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Comment by k-mcgrady | Hacker News Reader

Interesting article. I'm very pro-Europe taking in refugees. It seems however that the guy in this article moved because he couldn't get a job in his own country and thought he would instantly get one here - not a chance when a lot of Europeans are still struggling to find work because of the economy. It also sounds like he was pretty close-minded in regards to integrating into a new culture/diet/environment. Unless the article isn't telling us something or I misread this guy wasn't really a migrant - this was a man who wanted to move to a new country and didn't like it very much but he took the illegal route in instead of applying for a visa. He wasn't forced out of his home, his life wasn't at risk etc. Like I said, I think we should be helping refugees in every way we can but it really seems like this guy isn't a refugee.

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To be fair I think that Europe should absorb a percentage of refugees, but at the same time the US and NY times that is trying to promote articles like that should financially assist Europe and also offer to absorb a big percentage of the refugees... After all Europe didn't start the war on Iraq and Afghanistan. Also I agree that the guy on the article is an illegal immigrant.

I fully agree. I agree even more, that those who started this whole mess (The US militant system) should also clean up their mess.

But this is exactly what they want to cause, chaos and civil unrest, so these same people who benefit from selling weapons to war zones, can push in more laws like the TTIP during times of civil unrest, to support their militant and money based control systems.

The biggest piece of crock being peddled is US is responsible for all this. The borders, Bashar Al Assad, Wahhabist/Salafist extremism, Sunni-Shai fissures in Iraq have nothing to do with US foreign policy. US FP is one of the variables and not even the most important one.

Really? Kicking the hornet's nest didn't cause the problem? The hornets are the problem?

The fault lines are much older than US entering Iraq and it is not Americans themselves to blame but the Shia prime minister Nouri Al-Maliki who actively marginalized Sunni, who were behind Americans after the reawakening. If there is one person to blame he is the one, Americans were able to at least put a workable coalition of Sunni-Shia and Kurds, which Al-Maliki actively sabotaged.

Americans are one party, it is the Iraqis and Syrians themselves who are responsible for much of the mess, and let us not begin with Qatar, Saudi, Kuwaiti funders and Iran and its proxies.

The nice simple narrative to bash the America is much more fun even though intellectually lazy.

Not excusing the fact that GWB is an ignorant moron and warmonger - but the Battle of Kadesh was in 1274 BC between the Hittites and the Egyptians. The Anatolian hornet nest has been swarming for over 3 millennia.

Yet US policy makers thought that "this time it'll be different."

> this guy wasn't really a migrant - this was a man who wanted to move to a new country

Have I missed something about the word "migrant"?

> > this guy wasn't really a migrant - this was a man who wanted to move to a new country

> Have I missed something about the word "migrant"?

In Europe, in past couple of years, 'migrant' has almost become a synonym for asylum seekers and refugees.

Only in certain circles. The same circles that equate Muslim with Undesirable.

Actually the left seems to enforce the nomenclature changes calling them "migrants" rather than illegal or economical immigrants.

Doesn't mater how you paint the picture the moment these guys ended up in Turkey and kept going west they became economical immigrants, and they don't even stop at the first European country they get into they strive to go deeper and deeper to countries that (they think) will give them more benefits.

Heck as we speak you have anywhere between 75,000 and 300,000 "migrants" holding their fort in France (Mainly in places like Clais, Dippe, Rouen etc.) waiting to get into the UK and constantly avoiding registration in France in order not to get "stuck" there.

And the fact that you can hardly have an open discussion about this without being labeled as a racist is just mind boggling and the worst part is that it will make things 100 worse down the line because the pressure that the left imposes on everyone will just means that the whole situation will literally explode when it will reach the boiling point and were not that far off.

  > this guy wasn't really a migrant

He was migrant by defintion. Not a refugee though.

  > he was pretty close-minded in regards to integrating into a new
  > culture/diet/environment

I wonder, what is the percentage of those hundreds of thousands who do not have the same mindset. Alas, the thinking of those pro-Europet-taking-in-refugees is somewhere along the lines:

  1. Take in all the refugess
  2. ...
  3. Integration done.

There is no magic for the step 2. And there is the big misundrestanding how deep the difference between the cultures is. Also, the not undrestanding that Islam is not just religion, is the way of life—and the way not very much in agreement with the western one. Especially when the western way is considered subpar and the wrong one. Good luck in thinking that a few lecutres on European values will change all that.

  > 2. ...

If they want to be integrated, it would be really helpful if they learned Finnish. The first guy in the article said he spent most of his time in the gym, and hanging out with other Iraqis, which isn't really going to help with integration.

Learning Finnish won't solve every problem of integration, but without it, I would suggest that integration is impossible.

> If they want to be integrated, it would be really helpful if they learned Finnish. The first guy in the article said he spent most of his time in the gym, and hanging out with other Iraqis, which isn't really going to help with integration.

