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Comment by fxtentacle | Hacker News Reader

It's a strawman and I'm tiring of reading it everywhere. Ukrainians are Europeans, it's normal they're flying to neighbouring countries, that is European ones. Syrians are Middle-Easterners, it would be logical for them to flee to wealthy neighboring countries (most does: Lebanon is hosting millions of them) which are geographically, linguistically, culturally and religiously closer to them like Saudi Arabia or Israel. Europe doesn't owe anything to non-Europeans, especially when there are millions.

This is stretching it. Try buying kvass in Norway! Eastern Europe is in many ways a different planet. It's gradually changing thanks to Schengen workers, but middle easterners have had a bigger presence for longer - and they're actually better integrated in many ways (since they're not just here temporarily to make money, as many Schengen workers are).

Ironically, the only place I've found Ukrainian kvass is in small supermarkets run by middle easterners.

Your argument, stripped down: $UAFoodItem is hard to find, thus Middle Eastern immigrants are better integrated. QED.

No, it's just an illustration, of a dead-common thing in EE being obscure and hard to find here. Most people wouldn't even know what it is.

I explained why middle easterners are often better integrated: they've often been here for longer, and they're usually here to stay. EE right wingers overestimate how much they have in common with us, and have the usual hang-ups about Islam.

> Try buying kvass in Norway!

Easy. I've bought it in Kiwi in Hemsedal (Ulsåk) several times, for example. All Eco Market shops in Oslo as well (run by Ukrainians/Poles btw).

You definitively can't get kvass on your average Kiwi. I can't even get it my local Spar or Mega. But there are always odd exceptions (my local Mega pushes mochi heavily for some weird reason).

Immigrant shops are your best bet, it's true.

My local Spar has "east european foods" shelf. There's no kvas, but a lot of other good stuff though.

>Try buying kvass in Norway!

The immigrant store 150m from where I am right now stocks several brands of kvass.

Willing to bet most people, especially in Europe, work with a lot more Ukrainian contractors already anyway. I know of a bunch of people who have had their devs flee and have worked them out accommodation or accommodation for their families in Poland etc.

Ukranians are like family. You always help family first before strangers. That doesn't mean you don't like the strangers.

It could help if it was more generally known that Steve Jobs was half-Syrian.

Refugees don't typically get work visas, being a refugee is meant to be a temporary situation.

Most likely these workers are working as remote contractors as people still 'based' in Ukraine. (ukraine bank accounts, etc.)

It is much easier to wire money to a ukranian bank account than one in Syria, due to sanctions and other reasons.

The EU has a special status for people fleeing Ukraine right now (afaik including permanent residents, not only nationals) They get a temporary, time-limited right to stay (1 year, possibly extended to 3 years) and this includes the right to work and access to social services and healthcare. See https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/policies/migration-and-asy...

Job market in Poland is open to refugee workers and education system is opened to their children. They'll be even getting PESEL which is national identification number in Poland that citizens get.

Asylees in Norway certainly can get work visas, even before they get an answer to their asylum application. Bank accounts and temporary SSNs are also possible (and probably necessary) to get even before they decide if you get protection.

Well, they are essentially being used to tell us every day EU should close border around Ukraine to make it fair and lock Ukrainians inside. Which is something Putin would like, sure.

By quick google, Norway now established 8000 places for Ukrainian refugees. They in fact took in Syrian refugees too looking at google results - finally ending up with 30000 additional people over that.

And third, the bad situation of Syrian refugees is also because surrounding countries do close refugees to camps with no future for them. No one ever seem to blame them.

> I wonder how Syrian refugees would feel about this, considering that they also fled to EU from a war zone with Russian ranks.

It is a little disingenuous to blame Russians for Syrian refugees, given that we already had tens of millions of people that left Syria before Russia joined the party started by IS and other Islamists and escalated by the US/NATO.

Ask Syrian refugees here in Europe what they actually fled. They fled the bombs dropped by Russia and their Syrian allies. It was Russia and their Syrian allies who were responsible for the majority of civilian casualties and the massive flow of refugees.

Syrian civil war started ~2011, Russia joined in September 2015.

Most of the Syrian refugees came to Europe during the summer of 2015, before Russia even joined.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_civil_war

If we were to be nitpicky, we can even say the number of refugees from Syria in Europe decreased after Russian intervention.

Russian pilots started flying Syrian flagged bombers well before 2015. Russia was the primary weapons supplier to the Syrian regime throughout the conflict.

Sorry, but you are wrong. They are to be blamed with their vetos on 14 [1] UN resolutions since October 2011, covering human rights violations, indiscriminate aerial bombing, the use of force against civilians, toxic chemical weapons, and calls for a meaningful ceasefire, which if had been applied, this debate might not even exist.

[1] https://research.un.org/en/docs/sc/quick

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