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Comment by sobellian | Hacker News Reader

Would you accept $34k to move to Syria? I have no idea who this incentive is designed for. The (financial) opportunity cost alone totally swamps the incentive before we even consider the risk in living in a volatile dictatorship.

On a macro level, moving people from functional, high-productivity countries to failed states makes even less sense. Totally hapless policy from Sweden here.

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> moving people from functional, high-productivity countries to failed states makes even less sense

Depends who you're moving.

Well no need to be so mysterious about it - is there any group in particular who you'd like to put under Assad's thumb?

Those who fail to benefit the country in which they are guests, though I'm not sure Assad would be the primary recipient.

> Those who fail to benefit the country in which they are guests

That's hardly more specific. In an attempt to steel-man - before you edited your comment (or left another one? hard to tell in the HN UI), you referred to criminals. Well, this incentive is pointed at all migrants, not just criminals. I struggle to understand how law-abiding immigrants don't benefit their host country, yet the Swedish government would like to see them leave as well.

Yes, I edited the comment as I decided that criminals is too narrow. It's really a simple evaluation of whether you extract more value than you produce - which is usually true with criminals but could be expanded to include any migrant who is receiving state benefits while not making efforts to contribute going forward. Now, obviously there are exceptions and caveats but I posit there's a larger group of non-criminal migrants who are still a net-drain on the society that's supporting them.

All illegal immigrants from Syria.

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