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Comment by rozularen | Hacker News Reader

Interesting how the immigration policies are the biggest contributing factor to this situation. At least now that the centre-right took the government and is trying to fight against the outcome of those policies, the opposition agrees with their proposed measures.

Meanwhile in other countries (e.g. Spain) the left don't want to face the very same issues (although we don't have that many fireguns related crimes, in our case the weapons of choice are usually machetes, knives, etc...)

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> Interesting how the immigration policies are the biggest contributing factor to this situation.

If you listen to the PM, yes. Another major factor (actually the biggest?) is Sweden's among European countries relatively unique hardline and boneheaded stance on recreational drugs including cannabis, which has contributed to growth and strengthening of criminal gangs who fund themselves and maintain territory by drug trade, simultaneously silently pushing otherwise law-abiding citizens into the criminal sphere, furthering the split into parallel societies. Basically the opposite of the Portugal approach. There are arguments that the law on sex work (buying sexual services is a crime; selling is not) has been having similar effect.

If you believe it was naivete behind the open immigration policy, well, you could still say the same here.

The drug laws in France are the same if not more conservative (they include denial for medical use of cannabis for instance).

Same for euthanasia. At least we have a strong abortion law thanks to Ms Veil and others that fought for it in the 70's.

I am pretty sure that even in France, getting caught with possession of <1g of cannabis while nowhere near a vehicle won't be very likely to get you detained, fined 1000s of EUR-equivalent and having your drivers license restricted pending you showing up for regular urine samples.

This is roughly what you should expect if you get busted carrying one joint in Sweden.

Source: Some people around my social circle smoked back in uni.

Well, this is not that extreme indeed. Is what you are writing a true expectation, or rather an extreme case?

Let's say it's probably a more likely outcome than a police officer on patrol wiffing a smell looking the other way.

Aside: I'm curious what these numbers would be for other European countries:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37758402

> Sweden has about 8600 people in prison so about 37% of their prison population is in there for "drug offenses"

It's true. Took 18months fighting to get drivers license back.

Source: it happened to me.

The main issue is integration, not immigration. City planning and free school choice plays a big part imo. If most immigrants from poor countries end up living in the same areas and having their kids go to the same schools as each other, then you'll inevitably end up with situations like this.

And I'm sure the archaic drug legislation and a few details about the court system play a part too.

> immigrants from poor countries end up living in the same areas

how can this ever be changed? it's a free country so these people have freedom of movement and of course they will choose to live next to their friends and relatives. Unless you propose to forcibly disperse them away from each other?

This is Singapore's strategy, although it's a little softer, since the government runs so much of the housing stock.

Except Singapore does not really allow "immigration" from non vetted people via the employment pass system. Additionally the permanent residence process is heavily controlled with a huge bias (documented via govt stats just in case people are curious) to south east asian immigrants. So the situation is quite different

Singapore has strict immigration policies based on what some see as borderline eugenic criteria. The immigrants that fuel criminal gangs in Sweden would never be allowed to live there.

That’s not always the case, in Australia at least.

You cannot always choose exactly where to live. Initial location can be mandated.

Which tends to be satellite towns that need population or have been selected as strategical requiring population growth.

Immigration and Housing Policy are conversational hot potatoes.

AU social services tends to prefer community building where possible, eg:

https://www.sbs.com.au/voices/creative/the-karen-road-to-nhi...

    Increased resettlement of migrants and refugees in regional Australia has been an on-going focus of the policies of successive governments.

    One recent regional resettlement experience, initiated at the local level, has yielded significant outcomes for a small regional community and the refugees involved.

https://www.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/au/Documents/E...

From: https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/settling-in-australia/settle...

Can you point to any place where integration between widly different cultures worked on the long term? One place where mass immigration didn't result in the erosion of social trust, safety concerns and political divide through ethnic lines?

It's pretty interesting, if you read through the Federalist papers, where they were discussing how to set up the US states/government, they were seriously debating and worried about whether a state full of people from England could coexist next to a state full of people from France. They were seriously worried that even people that similar, from almost the same place and culture, would eventually fracture on their differences and go to war with each other. What a world we live in today in comparison.

Except that was an academic discussion and eventually there were no problems between people of English and French descent, whereas what we're dealing with now is a very real issue and I don't think the so-called cultural differences are the main problem here.

> English and French descent

> descent

30 years after showing up most of them were speaking English and generally living in roughly the same culture (be it Catholic or Protestant) with roughly similar expectations. As opposed to Muslim, East Asian, Aztec, etc.

Like my people were French huguenots (protestants) and rapidly turned into any other VA tobacco farmers

The US was always the melting pot model, where immigrants assimilated into the general American culture. The second generation spoke 'Merican just like the locals. Italians, Germans, Poles, all became standard USians.

