The Refugee crisis
 

I was going to post about this in my "Those crazy ****ing Irish!" thread, but I feel it needs a wider audience and anyway, it's not just about Ireland.

How do you feel about this?

I watched the news yesterday to see that there's a boat of hundreds or more refugees fleeing I think Syria (but not sure) stuck out in the Indonesian sea. Thailand doesn't want them, nor do any of the other countries around there. They have in fact been towed BACK OUT TO SEA by the navy of Thailand rather than allow them to berth there and disembark. The crew has now deserted them and they are literally drifting helpless with no food or water. Some have died and their bodies have been thrown overboard, others are drinking their own urine to try to survive. Whole families, whose only crime is they don't want to stay in a war-torn country and risk being killed, are being refused entry to any country that could provide them safe haven.

Ireland has agreed to take an additional 300 refugees, and today I heard three old bigots at the bus stop complaining about how we have to take them in. So much for Christian Ireland! I almost said something but I would have ended up in a fight so held my tongue. But if their attitude is typical of Irish people (and we are quite racist, no matter what anyone says or thinks) then I did wonder how everyone else feels about it?

If you country is/was going to take in refugees, are you/would you be for or against it? And why do you feel that way? Do you think we should help these people or just say it's none of our business and leave it to others? Would you want a refugee family living near you? Would you welcome them? Would you accuse them of "just being out for all they can get" (as per my trio of racists today) or would you want to show them compassion and understanding?

It's a prickly situation with few resolutions, but how do you all feel about it? Is enough being done for them? Is too much being done for them? Is it a case of they took their chances so **** them? Would you pay a small extra tax to support them, or do you feel it's nothing to do with you? Have you any experience of this?

I'd be interested to hear opinions, and I'll try to keep calm, but I'm boiling mad as I recall the attitude of my fellow Irishmen (and women) earlier today...

I don't personally see what the issue would be with having refugees living right beside you. They're humans, just like me & you, and I personally can't say I blame them for taking their chances on getting out of the country. Really you have two options: eventually be killed or otherwise in the war, or take your chances fleeing the country. Help them get on their feet, help them on their way to rebuild and restart. The trio you encountered are members of a dying breed, I think.

Well obviously there are economic and cultural issues, the latter stemming from the hyper-segregation of Europe & the Middle East. That's the reason why there are such bad race problems in countries like Sweden -- an ultra nationalistic mindset coupled with very progressive social reforms causes a great deal of strife when middle eastern immigrants come a knockin', from cultural differences to economic problems to crime.

Not to mention that the real problem is Syria itself. I mean what are we supposed to do when the entirety of Syria shows up at our doorstep? Obviously you can't turn them away, from a humanitarian standpoint, but letting them in is a bandaid that causes a great many problems for the country they integrate into.

Ideally, Syria should get it's **** together so we don't have to manage and house their civilians and do their job as a country for them. You're (generalizing here) hypothetically doubling your workload as a country, and creating huge cultural strife while you're doing it. Obviously the right thing to do is to give them passage into your country, but the liberal mindset that there are no problems that come from this is very childish and immature. Everytime you do anything, a problem is caused by it.

There are two sides to every coin and pretending that we can just let them in with no problems whatsoever is just... a fantastical idealist perspective that has no place in reality or logic.

Oh I realize there would be problems caused from it, I would have only have a brain if I thought otherwise. But the way I view it, and always has is that problems that occur can be worked through with a little bit of grease on the right wheels. The alternative to helping them is doing nothing, and just letting them drift hoping someone else will shoulder the burden. What when no help comes? Do you just allow them to die?

Cultural differences will ALWAYS be an issue in society. I believe, however, that if you get to know someone and take the time to see them as people and not as "them", you begin to see that cultural lines are exactly that, lines in the sand. They're just lines we have drawn around ourselves, not a ten story wall that has been thrown up to keep you apart.

To me the burden of allowing someone's unnecessary death is a far greater burden to bear than that of the extra burden to help them. Of course, if Syria could get their **** together to start with, that'd be outstanding but...uh...forgive me if I don't hold my breath.

I am a staunch supporter of controlled immigration, there are only so many people that can live on our small island, however I'd rather have 800 people living here than drowning cos their boat capsized in the Mediterranean Sea.

I don't think you know where Thailand is.

I know where Thailand is you twat :D. TH isn't asking just about this incident.

Mediterranean capsized migrant boat captain faces charges - BBC News

Did you not hear about this? Before the election it was discussed whether we should let these people into the UK which is why I mentioned it.

Yeah, Thailand is just the latest. We've had reports of boats capsizing, crews deserting, people dying all over the seas of Europe, and now Thailand too. I;'m afraid to say that the person who opined that the people I overheard are a dying breed is ill-informed. Most of us Irish are like that, probably like the English after so many immigrants have come over here and "stolen our women and our jobs" (never mind that half us Irish are too ****ing lazy to even try out for these jobs, would prefer living on the dole! How dare these foreigners work? And of course if they go on welfare, well...) :rolleyes:

I said it already, and I'll repeat it. Despite our happy-go-lucky image we in Ireland are some of the most racist bastards going. I know that what I heard is indicative of the majority. If there were to be a referendum tomorrow asking if we should help, I'll bet anything it would be defeated.

