UN Security Council Holds Closed Hearing on Turkey: Syria Update
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The rules of charter cities would be roughly as follows:
- Anyone (literally anyone) would be welcome to move to charter city if they just want so.
- EU guarantees funding for basic infrastructure like education, legal system, security, health care and tax authorities.
- Everyone moving in is allowed and expected to work in the society.
- All refugees coming to EU are directed to these charter cities.
- Charter city citizenship does not mean access to EU.
I am not saying that this would be a problem-free solution. I am saying that it is extremely important that we start to solve the problems that arise here. Because they are the problems we need to solve to take pressure away from the refugees to flood Europe. They are the problems we need to solve when suddenly there is an environmental catastrophe and there are suddenly a lot of people looking for a new place to live. They are the problems we need to solve to make the coungries still living under bad governments to improve their governance.
And no, most people in the world would absolutely not move immediately to these cities. Most people actually want to live in their homes.
Edit, small changes in looks.
So tell me, how does the EU magically drum up money for all of this?
Something like up to 80% are on welfare and public housing etc.
You don't work or go to school, you go back.
Shifting discussion from the cost of refugees to talking about only the food cost, or whatever it is that £37.75 a week amounts to, seems like a deliberate dodge. I'd be pretty insulted if I was from the UK. Obviously that's not a lot of money because obviously its not the whole picture.
What they are paid, or that they are paid at all, is never ever a relevant £ figure in these discussions unless its introduced to make it sound artificially small. When discussing cost, nothing but the total £ cost per refugee matters.
The stipend is for food and all other living expenses - clothes, heating etc.
Then the possible remainning part of the funding, well, at the moment quite a few European countries are borrowing money with negative interest rates. So I assume they can borrow quite a pile of money before the interedt rates become unbearable. And to be clear, this is in my mind one of the most important if not the most important thing EU should be investing money for its own sake. And EU does not need to give the money to charter cities, mo ey can be loaned as well.
If European taxpayers don't want their taxes going to other EU countries then that should tell you something about their desire to aid people outside the EU.
Charity starts at home.
If you want to pay taxes to house, feed, educate and care for 3 million extra people, fine by me, just don't make me pay for your charity. In fact, why don't you already take some on your house?
I work hard and burn myself out to pay for my children, and mine alone, not for others'.
This seems to be problematic IMHO. Who would want to go there instead of already build, well run city. Would you?
> EU guarantees funding for basic infrastructure like education, legal system, security, health cate and tax authorities.
That doesn't even happen for actual EU citizens, why on earth would an EU taxpayer allow for this?
> allowed and expected to work in the society
or what? are you throwing them back?
> Charter city citizenship does not mean access to EU.
I could use an expert to figure out the difference between this plan and living in any city in Hungary, for example.
I am no expert in all of the EU countries, can you give example of an EU country where basic education, basic health care, relatively functioning judicial and police system are not guaranteed by governments?
And why would the taxpayer want to guarantee (different than actual payment) this? Maybe because the other option is literally millions of people crashing one day in to EU uninvited?
How do you stop them? We're talking about extremely motivated people here.
> Everyone moving in is allowed and expected to work in the society.
How do you make them? What do you do if they refuse?
> EU guarantees funding for basic infrastructure like education, legal system, security, health care and tax authorities.
Like another poster said - who pays for it, and what funding gets cut in Europe to pay for it? Education budgets or maybe R&D?
Fences. Walls. Snakes and Alligators. Guns. I think there are lots of ways to keep people in one side of the border. In addition to these (to be sure that my sarcasm gets passed, not just in addition, but much more importantly) Clear incentives. In the charter city you can work and study and live officially a good life. You go past the snake pit, you are not able to do any of that but are immediately brought back to charter city when caught.
And there are tons of space for this: Sahara, Gobi, Siberia, Northern Canada, the central part of Australia, Antarctica, quite a few places in South America, etc. etc.
Economic prosperity is about institutions and their "source code". For a world afflicted with so many problems, it's just insane that we have got no way to try out blank-slate constitutions.
What I don’t understand is why we don’t treat these mass exodus of people from one country to another country like we do datacenter failovers and failbacks. Give people refuge, let them carry on productively with their life and the condition is that they failback once the situation has stabilized in the country they fled from.
To allow a select few to stay, you can create a merit based program based on contribution to adopted society and assimilation to provide an incentive to become part of the adopted host country and be allowed to stay instead of failed back.
