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Comment by muninn_ | Hacker News Reader

You can't have short-term, mass migration without having something happen or change. We will see a huge change in European political landscape within the next few years. People have to slowly assimilate into a culture in order to allow for a gradual, peaceful change in that culture. Shocking these types of systems with any sort of migration is a recipient for instability.

Please keep in mind that this isn't any sort of stupid anti-Muslim rhetoric, just a geopolitical observation. I think if you look at the United States you'll see a model of Muslim integration.

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The problem is that you assume they will assimilate, based on the current 2nd and 3rd generation MENA immigrants in Europe that might not be the case.

Europe isn't a good place for assimilation, you can be a 3rd generation "immigrant" living in France but you will not be French regardless of how PC they might appear to be.

European nationality is very much based on blood ties to the land, ethnic nationality was the driving force behind the emergence of Nations in Europe in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.

Trying to compare them to "new world" nations, and specifically the US isn't really appropriate. The US was built by immigrants and the moment you arrive regardless of who you are or where you come from (to some degree) you are an American, this is not the same for many European nations.

Additionally it seems that judging by past MENA immigration patterns assimilation is also very much opposed by the communities at large, even communities that socio-economically are not ghettos like many immigrant neighborhoods and even whole towns still seem to rather change their environment to fit their culture rather than assimilate to the existing one.

> the moment you arrive regardless of who you are or where you come from (to some degree) you are an American

Unless you were Irish, Italian, Jewish, African, Middle Eastern, Muslim, Japanese, Mexican...

Don't pretend that the US is somehow morally superior in the way they have treated immigrants in the past and tidy.

Don't confuse individual racism with national identity. To be a French or Dutch is very different than being an American.

No one is pretending that the US is some paradise without prejudice but once you take the oath of allegiance you are an American regardless of your background.

As a dutch person ive heard this complaint as well. Although we dont really understand how it comes they dont feel like Dutch, the remark is common enough that there has to be something there.

I do want to add that strong social security doesnt seem to help with integration. I think part of the success of the US together with generational patience, is that to make a living you have to play along. So any economic mismatch is corrected by "force". Whereas here you can get a situation where the cultural values and habits that do not econonically fit (like raising your daughters to be housewives) are essentially supported by the welfare state, creating the opposite effect of how it is intended.

It should not be taken as a complaint, it's just what it is.

New world nations were founded on the premise of immigration and building a better world for yourself, people joke about the American dream but to some extent that is true.

Being an American or even a Canadian is more about the future and what you make out of yourself.

Being Dutch, German, French or Italian or many other nations is more about the past, you are who you are based on where you come from.

I'm not sure that this can change, nor do I necessarily think it should change, every nation and every nationality has it's own unique definition many of those are based on shared heritage and history which is tied to ethnic and familial roots. It's "easy" to become a Dutch citizen but it's nearly impossible to become a Dutch national, in the US there is very little distinction since virtually everyone there is a migrant at some point or another, and while if we go back to the stone age you may also call European migrants for the US it's much more recent history. The majority of the US population is 5 or less generations "American", compare it to the average Dutch or French native family and you get quite a different story.

>>> Don't confuse individual racism with national identity

I don't believe he's talking about individual racism but systematic racism employed by the US government, which historically preferred people from a certain background.

Italians and Irish people weren't even considered white. Chinatowns were basically invented in the US because Asian immigrants wouldn't (or not allowed to) integrate.

I see an overall trend of of authoritarianism and nationalism as a response to immigration and an increasingly changing world. There's also a pretty heavy streak of anti-intellectualism as voters were encouraged to fundamentally reject experts that gave (IMHO well-founded) warnings about the ill-effects of Brexit and Trump.

In short: Nationalism in, Globalism out.

Even the idea of experts is being rightly criticized. Look at the flip-flopping recommendations of the US health dietary guidelines. What's true to the experts this year will be rejected some point later.

Not only that, but when you have centralized power it becomes much easier to corrupt and politicize. There's wisdom to decentralization.

I agree that sometimes experts can make massive erroneous assumptions. Nutrition is a field that has suffered greatly from this.

However, many of the predictions like currency devaluation and market loss, that were dismissed as expert scaremongering tactics, did occur.

