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Comment by harterrt | Hacker News Reader

Is this definitely a good thing?

It seems like Rome has provided a cash stipend to immigrants, but the local government has intervened and restricted the immigrant's purchasing choices. For example, this could be bad for the recipients if local shopkeepers had significantly higher prices than online retailers or if they charged a premium for extending this credit.

I see the benefits as well, which seem to be well represented in the other comments so far. I'd be interested to see whether this actually helps everyone in practice.

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From what I understood they are not providing a cash stipend:

> €35 (£29; $39) per asylum seeker per day from the central government in Rome. This has to cover everything, from accommodation, food and medical care to Italian language lessons, work placements and assistance with asylum bureaucracy.It also includes a couple of euros for pocket money.

What is not clear is: do they give a migrant 35 "fake" euros and tell him to do everything himself, or do they just do this on the food part, but still provide housing etc.

An exploit I could think of is if a local Italian goes and buys the migrants "food stamps" for let's say 80% of their price. The migrants would be free to buy anything with real € but he would pay an unnecessary 20% tax to the Italian. And the Italian would be able to buy 20% discounted food. That's not a huge amount of money at stake: Only whatever the Italian consumes in food over the year. And the migrant would need to be stupid/greedy to trade all of his fake € as he also need them for food.

as an italian student living on 12€/day which covers rent and bills (6€), food (4€) coffe to study after dinner (0.5€) and unexpected expenses i wonder how those 35€ and for the first time i understand why people are angry at immigration.. (we didn't get scholarships for 2 years because of the lack of money)

180€/mo for rent and bills? It seems pretty low for me. I'ma student in Milan and pay 450€/mo only for bill. I know other cities can be much cheaper but bills are almost the same everywhere

160€/mo rent 15€/mo utilities 5€ other stuff the house is shared with 4 guys, two bedrooms

(Turin so yea it's a little cheaper)

Logistically it makes more sense to build shelter-in-place in Africa and the Middle East. They are easier to police and supply.

Then the applications for refugee status can be fairly processed. This way people won't be converted into organs, thrown off boats, enslaved or otherwise taken advantage of. It should also serve to distinguish between genuine refugees (for non-permanent visa) from warzones and the holidaymakers/opportunists.

The current scenario is the worst possible route. Talk of migrants obtaining work is a shibboleth that discerns whether you have your head screwed on properly.

Are we really supposed to believe that millions of migrants are supposed to integrate without understanding the language, law, culture and without the schooling of so much as a secondary school student?

It is preposterous. Inexplicably stupid.

Even with successful integration it can take up to a 100 years for it to work. Look at how long the Italians and Irish were outsiders in the United States. And they were whites in a country historically unusually open to migration. And they trickled in instead of millions per year. That's the easy route and it is not that easy.

>And they trickled in instead of millions per year.

In 1847 New York had a population of ~375,000 and had 52,000 Irish and 53,000 German immigrants in one year.

Same year Boston with a population of ~115,000 had almost 40,000 irish immigrants.

During that time there was Irish immigration alone equal to about 3% of the US population(650,000 immigrants vs 17m). The current EU situation is equal to about 0.2% of the population(1m vs 500m)

Yep, sure, governements giving so much to refugees, and nothing to you. I can't count how many times I heard this myth.

Actually, the money really comes mainly from the European Union, so as a eurocitizen (not italian) I'm actually paying it, not you (with 12€/day you shouldn't pay any income tax).

Anyway, and I'm glad we provide for them, 35€ is not that much when one starts their life over from scratch.

Also note that the refugees are likely to spend everything in local shops, which in turn pay their tax to the italian governement. All in all, such an operation provides dignity to the refugees, increase the income of local shop owners, whose money they also spend in Italy, and all in all, most of the money goes to the italian governement. It's rarely presented with such a perspective, but providing to the poor actually costs very little.

I'm not against helping people with tickets and allowances, after all that's the whole point of scholarships isn't it?

But I do understand why many Italians are so upset about the amount.

I worked for two years (and paid my share of taxes) to finance my studies I don't understand why you assumed I don't pay taxes.

>are likely to spend everything in local shops

same goes for scholarships, actually more because we don't have families outside the EU

I agree about the negative possibility of businesses jacking up prices when paying with fake-bux. But I think you're looking too big picture in this case, and to a certain extent, politics is local.

This program is essentially an acknowledgement that large influxes of immigrants imposing a cost on society, and that cost is paid locally. Amazon is not being asked to give up rooms and apartments for the immigrants, the local folks are. Pets.com doesn't have to deal with non-native language speakers, and the big bank chains don't have to wait in line at the DMV. This program is not as much about doing the economically optimal thing, this is about smoothing over immigrant relations in the local communities.

Refugees are not immigrants.

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