This is such an important point - I'm German, living in Australia, and the Germans here tend to hang out almost exclusively with other Germans, same goes for the Chinese etc. I haven't yet seen a good solution for that "insulation" - It takes real effort and motivation to step outside of your comfort zone, you can't force people to do so, they'll quickly bounce back.

Germans in Australia do speak English. Also, I don't think the number of Germans who mostly meet Germans everyday is big. All my German (and French, and Russian) friends in Australia had girlfriends from other places. But sorry, communautarism is visible, generalizations over one's communautarism is frequent but communautarism itself isn't that much.

This isn't a surprise. There's a reason large cities have Chinatown, Little Italy, etc. Immigrants are more comfortable keeping their lives mostly within their own community that shares the same language and cultural elements. While I don't think it's all that healthy to avoid integrating with the society you move into, it's understandable to see people take the easy/comfortable route. Hell, I'd probably wind up doing the same.

I have a Greek acquaintance who lives in my city's unofficial Greek neighbourhood. Everything from groceries to bakeries and cafés, it's all Greek and he doesn't like to stray much from his routine in these shops. All the owners and patrons know each other personally. They get to feel like they're still back home. It keeps them sheltered a bit too much from the rest of us, but hey - they have a real community versus me that doesn't know the first name of anyone that serves me in any of the shops I frequent.

People move somewhere for a reason: most migrants (they are white so they are usually referred to as expats) in my neigborhood in south Spain are Brits who came for the weather and low prices: a lot of them simply want to live in a cheaper and sunnier UK. They do not want to integrate as that is not why they came. Same for the Germans; we have an entire town where everything is in German. Some come for the different lifestyle and Spanish culture; those integrate fast but it is a minority.

This is a more general phenomenom, like tends to hang out with like, not necessarily out of bigotry towards the un-likes, but just out of familiarity. It's really "seperate but equal" all over again.

Honestly, it just comes down to being open minded, which has to happen on an individual level. I'm open minded by necessity, because there are very few of my race in the USA, much less my current city.

I suppose typically first generation migrants seldom adjust culturally fully to their home country, and only the second generation become truly native?

Integrated to what exactly? You are never going to be integrated with people that want you to speak the local language, even if you do speak it. The thing is, once you leave your country, you are an expat, an expat doesn't do well with people that want to force their local/close minded way of doing things on you.

There are values that are the same across all Europe and those should be the focus of integration. Learning local language is not one of them.

I don't know how Finland handles asylum seekers, but chances are they keep them together while they determine whether they are refugees, rather than economic migrants. If so, his choice was more or less between hanging out with Syrians, Somali, or other Iraqis, neither of which spoke Finnish.

Also, chances are Finland doesn't teach asylum seekers Finnish while they await that verdict. That makes sense if that process doesn't take much time, but it is hard to make due process take little time if there suddenly are many asylum seekers.

Lee Kuan Yew has had the same experience with the close mindedness of certain cultures and being hard to integrate. My parents noticed the same with people from the same countries as them. Even I noticed early on in school how hard it was for teachers to mention certain progressive ideas without pissing off a bunch guys in my class. I never gave it a second thought until recently.

It's an uphill battle for any country that relies on sweeping issues under the rug instead of managing them up front.

I presume you're referring to Lee's comments about Malay Muslims in Singapore? http://www.singapore-window.org/sw99/90915loy.htm

If you're going to talk about "integration" (read: assimilation), it's worth remembering that they were there first, and it's the Chinese immigrants who are now the majority that has sidelined them.

I still call it integration as it was predominantly secular before a surge of Wahhabism from oil, now there is a divide.

You can look into Iran, Iraq and even Afghanistan. Unfortunately they didn't have a Lee Kuan Yew to draw in the line. My mum told me how no one cared about Halal only sections in Iran, my dad said the same about Iraq even though they would identify as muslims.

http://youtu.be/1KDjjXUx9bY

Step 2 in Australia after WW2 was basically: - education - counselling - socialising

It worked well enough for the influx of Vietnamese refugees too.

Vietnamese communities tend to integrate well. At least in Easter Europe, in Poland or Czech Rep they are doing quite well, no issues at all.

In France too. In fact I notice I know many Vietnamese descendents, but I didn't realize it until I counted. They're Frence-rooted to me. Successful integration.

I spent some months in Australia and got a completely different idea: multiculturalism is completely an illusion. It's a "timebomb" slowed down by abundance of resources: while everybody is getting more then they need, everything is ok.

Edit: For half a decade I was an expat in a monocultural country. Being open-minded (giving in more often than demanding) and member of a too small community to be considered a threat I could enjoy peace to a greater extent than everywhere else before - even as a member of the majority group in my own country. Probably that's why I'm very bearish regarding multiculturalism.

