Hacker News Reader

Comment by scrollaway | Hacker News Reader

The fix to failed integration is not to prevent people from getting in. It's to improve integration.

I can't believe this has to be said on HN. When you find a bug in one of your app's features, you don't remove the feature, you fix the bug.

Edit: As a sidenote, linking to the daily mail as a source for immigration-related matters is akin to linking to timecube as a source for physics papers.

Edit 2: Someone replied to my edit, but deleted their post and I didn't reply in time, so posting my reply below:

The Daily Mail doesn't so much reflect "the feelings of a large portion of the country", as much as "the feelings of a large portion of the country" happen to be easily manipulated by outrage-driven media. As for integration failures, one of the main drivers is islamophobia. Removing that really does come down to treating each other as human beings instead of being afraid of "The Different Ones".

View on HN

> The fix to failed integration is not to prevent people from getting in. It's to improve integration.

And why is that our responsibility?

This is outrageous. I were forced to emigrate due to war, poverty or prosecution and happened to be accepted in a country that is not my own, I would have to be 1) extremely thankful of my hosts for saving my life and 2) morally obligated to obey their laws and customs. This is basic morality.

> come down to treating each other as human beings instead of being afraid of "The Different Ones".

This is naive to the point of irrationality. The social unrest that is spreading through Europe is not _caused_ by yellow journalism (they just profit from it), it's driven by actual contact with radically different, incompatible cultures.

> And why is that our responsibility?

Because humans are humans, regardless of where they originated from. It's our responsibility to take care of people, period. I'm not american but remember "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free"?

Here's what I don't understand. When it's about blacks, the mentality comes down to being so scared of "being racist" that people want to stop using the word "slave" in database/hardware lingo. But when it's about muslims, it's not our responsibility to integrate them, they are all guilty of terrorism until proven innocent, they should be thankful we even accept them in our country (even though, really, we don't), etc..

The contrast is so fucked up. I just don't get it. And often enough it's the same people talking both talks.

> The social unrest that is spreading through Europe is not _caused_ by yellow journalism (they just profit from it), it's driven by actual contact with radically different, incompatible cultures.

{{cn}}. Most people who will complain about muslims have never met any, if they don't actively entirely avoid them. I'll give you that I can't prove all of the unrest is directly caused by toilet-papers, but I can show you a LOT of people who only know the term islam as a synonym of terrorism because the daily mail is the only place they actually read about islam.

Was all of that rape in Rotherham caused by newspapers? How come nobody protected those girls?

> Because humans are humans, regardless of where they originated from. It's our responsibility to take care of people, period

I think that only westerners, with our pathological altruism, are silly enough, or brainwashed enough, to think that way. The rest of the world think of THEIR people first, as is natural. And any government has to take care of its citizens, not play world saviour.

But my point stands: if you emigrate, it is YOUR responsibility to integrate.

> because the daily mail is the only place they actually read about islam.

Surely Islamic terrorism existing in the first place is a factor to take into account. People aren't worried about Shintoist terrorism for some reason.

> if you emigrate, it is YOUR responsibility to integrate.

It's both parties' responsibility. Don't get me wrong; it's mostly your job... but the government also has to step in and make the same efforts they make towards their own citizens. Anyway, those seem to be details; I think we agree on this point more or less.

> People aren't worried about Shintoist terrorism for some reason.

And in some unnamed country, a majority of people are not worried about gun violence despite it taking far more lives than muslim terrorism. It's all a blame game on video games, mental health, etc...

The majority of people are worried about what their media makes them worried about. I'm no different - I nearly exclusively worry about what I read about. I can't worry about things I don't know about. My only choice there is to seek as much information as possible, to avoid merely mirroring the opinion of whoever wrote the piece I read.

Do you have any actual suggestions to force them to integrate better? We are no longer in a world where most of these people will be consuming their host countries mass media, and they will certainly set up their own school system, so as far as I can see there is no way of getting them to integrate.

You're making pretty wild assumptions and following that up with "so as far as I can see there is no way of getting them to integrate".

I did give suggestions to improve integration. My edit#2 was directed to your previous (now-deleted) post. But above all you make it sound like nobody's integrating, this is not the case. A large majority of muslims are integrating fine despite how hard the xenophobia and islamophobia is making it.

What about our own citizens that aren't integrating? The poor, the unemployed, the criminals, the homeless, the mentally ill... do we kick em out too because they failed to integrate? Is it always "100% or else"?

I made no such claim: you claimed that integration had failed, and I asked if you had any solutions, while pointing out how why previous methods of integration of foreign populations might no longer work.

So I guess it comes down to a question of which came first - the islamophobia or the violence justified by Islam, and you're claiming it's the islamophobia?

Did you actually see the pics on the link? Do you think a person indoctrinated since birth to hating / wanting to kill the infidels, can be "fixed" 2 or 3 decades later? I think it's a losing game, at the extremely very best.