Now we have Thailand saying any who make it onshore (not quite sure how this works? Maybe brought there by other vessels than the ones they set out in? Rescue ships? Coastguard?) can stay, but any who drift in will be turned around and sent back out to sea. How can they do this, knowing they're condemning their fellow human beings to a slow and agonising death from starvation and thirst and exposure? Is there no humanity in these people? If Thailand has say an earthquake like Nepal (god forbid) they'd be whining for aid but they won't offer it to those in desperate need?

We have the same policy going for Cuban refugees. We can't just let them in all willy nilly, but we feel too bad to send them back when we actually have to do all the paperwork and put them on our own boats with our own immigration/Coast Guard personnel.

What happened to that little boy? Elian or whatever?

I think he went back to Cuba with his dad.

I thought we let him choose?

Full fledged member of the Cuban army.

http://d3819ii77zvwic.cloudfront.net...n-gonzalez.jpg

This is great news, though obviously they've been embarrassed into it. Still, if it save lives I'm all for it.

from CNN

Indonesia and Malaysia agree to take in migrants arriving by ships, as long as the international community helps to resettle them within one year, Malaysian state media says.

The offer was announced in a joint statement by the Malaysian and Indonesian Foreign Ministers in Malaysia, according to Malaysian state news agency, Bernama.

In recent weeks, hundreds of migrants crammed onto ships have been arriving in the waters of both countries. They're believed to be economic migrants from Bangladesh and Rohingya fleeing persecution in Myanmar, which is also known as Burma

we already have this issue in the united states, though the refugees come from south & central america/the caribbean instead of jihadistan

from a moral perspective i'd like to be compassionate and let them stay

from a more pragmatic perspective i realize that doing so gives and incentive for others to try to flee here. and realistically there has to be a limit on immigration, otherwise you just end up importing poverty and social strife on a mass scale.

I do understand that, but your refugees aren't (are they?) drifting at sea without food or water, and with young families? I honestly don't see how you couldn't give them at least temporary shelter in those circumstances.

dunno what the process is so i'm not gonna comment on that, if you really wanna know google it i guess, but yea i think the immigrants are sometimes in similarly desperate situations. i know there are flotillas that come in from the caribbean and **** like that...

Time to bring this back into the light again.
What's your opinion --- esp any Europeans here --- on the current situation? People being treated like they're a hostile invading army when all they're trying to do is escape conflict and genocide and make a better life for their families? Walls being erected to keep them out? Cameron calling them a "swarm"? Right wing fascist parties gaining numbers and support on their anti-immigration policies? Is there no room for human compassion here? We look at the terrible newsreels of the refugees on the road during WWII and our hearts break; how is this any different? We have a chance to make a difference, to show we care, that we're human, and all we do is shut our gates, turn our backs and say NIMBY?

Opinions?

The xenophobic hatred against the refugees is pretty damn scary.
Even scarier is how widespread it is. German Facebook is swarming with this ****.
It's a no-brainer that people who are facing death and destruction should be helped.

I'm a little taken aback by the naivete of my fellow liberals though, with them advocating virtually uncontrolled influx and thinking
that there won't be huge problems because of culture clash, abuse of the system and criminal behaviour by the refugees.
But all that is obviously not reason enough to let millions of people suffer and die in their ravaged homelands or on their way to safety here.

Imo the governments they're coming from are smart. They send in the bad ones so that they don't have to pay for their nonsense I'm in favour of the walls and calling them 'refugees' is just political correctness gone mad. Keep your country pure and keep those bastards out!

That's some nice JWBing.

Hey man, give credit where credit is due. I was Trumping.

Oh, right.
Apart from enjoying the MB 'discussions' I don't really care enough about Trump either way to read up on what he does and says.

Yeah Frown but remember there may be Beefheart fans among them, and surely you could get at least some cheap labour for your studio? Banging tins, opening and closing windows, rattling bins, you know, the kind of stuff that makes your music so unique.

Actually, in fairness I'd rather keep the jokes out of this. It's a serious situation I see on the news every night and my fellow humans' lack of regard for these unfortunates, and the overall selfishness and case of NIMBY here really disgusts me. I mean, what have these people done that they should be so reviled?

And now we have up to fifty people found dead in a lorry, just trying to escape a war zone and paying for it with their lives. Will this tragedy change European attitudes? Let's hope so, but I'm not putting any big money down. :(

Edit: Damn it! 71... :(

There were 71 bodies inside the truck found abandoned on an Austrian highway and officials found a Syrian travel document inside.

"We must assume now that these are refugees," Hans Peter Doskozil, police director of Austria's Burgenland region, said during a news conference Friday. "In concrete terms it is possible, this is a Syrian refugee group."

Four people have been arrested, including a Bulgarian national of Lebanese origin. The victims included 60 men, eight women and three children -- ages 2, 3, and 8.

