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Comment by bluthru | Hacker News Reader

Are the middle eastern migrants an economic liability for France? Wasn't Europe sold on the notion that a population influx would help the economy?

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Many people aren't sold on that notion. I can't see how bring people from vastly different cultural backgrounds, many of whom won't speak the language are going to benefit the economy.

Are you familiar with a country called the United States? I hear they've done pretty well with immigrants from vastly different cultural backgrounds, many of whom don't speak the language.

Yeah, they even have a state called California which gets quite a few people from Mexico coming in across the border. Many of them speak little or no English. I hear it is doing okay.

You will be getting a wall soon enough.

If we do too good of a job of keeping out Mexicans, we will have serious food shortages. There will also be other areas that suffer -- like upscale landscaping that seems to be mostly maintained by Mexican workers -- but the whole food shortage thing worries me lots more.

So, I hope we don't get too clever about it.

A wall all along the US/Mexico border is a fantasy. It's the grown up equivalent of promising to put soda in the drinking fountains when running for class president.

So where do you suggest all these people are going to work as you seem so sold on the idea? Many countries in the South already have high unemployment.

Also heard about US/Mexico borders, green card quotas, h-b1, etc. You practice immigration quotas (which may be smart), we do not. I would be interested to see the outcome of a massive muslim immigration in the US.

Look up Dearborn Michigan

"As of the 2010 census the population of Dearborn was 98,153. The racial and ethnic composition was 89.1% Whites, 4.0% black or African-American, 0.2% Native American, 1.7% Asian, 0.2% Non-Hispanics of some other race, 4.0% reporting two or more races and 3.4% Hispanic or Latino.[14] 41.7% were of Arab ancestry (categorized as "White" in Census collection data)."

Sorry, 50k is not massive, let's talk about a couple of millions.

The Muslim influx was a result of colonial France. Britain has a sizeable Muslim population which is doing relatively well. The problem was discrimation and non-integration. Muslims (of North Africa) are unfortunately INA similar position as blacks in the USA.

The only common factor being their economic status.

But the Arab French have integrated culturally and are highly successful artists, athletes, businessmen, etc. Its only a matter of time before they deliver on the promise of immigration.

P.S. I'm a Muslim of South Asian origin born in Saudi Arabia.

Sorry, but we do have quotas. We're just not vocal about them.

edit: No, we actually don't, my mistake. But there seems to exists unofficial expulsions and regularization quotas to meet every year.

The middle eastern migrants were a result of their colonialism. Recent immigrants (post 2008) are largely from poor European economies such as Spain, Portugal and from China.

Europe and France are two separate entities. France was at one point the most populous of European States but lost out to Germany and Russia before the World wars. Its population growth is relatively new post WW2 and independence of their colonies.

There are almost no migrants from middle east in France, all of Asia makes up for 15% of the immigrants in France (and they are mostly from Turkey and China).

Isn't Turkey considered Middle East? Wikipedia says it is.

It is, and 3.8% of all immigrants fits my definition of "almost none".

After re-reading your post, it doesn't actually make sense.

Hmm, I didn't break down the numbers in my first post indeed. Asia (with Middle-East included) is 15%, Turkey is just 3.8%, and no other Middle-East country seems to reach 1%.

So France has quite few immigrants from the Middle-East.

"There are almost no migrants from middle east in France"

two posts later,

"So France has quite few immigrants from the Middle-East."

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