And it continues to this very day. Your average latino American or Asian american just about can't assimilate quickly enough most of the time, and within one generation most fully identify as Americans without rejecting the fundamentals of their origin culture. One can wish and wash about racism in U.S. society in many ways but compared to many countries, the country is remarkably effective at assimilating people from extremely diverse places and making them feel like they belong to its society. Canada does a decent job of it too but I've never quite seem any country pull it off as well as the U.S., maybe because it has such a specifically charismatic cultural image from decades of overwhelmingly, globally popular cinema, pop culture and etc.

well, arguably the USofA seems to be doing a relatively decent job managing a multitude of cultures over a few centuries... given that at some point, almost everyone was an immigrant (after a number of violent events removed almost all of the locals)

The US was over 80% white, often over 90% white, for the vast majority of its existence [0]. It was relatively unified in race and culture for the last 400 years. Only since the 1960s/1970s was the immigration floodgates truly opened and the demographics significantly changed. If anything, the way things have been falling apart in the last 50 years is directly contrary to increased diversity of culture being beneficial.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_racial_and_ethnic_d...

Italians, Jews and even Irish were not considered 'white', which was reserved for descendants of British immigrants, due to the general racial theories that dominated the pre-WW2 era.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/12/opinion/colum...

> It was relatively unified in race and culture for the last 400 years. Only since the 1960s/1970s was the immigration floodgates truly opened and the demographics significantly changed. If anything, the way things have been falling apart in the last 50 years is directly contrary to increased diversity of culture being beneficial.

It was relatively unified because blacks were subjugated until 1968, despite the bloodiest civil war in history liberating them from slavery 100 years before that. Where are you coming from with this?

Diversity isn't a problem in itself; we just have no singular culture for everyone to assimilate into so we trend towards chaos. "When in Rome" has never applied here.

chaos is an exaggeration. Somalia is chaos, here it's mostly first-world problems and a massive success compared to the real chaos.

Sure: https://www.sbs.com.au/voices/creative/the-karen-road-to-nhi...

and there are other examples.

Mumbai. But you need major sustained growth, gigantic slums and mafias to keep the peace.

You sure about that? The Shiv Sena would like to disagree, as well as the Marwari-only colonies.

There are no functioning cultures by some definitions.

The United States. Singapore.

These are terrible examples. I absolutely don't want Sweden to turn into either those countries. Extreme class divide in the 1st case, massive judicial injustice, plus the US has kind of been trending downwards since the 1970s... And Singapore is an extremely authoritarian country.

Anyway, these countries have not invited 1 million+ people from a dramatically different(read: backwards) cultures that are completely incompatible. Singapore has invited skilled labor from all over the world.

If 1 million Polish or 1 million Portuguese had migrated to Sweden over the last 20 years, I doubt we would be having such problems.

He asked if there were countries, "where integration between widly[sic] different cultures worked on the long term," and I answered that there were. And it was easy as there are many such examples. This was not a claim that Singapore was superior in every way to Sweden. Merely that multi-cultural countries can be stable and successful. You don't want to live in Singapore, and that's fine, but you all have to move your goalposts away from, "multiculturalism doesn't work," because it absolutely can work.

> the US has kind of been trending downwards since the 1970s

The US and Sweden both had a rough 1970s, and both bounced back pretty well.

> Anyway, these countries have not invited 1 million+ people from a dramatically different(read: backwards) cultures that are completely incompatible.

The US accepts about a million new immigrants every year, give or take, and has forever. The accents have changed somewhat over my lifetime time but almost all of them have been from countries that are poor and experiencing very bad things. It is a core strength of America that we collect people from all over, quickly turn them into Americans, and borrow the best things about where they came from, and call them our own. Some of my ancestors emigrated to America from Sweden, and I will say that I am very glad that they did for the economic opportunities they found here and because I didn't have to grow up in a monoculture.

Although I agree with your general point, that multi cultural societies can work. But those countries are hardly good examples.

A better example would be Switzerland (where I currently reside).

>Extreme class divide in the 1st case

Please. Media hysterics aside, the U.S. is much better than many, many countries on class divide, and incredibly good at turning immigrants from an incredibly broad range of societies into Americans very peacefully with their full, willfull personal involvement. It manages to do this without even forcing integration or making most people feel ashamed of their origins. It's why there are huge ethnic communities spreading around the country to this day despite their children integrating with the essentials of U.S. society.

So much of the claims against the U.S. for the above seem to be based on a deluded idea of how it works in practice with minimal perspective allowed. Compared to most of the world's other big countries and so many smaller ones, the U.S. is incredibly effective at class mobility, social mobility and integrating immigrants peacefully while still allowing vast numbers of them in per year to this day. I don't see Russia or China welcoming one million immigrants per year and peacefully turning them into their own people in all but ethnic origin and underlying pride in cultural roots.

Even western Europe, for all its liberal platitudes, is rife with hardened underlying racism and ethnic social balkanization to a degree that would give even deep red state Americans a run for their money, it just hides it more smoothly (usually).