As this topic has not been added to imagine while, I thought that I would bump it. I was just curious how they are handling the refugee crisis in your country . Over 2000 people have been applying for asylum per day here in Sweden and they have been creating
Refugee camps everywhere. This has caused a lot of conflict here with talk of closing borders for the refugees ( even the pm has admitted that the amount Sweden is taking in has gotten out of hand) . Places where the refugees might be placed have been burned down and this has caused insurance companies to refuse to insure them ( future residences for refugees). In turn, our national immigration agency has announced that they are now setting up cots in their offices as there is no place to put the refugees.

So my question is, are other countries increasing their intake of refugees? I realizability that Germany is also taking in a large amount but they are the only other country I have really heard about. Taking in an extra hundred or so just doesn't seem that much if you have thousands knocking at the door...

USA: No idea. This country is so big that if China invaded California, and the news decided not to report it, we on the East Coast wouldn't even know. So I couldn't tell you what our country as a whole is doing, but here in Virginia I haven't heard about any refugees.

these people are mainly sunni muslims - why don't the sunni majority countries that are in close proximity to syria take these refugees? you know... societies which come much closer to resembling their culture and which they would have a much easier time assimilating into? why not turkey, saudi arabia, egypt, etc...? why sweden, germany, england, etc...?

the answer is simple. the world knows that western countries are just one big charity at this point. the leaders of saudi arabia and turkey are simply too smart and their stakes are too high for them to make that same mistake.

One of those Sunni majority countries like Syria?

nice strawman

Thanks. Seriously though, beyond maybe language, is assimilation really that important?

yes... i would say culture matters, and multiculturalism in europe is causing a good deal of cultural and ethnic tension, which in turn is fueling the reemergence of nationalist and right wing sentiments.

Fair enough. I disagree that people being close minded about other cultures (this applies to both sides) is justification enough for immigrants to make flagrant lifestyle changes. Might as well support segregation because integration causes too much tension if that's the way you look at it.

i think that putting the onus on the inhabitants of a country to change their mentality rather than putting the onus on the new immigrants to adapt to the culture of the host country is a rather strange policy, tbh.

it has always sort of been assumed that assimilation is an important component of multiculturalism. people by their very nature have tribal instincts, and culture will continue to matter whether we like it or not.

interestingly enough, the only ideology i've ever heard of which actually tried to eliminate any nationalist sentiments whatsoever is communism. and in all the cases i've looked into where people have attempted to implement communism, it has resulted in extreme forms of nationalism which come closer to resembling fascism. this was true in the soviet union, and it's certainly true in china and north korea today.

at the end of the day, though, the real point to me is that i don't support isolationism but i do think immigration policies should be based solely on the benefit of the host country and not on humanitarian concerns. simply because the prospect of taking in every lost soul the 3rd world has to offer is a hopeless cause; the only way to really attempt to tackle 3rd world suffering has to come from changing the situation in those countries, not importing their victims to richer countries.

JWB 4 Prez

It's a strange policy to not want people to be close-minded to other cultures/xenophobic? It's obviously a two way street: immigrants should assimilate to the point that they follow the law and can communicate while the current inhabitants be understanding that people from different countries have a tendency to practice different lifestyles from their own.

My integration analogy still stands.

@ goofle not sure if that's sarcasm but i'll take the endorsement either way

another somewhat interesting thing to me is that it's often pointed out by conservatives that it seems to only be western countries which are expected to put aside nationalist sentiments and embrace multiculturalism. with perhaps a few exceptions such as hong kong, israel, etc.. which interestingly enough got that way due to the legacy of western colonialism. but look at a country like japan.... which is relatively rich, modern, and democratic. yet extremely and openly nationalist and xenophobic, and yet catches very little flack from the international community for being so.

when you point this out to many liberals they will say things like the west got so rich through a legacy of colonialism so they sort of owe it to the rest of the world. or you hear things like american and european interventions in the middle east led to the current situation, so we owe it for example to the syrian people to take on this burden because our foreign policy contributed to their suffering.

yet i return to the question of why not saudi arabia? why not qatar? for the shia refugees... why not iran? these countries have openly waged proxy wars throughout the islamic world, including in iraq and syria. they are just as responsible as the west, if not more so. and once again, they share many cultural and religious similarities with the people in question. but nobody seems to expect the saudis to open their borders to these people. perhaps it is because us westerners are more forward thinking than the saudis. or perhaps it is because the saudis have more direct experience dealing with the ethnic tensions in the middle east and they know better than we do the hazards involved.

iraq is a perfect example of a "country" that isn't really a country because it comprises of at least 3 ethnic sects which don't particularly like each other. and so when we eliminated the current authoritarian dictatorship that was holding that country together through sheer fear and intimidation, we predictably get the current situation with ISIS, the kurds, and the shia led govt in the south, all 3 of which are mutually hostile to one another. this alone should be proof enough of the importance of cultural solidarity.

Not sarcasm at all. I'm pretty much 100% on board with what you're saying.