of thousands of dollars to people traffickers.

Women's reproductive rights haven't improved at the same rate. While once a women might have had say 8 children to see 3 survive to reach adulthood now a woman will have 8 children and all 8 will survive rather than having 3 in a planned fashion.

lessworried, I am not convinced that I care deeply about women's reproductive rights if I am honest. I think we need less reproduction all around. I am concerned that the civilised society that exists in Europe could be swamped if too many people decide they want to enjoy its advantages without buying into the culture and traditions that have gone into to making it. I KNOW, this makes me racist, but I don't believe that people should be able to arrive in a country and immediately start dictating the terms under which they want to live.

The migrant crisis is mostly about the whole world being able to see what passes for normal in Hollywood/Hello on their smart phone and thinking that that's average in Helston.

You should care about women's reproductive rights that's what's driving the migrant crisis. Overpopulation. Too many people in countries with not enough jobs and resources.
I agree with you about the people having over inflated idea's of the lives their going to get in the West though. They think its going to be keeping up the Kardasians and its actually going to be Grenfell tower

I care about women's rights but you got it right when you said above that once 2 or 3 children born out of 7 or 8 would survive, and now all of them will. It's about education and effective contraception rather than the "right" to reproduce. However, for the change to become established in LDCs, the view that a man's wealth and legacy is partly measured by his fertility has to be challenged.

I thought you said you didn't care about women's reproductive rights. I'm glad you do. Your right it is a cultural issue.

I don't understand why the same smartphones that deliver the Kardashians don't also deliver real news from the ground? Ie refugees feeding back to friends and family what's actually happening?