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Comment by joe__f | Hacker News Reader

Do you have some historical reference for a time when countries were destroyed by immigration in the past?

Australian Aboriginals ? Native Americans ?

Those weren't immigrants, those were colonizers. Different thing. Immigrants assimilate to the local culture and follow local laws, colonizers force the locals to adopt their laws and culture, or just enslave or kill them.

The argument, such as it is, being made in Sweden and Germany is that immigrants from Syria and other such places (not the immigrants from the US, Norway, Finland, etc) are not assimilating and not following local laws, thus increasing crime rates, etc.

By your comment, they are therefore not immigrants, they are spearhead colonizers.

>By your comment, they are therefore not immigrants, they are spearhead colonizers.

No, obviously they aren't colonizers. These conversations are typically low quality enough without purposely misrepresenting terms.

I agree that they are not colonizers.

None the less, as evidenced by newspaper articles in Germany and Sweden there are many that state that recent immigrants are not assimilating.

By your definition in your comment above, if they do not assimilate then they are .. (in your words) ?

FWiW if immigrants are not assimilating I'd put that down to what resources are being put into integrated housing, education, etc. and whether those resources are stretched, etc.

I understand that this is the argument being pushed primarily by right wing media and politicians, I think it's quite universal and not only in Sweden in Germany. Are you aware of any data that either supports or refutes this claim?

I just peer commented that:

    FWiW if immigrants are not assimilating I'd put that down to what resources are being put into integrated housing, education, etc. and whether those resources are stretched, etc.

which is a crux, given populations can only assimilate so many new people in any given time period and that is mediated by how much effort goes toward welcoming people in.

We have examples in Australia over the past six decades that demonstrate segragated communities with no programmed support remain isolated from mainstream society for longer than communities that are spread about more and given support to find work, learn languages, and have their children make friends with other Australian children.

I don't know enough about Sweden and Germany to comment on the issues they are currently facing.

Yes ok, my take on left wing media's spin here is that it often boils down to 'right wing media are only interested in identity politics and racist dog whistles'. I don't entirely disagree with this, but it doesn't go very far to address the legitimate concerns of the people who live in affected areas.

Nice to see an example that there can be a positive outcome with allocated resources. I'm not sure how it would affect their electability among affected populations, but (I'm in the UK and) I'd like to see Labour addressing this problem by proposing solutions like you're suggesting.

There was colonizers and immigrants, both have negative impacts for the respective peoples I'm sorry to say.

I'm definitely not anti-immigration, not even close, but to say that it didn't have a negative impact on those native people seems strange?

In the long run, positive impacts yes.

Pretty hard to claim the migrants are coming with advanced weapons, unknown diseases, and/or large organized armies.

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