Step 2 in Australia now is mandatory detention, and step 3 happens some undetermined time later (if ever). Interesting to see how we've gone backwards.

Well, asylum-seekers are a massive political football at the moment, but they're a drop in the bucket compared to other migration - Australia has 500k in and 300k out for an annual net migration of 200k in. Excluding kiwis, permanent migrants in are about 86k. Asylum-seekers are very much in the media, but they are also very not typical of the usual migrant situation here.

http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Latestproducts/3412....

With 28% of our population being born overseas, we're doing integration okay (21% if you discount UK and kiwiland - and our #1 country of import in recent years is China). For comparison, the UK is 12% and the US is 14%. If you look at the current migrant rate (migrants/1000 pop/year), there are only two sizeable western countries higher than Australia, being Norway and Spain. If you exclude conflict areas, there are no other large countries higher than Australia[1].

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_net_migra...

Basically, the WAP is dead as a dodo as of 40 years ago. The idea that Australia is an insular country afraid of immigration is clearly a myth once you look at the stats. Of course, that doesn't sell newspapers.

In short, no, we haven't gone backwards. We're actually a success story, it's just that we have a very visible wart on our nose at the moment (thank you, politics).

[1] this data is from 2014, which is before Germany took in 1% of it's population in the form of Syrian refugees

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> Things like a Secular government are new concepts to them

I don't think a secular government is a new concept for Syrians or Iraqis. Saudis, Afghans? Sure. But Syria and Iraq have been under secular governments pretty much since the fifties.

Now living in an open, liberal society like those in Western Europe is a different thing altogether, but for educated Syrians it's not an impossible endeavour. I think most of those actually making it to Germany/Sweden/etc. are from the most "modern" parts of society, as the less educated and poorer ones are pretty much stuck in Liban or Turkey

>I don't think a secular government is a new concept for Syrians or Iraqis. Saudis, Afghans? Sure. But Syria and Iraq have been under secular governments pretty much since the fifties.

This is a common misconception while the governments were secular they've enforced very strict "cultural" laws. In Iraq and in Syria it is perfectly legal to kill your sister for extra-mertial sex, homosexuals are also specifically targeted by either laws that outright make homosexuality illegal (Syria) or by laws that target extra-marital sex (Iraq).

So while you can have perfectly "well adjusted" individuals that might even be highly educated there is an almost insurmountable cultural gap that is almost impossible for anyone who isn't either from the region or had extensive contact with people from the middle east to understand.

You can literally be sitting over tea and talking with a young Iraqi, Syria, Iranian or w/e engineer about everything from mechanical engineering to democracy and constitutional law thinking to yourself wow these guys aren't that different after all until they mention in the same nonchalant casual manner as you would "hey did you see the game last night?" that they had to kill their sister or that they've reported their room-mate for being gay to the state.

Religion and culture aren't separate entities like it or not even by being say not even an atheist but an active anti-theist if you grew up in the west the 2000 years or so of shared cultural heritage which at some point or another was (and still collectively is) affected by judeo-christian beliefs, values, or what ever you want to call it (and vise versa) has been imprinted on you from the day you were born the same way it was imprinted on everyone else.

The true cultural shock isn't when the drinking, chain smoking, club going mid-20's Syrian law student comes to Sweden the cultural shock happens when the Swedes figure out that no matter what they tell him they still can't stop him from thinking it's OK to kill his sister for dating some one he doesn't like.

It's funny how you can tell your political/idealogical leanings on this topic by your phrasing:

> I wonder, what is the percentage of those hundreds of thousands who do not have the same mindset.

Rather than wondering how many people do share that mindset you wonder how many do not share that mindset. This comes across (to me) as if you're coming from a starting position of "they all share this mindset" and are looking to see how wrong you are.

They are Islamists. They do not come from a multi-cultural society, e.g. a society of tolerance and acceptance. I think it would be quite deluded to expect something vastly different of them. Whether of not they will adopt Western culture and philosophy is a different question, but at the time of arrival it should be quite clear what culture and values they represent.

Perhaps you mean they are Muslims.

Islamism is an ideology -- or arguably a catch-all term for a number of ideologies -- that want to force Islam into the government, law and everything.

http://www.danielpipes.org/954/distinguishing-between-islam-...

The average Iraqi or Syrian isn't Islamist. E.g. the Alawites in Syria aren't Islamists, and the former Baath party in Iraq wasn't either.

Honor killings were both legal and prevalent in Iraq under Sadam's rule. The Baath party also operated para-military militias that enforced "morality" rules mostly targeting prostitutes and homosexual. Extra marital sex was punishable in Sadam's Iraq and it was commonly enforced by either the family or the government which quite often resulted in death. The picture as far as Syria goes isn't that different the only major difference is that unlike Iraq Syria had and still has specific laws that target homosexuals rather than just "extra martial sex".