I would much rather grow up in a poor family in western Europe than anywhere else in the world.

All your arguments are related to migration. I agree there is a lot of racism in Europe. There is a lot of racism everywhere(yes, even in the US).

I am talking about social mobility. Things such as health care, education and the justice system works much, much better for the poor in Europe. Obviously YMMV. Some countries are more backwards than others, France and the UK especially(according to my observations).

While in the US you have to pay tens of thousands of to hundreds of thousands of dollars to go to a good university, in most of Europe all you need are good grades from high school(or equivalent).

Similarly, good health care is accessible to everyone, while in the US it can absolutely bankrupt you, even for the middle class.

Obviously both Europe and the USA are both diverse places. You can't really compare Switzerland to Romania. You can't really compare New York to Georgia.

> these countries have not invited 1 million+ people from a dramatically different(read: backwards) cultures

Sweden's had quite the spread from backwards nations to reach that 1 million (2010 - 2020 inclusive):

* Poland 47,940

* Somalia 46,044

* Germany 26,945

* Finland 26,521

* Denmark 21,792

* United Kingdom 21,285

* Norway 21,265

* United States 19,378

etc. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Sweden#Contempo... )

With the largest number, 177,154 from Syria - more wartorn and shredded by decades of totalitarian dictatorship than intrinsically 'backwards'.

Integration is exponentially harder if you're a (potentially traumatized) and uneducated asylum seeker from a poor country, compared to someone who migrates for work and already holds some qualifications. So, in that sense Sweden's migration policies are to be blamed, since the country has received way more asylum seekers per capita than most other EU countries.

Apparently Sweden has the highest gap between employment rate of citizen and non-EU citizen in the whole European Union. I think it's mainly because so many migrants arrived to seek asylum rather than work. But yes, city planning and ineffective legal system do not exactly help either.

Why would that cause any problems if it's not the immigrants committing the crimes. Yes, immigration is the problem.

A lot of the issue it seems to me is not immigration per sei but who you let immigrate. Let in PhDs and medics and no problems. Let in illiterate drug gangs as in Sweden and much problems.

Yes, people with decent education are almost never causing trouble, no matter the country of origin. They can find legal paths to improving their lives, while migrants with difficult background (and their children) have very difficult time doing that. Sweden isn't like the USA in the 1800's, you need education and decent language skills for any good jobs. Free education is no silver bullet that suddenly turns masses of illiterate people into doctors and economists, because even under such system there's competition for university spots.

Sweden quite simply took in way too many people who would have required a lot of help to integrate, stuffed them into bad neighbourhoods and gave them free money. I'm sure many companies have benefited from this supply of slave labour, but for the society as a whole it has been a disaster.

Uncontrolled immigration can be a problem, since there is no integration that could handle the amount.

Its depends on how its handled. Germany took even more immigrants, and it doesnt have the same issues, at least not to the same degree.

Because Germany took different immigrants.

Sweden was one of the countries which specifically took the refugees that other countries didn't want: Somalian, Eritrean, Syrian, Afghan, etc. If you look at other countries that have taken people from these countries, the same thing has happened but at a lower level. Sweden went as far as it is possible to go, they let anyone in and gave them citizenship immediately...this is the result, that is why they have had particularly severe problems.

I will also gently point out...the recent wave of illegal immigration into Europe is coming from these countries again. Other countries are represented, some of these have their own issues but the specific issues with people from one or two of the countries above (I won't name which) are well-known and exist in every other country they have ended up (in the case of one, this has been going on since the mid-90s...the reason why no-one wanted them before is because countries have tried to take them before...and it didn't work, Sweden had very specific beliefs about integration that guided their decisions...and they turned out to be very wrong).

This is exactly it. Sweden took in the lowest quality immigrants, that did not even have id, lied about which country they're from and many were convicted criminals.

They definitely have issues with immigrant gangs though, and they are looking for solutions, see for example: https://www.dw.com/en/germany-crime-deportations/a-66467396

There it is said that only a third of the gang members are German citizens. They've got like 100 gangs that matter there, and pretty much all are Turkish (Kurds too, not that specific ethnicities matter too much but the point here is that they are immigrant gangs and they are a direct result of the immigrant policies).

I think the biggest difference is that for immigrants, Germany is seen as country where one can prosper, have a good job and a nice car because of its strong economy while Spain is seen as a paradise where you can live a decent life on government subsidies because of its policies, also the weather and culture.

Edit: I must add that here in Spain we have the "okupa" problem where people occupy unused houses for years sometimes before a judge rules they should be taken out.

Squatting is also a problem in France, but in addition it is strongly supported by mainstream political parties.

This creates tension not only with the squatters, but also with their partisans.

Really? Quite a few Germans seem to regret that now.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53517022

https://www.dw.com/en/new-years-eve-in-cologne-5-years-after...

More immigrants per capita?

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