As for the quality of the daily mail, I don't know, but those photos have been posted on various news sites around the net. They are not disputed at all.

I'm not disputing the photos, I'm disputing the source. The Daily Mail has an agenda and constantly tries to show the worst of the worst of any situation.

Are those kids actually coming to europe in waves of immigration? If not, why do they matter in talks of immigration?

And let's imagine for a moment they are - is denying them entry the right approach? Leave them in whatever neighbouring country they happen to be in at the time? These kids can be fixed. They're not wielding weapons because they're inherently evil. They were raised in a terrible environment and need to be treated like other, non-immigrant kids raised in terrible environments. We don't give up on people just because they're from somewhere else.

We are all humans. This doesn't merely mean that we should treat each individual as a human being - it also means that we should treat our neighbouring countries as we would want our own country to be.

We don't know who is coming. I don't want to learn in the Paris way. And I think the probability for that kind of events is scarily high.

I didn't say they are "inherently evil". I say they are being taught since birth to be evil, and they naturally internalize it. "Being from somewhere else" being a problem, is totally irrelevant, I didn't say or believe that, and you are distracting from the real issue of what are their learnt since birth values and beliefs.

"We are all humans." Well, my VM is running Linux. Maybe I should try win 3.11. After all, "they are all OSes". Maybe I should try to "improve" and "integrate" it. Or maybe I will continue running Linux.

> "We are all humans." Well, my VM is running Linux. Maybe I should try win 3.11. After all, "they are all OSes". Maybe I should try to "improve" and "integrate" it. Or maybe I will continue running Linux.

I would actually like to think that I'm having a discussion with someone who is above such ridiculous analogies. I wouldn't even say "racist" but you did just compare "immigrants" to "a primitive operating system nobody wants to use".

To address your other point: I'm french, and my sister lost somebody in the Paris attacks. This doesn't mean we have to close ourselves down in a bubble.

I'll elaborate on this another time (maybe when you come up with better arguments) - but the mentality of closing borders for fear of what might come through is akin to never going out for fear of hitting a car. And car accidents happen a fuckton more than terrorist attacks.

I've known lots of kids that where indoctrinated since birth with all kinds of political and/or religious beliefs. Most of them had pretty much grown out of them by their early 20's, and even the ones that didn't ended up much more nuanced in their beliefs than their parents.

Indeed, but

a) you need to have the seed of having an open mind, that can help you later on. If you learnt to have a closed mind, then it's a fortress new ideas can't come in.

b) There is a upper limit of mixing proportions, above which the incoming mass of people is just too high, they stick together, and don't change / mix up with the existing population. This invasion is too big, too fast, for possible integration.

I don't know if this is your intention but the way you talk about immigration as if it's a virus whose spread needs to be contained is frankly disgusting.

What do you think will happen when "too many muslims" cross the border? Sharia law? Even in Turkey, a country nearly 99% muslim, only 12% favour Sharia law. (source: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/12/07/muslims-and-...)

It's sad but I find your fervor trying to shame others to think like you because your ideas seem noble quite disgusting too. "Let's all rush and make cultural and social experiments because some guys want to feel good and we should be ashamed of ourselves if our instinct of cultural/ethnic conservation tells us to oppose radical change of our societies". I already know what happened when too many muslims crossed the border in your country and you don't have any right to impose me to do the same in my country.

What makes you think I need to shame you into this?

You're there trying to imply that the paris attacks are a result of immigration (which they were not), as if you knew anything about my country. Exactly the same thing you do to muslims, you do it to me.

I've lived in romania, so I definitely recognize your mentality there. Looking at your comment history, you seem to almost exclusively attack other people, and most of them are on matters of ethnicity. I don't need any further proof that you are not, overall, a good person in terms of culture and acceptance.

If after all this -- all those comments, those attacks, those outrageous claims... if after all this you still yourself think you're in the right? There's nothing I can do to convince you you're not.

"Only" 12% of an almost 75 million population country is alot, furthermore "Research by the United Nations Population Fund indicates that 28.2% of marriages in Turkey — almost one in three — involve girls under 18"

"Turkey - Child Marriage" (PDF)

http://eeca.unfpa.org/sites/default/files/pub-pdf/unfpa%20tu...

12% is, by some numbers, less than the % of the french population that is muslim (which is reported to be between 9 and 13%). Whether it's a big or a small number does not matter - it puts things in perspective.

And turkey is not a good country, I never claimed it was (hoooly hell did I not claim that). So your numbers are absolutely meaningless.

True, you never claimed that, however you implied, as if "only 12% that favour Sharia law" is some statistically insignificant #. Maybe my numbers are absolutely meaningless as you say but so is your contribution to the discussion so far.

Fair enough, you're right the number was not very relevant.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com