Without failbacks, we absorb good people willing to work for a better life and deprive that country of those people long term. That never allows those countries to get better because most of the good people leave and never go back. Failbacks would be the healthiest form of nation building since it would be done by citizens of the country in need of being built up.
Furthermore, refugees should not change the country that graciously hosted them in a way that many of the citizens of that country dislike. That’s being a bad houseguest.
Of course, citizenship in a charter city would not give citizenship/voting rights in the host country.
"By 2010 there were about 4 million people of Turkish descent in Germany. The generation born in Germany attended German schools, but some had a poor command of either German or Turkish, and thus had either low-skilled jobs or were unemployed. Most are Muslims and are presently reluctant to become German citizens."
But now, with Eastern Europe and the Baltics part of NATO there are better options and Turkey's membership should be reviewed.
If this were true why do ME refugees not want to stay there?
>Largest army in Europe.
Okay, but if they're more culturally similar to the ME, as your first point implies, than to e.g. Germany doesn't it become a little problematic for employing this army in NATO's current theater of operations?
>Erdogan still has to restrain himself because he has treaties with NATO allies...
This is a great argument for why entangling alliances with people who aren't really your friends or are too culturally distant to even pretend as much are a terrible, awful idea. I believe we fought a World War because of this once.
In Europe, west of it, they could earn much more. They don't want to go Romania either for example.
But to answer your question, Erdogan not the coolest dude ever. Plus Turkey doesn't have the greatest history of human rights especially if you aren't Turkic in ethnicity. Just ask the Armenians, Greeks and Kurds(very much related to this issue). All of which happened in the last 100 years.
In short, if you are getting displaced why not go the extra distance? Just because you've been violently displaced from your home (and everything you know) doesn't mean you can't have upward mobility ::eyeroll::.
People tend to forget that. Thanks for articulating it so well.
This said, Turkey is being removed from the supply chain. Of course, this comes at about a a half a billion in costs... https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-turkey-security-f35/p...
Turkey’s entire economy is like half the size of New York City’s. And in any case, ejection from NATO doesn’t mean comprehensive sanctions.
IMHO, I don't think we should care that much. The middle East's importance is waning and it's been nothing but trouble for 50 years. Better to step back and let others play the game.
They have successfully played the west in exchange for a few US air bases.
Turkey have many problems dealing with its minorities, neighbours, even its own citizens, sure - but on this issue, maybe its time to get off your high horse, before calling any country nefarious. Are we really worse than Spain, worse than France, worse than UK? Why do they have a say in it without helping the problem in the slightest?
We used to pay people handsomely to get our hands on Russian weaponry to play with.
And to add - indeed it's not the fault of the Turkish citizens who are against the tyranny, and those are who we need to align with and help support. Likewise, the US needs support from the world to help counter the bad actors we have here. Or we can all just be angry at "everyone" and rage against innocent people - and watch the whole world burn.
Considering Turkey's strategic location, it's better to have Turkey in NATO instead of as an adversary, even if its leadership doesn't align with the values of other NATO members.
Erdogan knows that he has a ton of leverage and chooses to maximize his advantage.
There are a lot of moving pieces here. He's overcalculated a bit and his nationalist policy has hurt the Turkish economy.
Likewise, many European countries rejecting Turkey's EU bids last decade on thinly-veiled Islamaphobic pretenses only strengthened his nationalist message at home.
The west knows it, but they also know that they would rather have Turkey nominally on their side than not.
It will probably take cooler heads and or a major economic downturn to shift that sentiment. Until then, Turkey maintains its seat in NATO.
So, we should be more fair to Turkey handling literally, not metaphorically, millions of refugees. It is easy to talk about humanitarian values, when you're outsourcing Turkey to do it for you.
Oh, you mean discrimination? I'm white, Eastern European living in Western Europe and if I'd have a biscuit for every time I have been discriminated here I'd be fat for life. And yet, I don't call everyone who doesn't like me a nazi.
Because you think those things are wrong? Then they're wrong when Erdogan does them, too.
Because you think that we think that those things are wrong? Then we think that they're wrong when Erdogan does them, too.
I don't think that there's an argument you can make on these grounds that helps you very much...
Isn't it that according to the law, the refugees are allowed to get the shelter in the first country they manage to get to? In this case it's Turkey, right?
Nothing against helping refugees but EU and NATO should reconsider any further cooperation with Turkey.
Of course, the Mediterranean countries will regret this bad precedent once the hordes of Scandinavian refugees come down from the south, and Germany and France and Benelux expect them to take some of them. Oh, wait...