1. The pound dropped 22% in value after the referendum [1] 2. A 13% drop in the FTSE from referendnum to present [2]

[1]https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-15/pound-dro... hard-brexit [2]https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-13/what-can-...

No, it's not right to declare expert opinion to be the same as simple opinion, fad, or partisan propaganda. It is right to expect experts to change their guidance as they gain greater understanding of the objective truth of their fields.

Nor is it right to equivalate different fields of study, such as nutrition and economics. Some fields of study are much more stable than others due to the ease of proper sampling, hypothesis testing, and experiment replication. If you want to try to discredit economic experts, then focus on their failures, not the failures of other fields.

Last but not least, your claim that it is easier to corrupt and politicize centralized power is meaningless. Power only exists when it is centralized. Decentralization simply means creating multiple smaller groups of centralized power.

I think that the benefits of centralization, such as standardization of norms and forced unity, have proven far more beneficial to society as a whole than any increased chance of corruption.

Actually, the US dietary guidelines had very little to do with the "experts" and had everything to do with the government structures who based their recommendations on an incomplete set of research. [0]

[0] From http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/07/magazine/what-if-it-s-all-...: "In the intervening years, the N.I.H. spent several hundred million dollars trying to demonstrate a connection between eating fat and getting heart disease and, despite what we might think, it failed. Five major studies revealed no such link. A sixth, however, costing well over $100 million alone, concluded that reducing cholesterol by drug therapy could prevent heart disease. The N.I.H. administrators then made a leap of faith. Basil Rifkind, who oversaw the relevant trials for the N.I.H., described their logic this way: they had failed to demonstrate at great expense that eating less fat had any health benefits. But if a cholesterol-lowering drug could prevent heart attacks, then a low-fat, cholesterol-lowering diet should do the same."

My own country, Canada, seems to be doing a good job, and I'm not sure but I think we have even higher immigration rates than Europe or the United States and we're still a fairly liberal, progressive and integrated society. I think our secret is selective immigration, we are much more selective than Europe in regards to who we let into the country and we don't have the illegal immigration issue on the scale that America does.

I think the trick to dealing with immigration is controlling for "which immigrants" which might be easier said than done if you are place like America or Europe with a bunch of people stampeding at your boarders wanting in.

I would be very surprised if total (legal and illegal) Canadian immigration is anywhere close to US or Europe. Do you have any numbers to back this claim?

immigration "rates"

In mathematics, a rate is the ratio between two related quantities.[1] If the denominator of the ratio is expressed as a single unit of one of these quantities, and if it is assumed that this quantity can be changed systematically (i.e., is an independent variable), then the numerator of the ratio expresses the corresponding rate of change in the other (dependent) variable.

People/year? People/country? Per capita? Just putting quotes around a word doesn't clear anything up.

Controlling for immigrants, hmm. Doesn't sound like a popular idea in europe or in the US in democratic circles.

Of course if you cherry pick your immigrants, you can claim immigrants are not problematic.

If all your immigrants turned into Muslim refugees overnight, what would happen? I'm sure you guess it.

Canada is in a comfortable position: It might be tenable to get from the Middle East or North Africa to Europe in a raft, but not to Canada (or the US, for that matter).

The US takes in about a million legal immigrants per year [1], the EU took in 1.6 million immigrants from non EU countries in 2014 [2]. The US has a population of 320 million, and the EU has 508 million. So the immigration is about the same per capita. So I think it should be possible to deal with that.

[1] https://www.dhs.gov/immigration-statistics/yearbook/2015/tab...

[2[ http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/...

Where did those immigrants come from? What is their socio-economic background? Are they refugees, or perhaps tech workers? What about those coming to Europe?

Perfect questions.. and also Europe consists of many countries.. Are the immigrants evenly distributed between them? I doubt it.

define evenly.

> Are the immigrants evenly distributed between them?

No. There was a hot debate about this in 2015, with countries that take more refugees than average [1] arguing for quotas that would implement a more even distribution. I distinctly remember that a compromise was made, and in the end, some 50 refugees were actually relocated to a different EU country.

[1] Relative to population size.

Immigration (actually refugees) went up massively in 2015 and 2016 because of what happened in syria.

> You can't have short-term, mass migration without having something happen or change.