> I think it would be quite deluded to expect something vastly different of them

How about we treat their opinion as "unknown" rather than a foregone conclusion (for either side)? Is this too much to ask?

How about we work with the information we do know and approach the problem using logic and prudent risk management like we would with almost any other topic?

I suppose parent may have been extrapolating their willingness to integrate from that of other immigrants from Muslim cultures who have been living in France/Germany/UK for decades.

No, that doesn't reveal anything. If the poster is trying to illustrate that others think differently, either phrasing illustrates it just fine.

Your sensitivity to it maybe illustrates that you are much closer to it politically and are easily offended.

> pretty close-minded in regards to integrating into a new culture/diet/environment

This applies to a large segment of migrants and refugees from the middle east.

I can say this because I did immigrate from there.

Please tell us more, at least you have knowledge on something ;) Do you have this problem yourself? Or are you looking down at your co-immigrants for that? Do you consider western countries should have a middle-ground effort?

I come from a Christian monoculture in Europe and find it hard to believe that other religions are any better.

It's hard to argue with people who have been brainwashed that everything good comes from gods who also demand all those superficial rituals and arbitrary cultural norms. Questioning their rituals throws their whole worldview and morality out the window and they aren't exactly appreciative for that.

There's also this image that western societies are promiscuous with low (if any!) moral values (because all morality revolves around the regulation of sex, of course!)

There's also a sense of entitlement, because: "The destruction of our country is largely the responsibility of the West". This mindset is very prevalent. So instead of appreciation for being taken in, there's discontent because reality is not turning out like they imagined it to be.

What bugs me the most about this situation is people like you who always find it easy being pro-other-people-paying-the-price. How about you liquidate your assets and send them off to pay for these "refugees" since you are so for this. How about you take in random people and then pay for their expenses in your house. It's always easy obligating other people, isn't it? That's the whole problem with this whole "social/ism" notion that it puts people in power to decide the fate and obligations of others.

>> "What bugs me the most about this situation is people like you who always find it easy being pro-other-people-paying-the-price."

Huh? Where did I indicate I want other people to pay the price? We live in a democratic society and I believe our government should use the money we give them via taxes to help take in refugees. If you disagree vote for a party that doesn't want to help. I'm not sure where you're from but if you're in the same part of the world as me you're not going to have much luck.

>> "That's the whole problem with this whole "social/ism" notion that it puts people in power to decide the fate and obligations of others."

Again - these people are voted into power to represent the views of the entire society. This is nothing to do with 'socialism'. If you find yourself consistently annoyed that your government is helping people instead of letting you keep your money (because screw everyone else, right) you're either living in the wrong place or you might want to take a look at what you place importance on because most of the people around you disagree with you, probably for a good reason.

> We live in a democratic society and I believe our government should use the money we give them via taxes to help take in refugees.

This is not a zero-sum game, If government pays it via taxes they have to stop paying something else or increase taxes.

That is not what irks me most though. What irks me most is that we could help a whole lot more people, -and less fortunate people at that, if we applied the same resources in the neighboring countries instead of giving those resourceful enough to cross Europe "golden tickets".

I would be happy to pay a little extra tax for that, if I knew the money would be spent helping those poor souls that are now hunting cats in the ruins of those towns instead of the current golden tickets mostly to young men who leave their families behind,

> This is not a zero-sum game, If government pays it via taxes they have to stop paying something else or increase taxes.

That is literally the definition of a zero-sum game.

It's actually a negative sum game. It costs money to run a tax system, and that money comes out of taxes too.

So, as a coercive state with guns, if I want to fund some program that costs $1M, I would need to tax much more.

I guess you are right. It seemed right when I woke up, less now. Thanks.

Anyway, my larger point stands I guess.

Getting pretty tired of people who display this sort of selfish, trashy attitude towards others less fortunate than themselves.

Please understand that we feel a real threat here. Sweden, France and Belgium is already quite chaotic.

Please understand that some people think that people that have "fled" through multiple safe countries might not be the ones who most desperately needs help.

That really hasn't got anything at all to do with what I was responding to.

What you don't quite get is that you are tired of other people having to deal with your demands and not even helping those who need the help. You think the 80% of these colonists that are male and paid thousands of dollars to get to Europe are really the needy ones? ??? Just to be clear... not the women and children that were not among the ones arriving in Germany after passing through dozens of countries where they were safe. You are supporting the squander of other people's tax money on freeloaders and benefits shoppers that are colonizing Europe and leaving the most vulnerable and weak behind where they came from. You want to help people, try not being ACTUALLY selfish by making this about making yourself feel better about how good of a person you are for taking in people ....... who don't need to be taken in, while those who do need help are left destitute where they should be taken care of in the region.

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