Europe doesn't have to do anything if it doesn't want to. They can just not let in refugees (whether legitimate refugees or pretenders).
It's this kind of divisive rhetoric that has spurned the division we see today and the rise of hard-right nationalism. Please learn to be somewhat more rational and civil in your discourse.
So "protecting your civilisation and way of life" from the fallout of an unjustified war that one's country (coalition of the willing?) participated in, does make one a bit of a bastard, and that's putting it lightly.
Last time I checked we're all humans and until we all live in relative comfort there's a bunch of fatties on one end consuming more than their fair share.
It has fallen almost solely on Europe. If the US were providing adequately for its victims, the Middle East taking in their fellow Muslims, and China showing some semblance of humanity in offering a home to some, we wouldn't be seeing the rise of nationalism in Europe that we now are.
I don't think you can pin the rise of nationalism solely on migration - non-European countries are also experiencing sharp increase in (right-wing) nationalism - including the US which you noted hasn't bourne the social cost.
My pet theory is that nationalism is on rise due to economic frustration post-great recession, as well as a loss of social memory on how awful war is. I remember reading that the big wars tend to happen every 3 generation - I bet nationalist sentiment would closely track that, and our last big war was WWII
Hold on. The US has also seen massive demographic change due to migration (just not from migrations from the Middle East). Indeed there have been US politicians and other mainstream figures openly celebrating the "end of white America".
They have radically different ideas than us on how society should be run. That means both mass immigration from those countries and our own attempts at spreading liberal democracy to them are both equally foolish.
No, I'm serious, what will the UN, a cabal of unelected bureaucrats who I have never voted for, do to my country if we don't comply with said convention?
But it's more than that: Even China didn't cause the refugee disaster of ME but since the disaster was caused by good intention of Europeans with the naive human rights view,and it's already happened, China still should share some responsibility from humanity point of view. However there's another reason at the opposite side that is always misunderstood as selfishness by westerners : Accept a lot of refugee will definitely cause the internal turmoil because of the collision between bastards and non-bastards. That would be a bigger concern by government. Direct cost of settling refugee should be trivial given the size and wealth of China.
The same situation is applicable in Europa. The direct social cost of settling refugees is a relatively smaller problem. The internal conflicts and political polarization is a high-order problem.
https://popula.com/2018/08/27/baizuo/
https://theintercept.com/2018/08/13/china-muslims-uighur-det...
With his pithy comment, lawnchair_larry touches on an interesting aspect of this discussion. Many of those who support mass 3rd-world immigration (engaging in much grandstanding and moral preening in the process) are entirely removed from the actual consequences of it. They have no "skin in the game" so to speak as they know 3rd-world immigrants will not be settling in their neighborhoods (or guest bedrooms) anytime soon.
It's interesting phenomena though, isn't it? Those who praise diversity and immigration the loudest are often those most insulated from it. Why is that? Why don't those people move to those diverse, ethnic neighborhoods they claim to love so much?
They seem to only care for the abstract idea of it all, not the reality.
Do you have any data to support that assertion? Someone could claim just as confidently that the people most comfortable with diversity and immigration are those who have had (assumedly positive) exposure to it. That would seem just as valid a hypothesis, except there is actually some evidence that supports it, at least in one political context:
http://theconversation.com/hard-evidence-how-areas-with-low-...
I'm not making a judgement about which party is correct or wrong. I'm just saying that there's an high order problem being ignored by a lot of people.
Like most issues, I’m personally more on the fence than I am in either camp. I do think it’s worth challenging someone when they make comments that take such strong positions on complicated issues, particularly when they are someone else’s problem.
Likewise, I don’t support the border wall. But that’s an easy position for me to take, because as far as I can tell, it doesn’t affect my life. However, I’m not in a position to assume anything about the character or motivations of those who live near the border and have strong opinions about it.
And I do find it odd that when it comes to judging the character and motivations of others, so many are willing to give more benefit of the doubt to foreigners than they are for their fellow countrymen with a different political affiliation. I mean, consider that it would be a statistical miracle for America to be the only country with so many “shitty” people. If you think half of the US are deplorable Nazis, then it stands to reason that the worst half of any other country is approximately as bad, so letting them in indiscriminately has to be at least as bad as supporting Republicans. Believe it or not, but some countries have democratically elected people even worse than Trump. If you let in 10 random filipinos, that means 4 of them voted for fucking Duterte. And in case it needs to be said, I have nothing whatsoever against filipinos - they’re just a convenient example. If your belief system is such that people from other countries are fundamentally as good as us, you are dishonest if you reject that this means they must also be fundamentally as bad as us (which becomes increasingly problematic if you happened to decide the right are all Nazis).
I could have it completely wrong, but I just can’t help but think that maybe not everyone on the right is an evil greedy Nazi. Just maybe there are reasonable people over there whose circumstances have led them to a different view on some issues, and maybe the world isn’t black and white.
I do agree with your comment though, and that’s been happening elsewhere already.
I don’t see how my comment would be misunderstood as trolling, to be honest. I’m also far from right wing. My conservative friends, of which I do have a few, give me a hard time for being a lefty, so being called a Nazi is rather perplexing.
I do have a bit more exposure to this issue than most Americans, and admittedly, my experience has caused my view to shift heavily over the past several years.
Not so long ago, I would be calling people out for their lack of compassion on this issue. It turns out that real life is a lot more complicated.
I can be honest with myself. I do have sympathy, but I’m not going to open my home to a refugee. I am not going to sponsor one. I am not xenophobic. Hell, I wouldn’t want my sister-in-law to live with me either.
Unless you’re willing to do those things, then respectfully, I must declare that it is you who is full of BS. Much like I once was. You see, I wanted to see these people helped, and I thought that someone should help them, but it was only an abstract concept. I wanted someone else to do it. Now I realize I have no right or moral high ground to criticize anybody else unless I’m willing to do it myself.
If you in fact are willing and helping, then I will gladly accept criticism from you. And some people are. And I have great respect for them. But personally, I find it difficult enough to take care of my own family.
The backlash in places like Germany, Canada and the UK are very real. All of them poll left-leaning, yet recent polls indicate that the majority of the population feels that they have taken in too many immigrants. That isn’t because they all started reading the Daily Stormer, it’s because unlike you over there calling people out from the cheap seats, they have been faced with complexities that go along with mass immigration of people who are not able to easily integrate with their new society and be self-sufficient.