They did that because they didn't have the resources to deal with that and when they asked the rich countries for help all they got was "sux to be you. sorry fam, you're on your own. lol"
They got the short stick of the dividing of the area, and their lands were used as a 'loot' to divy up by the great powers...
They ended up as a nation without a country. They have faced great persecution over times, even mass gassing (in Iraq by Sadam)
They have every-right should form a their own country... and they have been a good ally to the US, but Trump is messing it up and just letting Erdogan have free rein the area....
This covers fight in Syria, and Iraq. The stuff they did/do within Turkey is I think more complicated but I don't feel I know enough to judge.
Yet another reminder of how old colonialism was properly evil force and how it fucked up the world for centuries when state lines were drawn by clueless and/or evil politicians.
The EU is going to throw billions at Erdogan, because they the EU cannot agree on how to deal with refugees. another wave could tear the EU apart.
The refugee situation is one of the polarizing issues in EU/Brexit politics. The Turkey-Syrian conflict pushes a new wave to exacerbate internal polarization within the UK & EU - a side effect of the conflict but still furthers a broader agenda. Pretty crafty.
Call the bluff.
Furthermore, the US currently is a lot more xenophobic and less accepting of foreigners than Europe is. I'd even go as far as say that in my experience Americans in general tend to be more racist than Europeans as well. And let's not forget USA's far from spotless historical record of treatment of minorities and other groups deemed to be 'different'.
Just like the current xenophobic attitudes among some in the US is a choice and was a choice in the past. None of this is excusable, none of it is inevitable. And I have little patience for "realists" who carry water for the idea that xenophobia is inevitable and unchangeable.
And not that it matters to the discussion of whether it's inevitable or not, but Americans are more welcoming of immigrants: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/09/business/international/fo... and have lower demonstrated racism than most of Europe: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/15...
And forget the anecdotal data. The bulk of Americans interact with folks from all around the world, daily, with little issue. America's a big place, and its easy to cherry-pick news reports to get any impression you like.
Here's some data: racism by demonstrated tolerance. America is at the bottom of the list:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/15...
https://www.dhs.gov/immigration-statistics/yearbook/2017/tab...
Secondly, these new citizens are truly multicultural, as they literally come from every part of the globe - opposed to the refugees coming into the EU who are mostly from a middle eastern cultural origin. Because of this new immigrants coming into the US rarely have the luxury of arriving in a group of people similar to them so they are pretty much forced to assimilate.
Lastly, the geographical position of the US and their immigration policies allow them to be able to sift through the millions of applicants and pick the cream of the crop. Winning the dv lottery is not unconditional - it's only the first step in a series of screenings and checks one needs to undergo before he's even approved to become an american citizen. This is the polar opposite of the migrant situation in Europe where millions of people are simply passing through county borders without barely any supervision or control.
This is making excuses for a cultural choice.
Last refugee crisis destroyed any future plans for expansion of the Schengen zone, helped Brexit and propell right wing parties at elections in EU member states and also further distance the southern states from the north as they were left to deal with the crisis alone.
Edit: I'm not blaming the refugees, I'm highlighting that if Europe was so united as you suggest we wouldn't be having these issues but currently, as you can see, Europe's policy is every man for himself and the refugee crisis helped expose problems Europe already had.
Individuals might feel that way but governments are happy to have then detained in Turkey.
Even Sweden would probably not open up for so many refugees and several Eastern European countries refuse any. (EU might be able to force them).
I'd like to point out that it is a notion held by a minuscule % of the population.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/07/12/in-views-of...
And I believe that the opinion held by majority matters more than the notions held by a minority, however vocal it might be. This is how democracy works, doesn't it?
Removed posts appear as [removed] only if they have children (and, I believe, only mods can remove posts that have children). A post with no children that is removed by its author or a mod simply vanishes.
The tag HN uses is not [removed] but [deleted] and yes, if the post has no children, we don't bother displaying that. It's just there as a placeholder in comment trees. More importantly, though: mods never delete posts unless the author asks us to. The most we would do is kill a post, which shows as [dead] and is visible to anyone with showdead turned on in their profile.
There have been a handful of exceptions to that in 10 years, a couple accidental deletions and a couple that the legal department told us we had to do, but it is as solid a rule as we have on HN.
Absolutely not, and I appreciate what you do. It's very uncommon to see someone with the necessary set of skills to effectively maintain a community and put up with people like me. That also includes calmly explaining over and over again the decisions that have to be taken to moderate this site without falling for the "I'm doing this because this is the way it is/because I want to" argument.
Or, I make my reply, and decide that it was too harsh, or that I misread the parent.