I am generally confused by the claim of "mass migration". As this chart shows, EU migration of 2013 is below the rate of 2002 and is only now recovering from the 2008 economic crisis.

http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/...

If there is some problem that mass migration causes, why didn't it happen back in 2002?

Then why is Europe experiencing such a huge problem now and not then?

That's an oversimplified chart that doesn't mean anything for this discussion.

> Then why is Europe experiencing such a huge problem now and not then?

It seems less likely the problem is immigration and more likely at last part of the problem is fear of immigrants. Studies such as the following show that anti-immigrant sentiment is more extreme among residents of rural places than among residents of urban places, even though immigrants are more likely to reside in urban communities.

http://citation.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_cita...

Think about that: the people who are most affected by immigration are least worried about it, the ones least affected are most worried.

> That's an oversimplified chart that doesn't mean anything for this discussion.

If the claim is that migration alone is causing the problem, then it isn't oversimplified, it puts migration numbers into historical context. But if your claim is that it is not migration alone that is the issue, then possibly, yes, it is oversimplified. What other issues would you identity?

Why are people scared of immigration this time around and not previously?

Did previous immigrants assimilate? Were they similar, culturally?

It's a worthwhile question and one worth comparing to the US today. Why is a sizable percentage of the US today afraid of immigrants despite no significant increase in immigration at all (unlike Europe)? In this case, assimilation is irrelevant yet this fear of immigration has been enough to put Trump in office.

It's speculation, but I think rural populations worldwide are experiencing poor economic conditions while the urban areas have enjoyed growth and prosperity. The primary reason for this is most likely that young and educated people move to the cities draining rural areas of talent. Further, rural industries in first world countries are no longer competitive enough to sustain rural economies. There's more than can be said here I'm sure.

I feel like it's more about the economy than immigrants. Ask somebody in Parkersburg, WV if they are angry at the Lebanese family that built a restaurant, or if they are angry about that economy in general

The issue is right there: previous immigrants in France hardly assimilated, so when a new wave comes in, without change in the country there is no reason for them to assimilate either.

Same source, I used the graph generator to graph by country and year. The bottom 'light green' bar in each country's section is 2015, each successive bar above is one year prior.

http://imgur.com/a/od7Hi

You can see, in 2015, very notable increases in (in)migration rate for Austria, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Malta, Slovakia, and Estonia. You can also see Italy's huge 2013 spike (in magenta).

I'm looking at the top graph (EU 28 countries) and not seeing anything alarming relative to prior years. I'm not sure why Europe should be disintegrating now and not a decade ago if the claim is solely that Europe's problems are due to migration.

I find it funny that the top comment in regards to the question "Is Europe Disintegrating?", is all about immigration.

I know you don't mean anything bad about it, as you have mentioned. I am simply pointing the fact that this comment, that is strictly related to immigration, is the one that is the most up voted.

To me, it shows that people see immigration as the biggest problem of Europe, or at least the most discussed.

I don't think immigration is the main reason people have anti-eu sentiments.

More problematic is the forced integration of diverse cultures and diverse economic backgrounds who don't speak the same language. Also there is a lot of obvious financial waste in its centre, lots of lobbyism and poor democratic safeguards. People, including me, feel they have no influence at all and a lot of the de decisions being made are not in the personen peoples interest. Massive immigration issues only examplify those issues.

> You can't have short-term, mass migration

Well, luckily, we don’t have that, eh?

In the 90s and 2000s, Western Europe took over a million refugees from the balkans – by 2005, all of them were deported back.

There was no wave of nationalism back then, no political change.

Even today, in Germany, most are in favor of the current refugee policy.

I don’t see why any of what you said has to happen. It hasn’t happened the last time this happened either.

Why were they deported? Is that the same situation as now? Will Germany deport these new refugees back as well? Or are they hear to stay?

1. Refugees are not citizens. They are to be deported when the "risky situation" in their zones of origin ends.

2. Balkan refugees were not problematic and were fully identified. The opposite is the case of current refugees from the Middle East. That's why these problems are arising now.

People don't really have a problem with immigration. They have a problem with terrorism.

The various eastern European migrations subsequent to the fall of communism did not come with terrorism.

Nationalists didn't have the massive propaganda engines they do today.

That's a little bit easy.

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