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Comment by trabant00 | Hacker News Reader

This is an old and tired straw man argument. Yes, there are simple minded people out there who oppose immigration on principle and racism. But a lot of people are in fact opposed to indiscriminate immigration. A significant proportion of refugees are criminals, plain and simple. They often have the means to move that simple, poor, hard working people don't.

Taking large waves of refugees with no filtering will gurantee that the honest working ones will suffer by association with the bad ones.

Edit: Huge numbers of desperate refugees will also accept pay and working conditions that put local workers out of options.

Immigration is not a good thing just like it's not a bad thing. The devil is always is the details.

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> But a lot of people are in fact opposed to indiscriminate immigration

Everybody is opposed to indiscriminate immigration, whatever that’s supposed to mean, otherwise we wouldn’t even have passports. The debate on immigration in the West is about foreign nationals living peacefully and contributing to the society of the country they moved to. There’s no debate about rapists crossing borders illegally, because nobody wants them and because they are a minuscule fraction of the population.

> A significant proportion of refugees are criminals

Probably good to actually give any sort of evidence for your frankly outrageous claim, otherwise it just looks like you too are incredibly racist.

I was about to comment the same thing. An incredibly bold statement with 0 evidence to back it up.

If you think that the vast majority of these people are 'economic' refugees which is generally not of legal status then technically all of them are criminals because they have broken the law to get there. This is the only way this argument makes any sense to me and that's with a big helping of benefit of the doubt.

That assumption is also one that would need proof, as that is also fairly outrageous. That said, it would be a very charitable way to read the original post.

Indeed, I was doing my best to be generous. Also tough to give proof regardless because member states seem to have different rules. This from an EU Gov on immigration statistics, "The EU’s asylum system remains undermined due to significant differences in recognition rates across EU countries. For example, in 2020 the recognition rate of Afghan citizens at first instance ranged from 1% in Bulgaria to 93% in Italy."

https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/priorities-2019-2024/prom...

The german federal police publishes a report every year about suspects of crime. "non-germans" meaning people without a german passport. "refugees" are included in non-germans and mean people who got asylum status or stay illegally in Germany. From 2020:

> Murder/Manslaughter Germans: 1,587 Non-Germans: 1,085 (420 refugees)

> Assault Germans: 84,776 Non-Germans: 52,412 (18,094 refugees)

> Robbery Germans: 15,435 Non-Germans: 10,378 (3,739 refugees)

> Rape Germans: 5,370 Non-Germans: 3,110 (1,155 refugees)

Source: https://www.bka.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/DE/Publikationen/Pol...

Now go ahead and put these numbers into context regarding each group's percentage in the population. And be sure to remember, that there are millions of people with migration background who count as germans because they have a german passport.

Personally I have no problem with migration of skilled people or temporary asylum for war refugees: black, brown, white, muslim, hindu, christian, whatever, I don't care. But one has to keep the bad ones out in the long term. Germany and many other western european countries failed to do that for whatever reason. And now their prisons are full of people with migration background.

By personal experience, non-Germans tend to be poorer on average. Is there a version of that dataset that controls for poverty level?

You get the basics for free in Germany. There is no need to do robberies to survive. Also murder, assault and rape has nothing to do with being poor (in a welfare state...).

So, I don't know what you're up to.

> There is no need to do robberies to survive.

Then why do robberies happen at all, including by members of the native German population?

Because of a different philosophy (from yours).

What you omit from this analysis is that the numbers for immigrants (not refugees, the report does not make that distinction) are lowering significantly more in percentages than the other groups basically across the board. Where they are not leader in crime decrease they are at least lowering as much as native Germans.

Edit: I made the mistake of engaging with your post, where actually it would have been more constructive to point out that you have moved the goalpost: The claim was that refugees are criminals mostly. You have not proven this, you've just proven that some of them commit crime when they are in a new country. That doesn't mean they emigrated as criminals.

> you have moved the goalpost: The claim was that refugees are criminals mostly

I translate "significant" to "meaningful", "noteable" (relative to something) in this context... Not a native speaker though, maybe I'm wrong? If I'm wrong, you are right. But it would be so obviously false anyway, wouldn't it? Only an idiot would claim that let's say 50% of refugees are criminals.

I broadly agree with your last sentence, even though I would have worded it differently here. That is the reason I asked for proof: It was to highlight there isn't any, because it's not true.

Your broader point, that sometimes immigrants fall into criminal traps, is one that is relevant and interesting. It's important to figure out why this happens and how it can be mitigated, because immigration is forever. You want your social structure and systems to be such that no-one feels like the only way they have to have a reasonable life is to be a criminal.

I am speaking as the citizen of a country that is the source of immigrants for western Europe, Romania. According to Wikipedia we have the fifth-highest emigrant population in the world, I would estimate a fifth to a quarter of the population. The criminals are extremely over represented in the emigrated population - mostly pimps, prostitutes, thieves, drug dealers. I will not make an estimation of percentage, but they are significant. Please do note the difference between "significant" and "majority".

Now coming back to your comment. Firstly it is not about racism, we are Caucasian. Secondly we are discriminated abroad and while it is unfortunate for me whenever I travel or work I completely understand it. Our criminals did a lot of harm. That is why I said a filter would have been better for them and us also.

I don't think this phrase is defensible, because "significant" in that context is very subjective. Nevertheless, the German intelligence estimates there are 2000 extremists that could cause trouble. This is something completely separate from criminals like ordinary robbers or rapists - people with an ideology could be more dangerous, and, unfortunately, every few years they hit headlines in Europe. Everybody is aware of this so nobody is surprised if armed guards ask you if they can look into your bag for example, or there are massive blocks preventing attacks with trucks. So no wonder people long for the old times when they had to deal mainly with local bandits.

[0] https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article233732426/Ver...

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