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Comment by em-bee | Hacker News Reader

you are contradicting yourself. patriotism being considered right wing is exactly why germans prefer to feel european. and it's not only germany, everywhere else in europe too people consider german patriotism as rightwing.

while i lived in germany, when i traveled abroad telling people i live in germany the reaction was noticeably different compared to later when i moved to austria.

people outside of germany assume that germans are as patriotic as they are for their own country. combined that with hate crimes in germany making headlines and you can easily see how people think about germans.

when angela merkel welcomed all refugees during the syria crisis it was the first time i felt proud to have lived there. (officially recognizing dual citizenship was the second. you can say what you want about germans, but at least their laws in this area are developing in the right direction. they recently made it easier to get german citizenship too)

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>when angela merkel welcomed all refugees during the syria crisis it was the first time i felt proud to have lived there.

This national delusion and inability to separate the harsh reality from wishful thinking, is why Germany is going to shit and why many skilled Germans are emigrating to places like Switzerland and the US with saner policies and stricter immigration laws. My current boss is the third one I'm seeing emigrate to the US where they're happier than in Germany and get better healthcare. And I lost track on how many colleagues I saw move to CH in the last 10 years.

I expect the politicians I vote for and pay half my salary every month to take care of their own citizens first and foremost and not prioritize outsiders who aren't their citizens/voters using my tax Euros.

Has every homeless and starving citizen of Germany been taken care of with a roof over their head and food? No? Then where are you going to house and feed all those foreign refugees you're bringing in? With what money? If you have money for refugees you should have for the locals as well first and foremost.

Has every citizen of Germany received timely healthcare in the public system and easy to find a place in kindergartens/school/Hausarzt? No, because you have a shortage of doctors and teachers? Then how is importing more unskilled foreigners gonna make these public staff shortages better for the local citizens?

This is not "right wing extremism" take, it's just basic economics and survivorship common sense based on availability of limited resources by respecting democratic principles of the citizens.

So politicians, please don't use my tax money to care for foreigners when you haven't yet taken care of the locals who pay your wages and fund the public systems we need. Please perform your virtue signaling on how generous and welcoming you are using your own private money and properties, not the taxpayers'. Because it's very easy to be generous with someone else's money.

and exactly where should these refugees have gone to instead? you think the situation is better anywhere else?

the problems you mention are not unique to germany. and yes, it baffles me why no country can recognize that the only way to solve those problems is to put more resources into education. but denying refugees a save harbor is not going to improve your life one bit. those two issues are completely unrelated to each other.

the question is that of a general attitude towards others. people who favor their own over refugees tend to also favor them over their neighbors, and when that happens we have a problem.

let not a man glory in that he loves his country; let him rather glory in this, that he loves the world.

Depends on the 'culture' and 'values' of the refugees. Maybe those are exactly the reasons for the failure of their states?

>and exactly where should these refugees have gone to instead?

I don't know and I don't care since it's not a problem I created and I don't want my taxe Euros to be used on global charity, I want them used on the local citizens first and foremost. Why didn't the wealthy neighboring countries that are similar in culture like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, etc. take them in? Why must it be always the liberal European countries far away in charge of charity?

Imagine the local native American/Australian people seeing the British/European colonizers arrive on boats on their land and welcome them saying "where should these people go to instead?" instead of fighting them to kick them out. Or the Why would you ever welcome invaders? Hasn't history shown what happens over and over again? The culture with the most valance dominates the others. Why do you think random parts in the middle of Africa speak French?

> but denying refugees a save harbor is not going to improve your life one bit. those two issues are completely unrelated to each other.

How so? Less people coming to compete for access to limited healthcare and housing will definitely improve the life of the locals. It's just the basic economics of supply/demand. Do you think arithmetic is wrong? Denying this would be some advanced form of cope/delusion.

If those refugees would be such valuable human resources like skilled doctors and teachers with a great culture of assimilation, then all their wealthy neighboring countries I mentioned above would be fighting over them to bring them over instead of rejecting them. You don't want to import the dross that nobody else wants, so then why is Europe doing it?

> people who favor their own over refugees tend to also favor them over their neighbors, and when that happens we have a problem.

Maybe this kind of gaslighting and guilt tripping works on some people with luxury beliefs, not on me though. I like to be realistic on the economic realities and scarcity of resources. Noting personal against anyone or any group of people.

>let not a man glory in that he loves his country; let him rather glory in this, that he loves the world.

Luxury beliefs and virtue signaling. Feel free to engage in them as much as you like, but on your own dime.

it's not a problem I created

but it's a problem we all have to live with, so the only way out is to do something about it. we can't just ignore it.

Why didn't the wealthy neighboring countries that are similar in culture like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, etc. take them in?

most of them actually went to turkey, followed by lebanon and jordan as distant second and third. germany only took half a milion from a total of more than 5 million. the countries you mention are separated from syria by a large desert without a practical way to travel there, so it's not surprising they didn't go there.

Imagine the local native American/Australian people seeing the British/European colonizers arrive

sorry what? how does colonisation in any way compare with being a refugee? while it is true that at there were many escaping religious prosecution, the problem was that they overwhelmed the natives by the numbers and with greed. not to speak of what happend in africa. noone went there to escape anything. to compare colonization with refugees seeking shelter is quite frankly insulting.

Luxury beliefs and virtue signaling. Feel free to engage in them as much as you like, but on your own dime.

you bet i am. but it's not a luxury. it's an absolute necessity. only if we improve conditions everywhere in the world can we improve our own lives too. the worlds countries are way to interdependent for any country to be able to go on their own.

>refugees seeking shelter

I'm not legally nor morally obliged to provide them shelter, not do I wish to with my tax money. "No taxation without representation." It should be the voters' choice what to do with their tax money and I vote to provide shelter first to the local EU nationals. When there are no locals struggling to afford shelter, then we can talk about helping strangers from other places. No matter what you do, there will always be people suffering on the planet. It's not my job to help them all with my tax money nor is it realistically possible.

>only if we improve conditions everywhere in the world can we improve our own lives too.

Kneecapping our economy and our working class' standard of living in the noble pursuit of fixing the world's issues is not the choice most taxpayers want (see the swing in election results) nor is it realistically achievable no matter how much you reduce your heating/AC and how many paper straws you use when another Exxon oil tanker dumps its waste in the ocean as we speak and the likes of Nestle keep destroying the planet for profit and China and India are burning more cheap fossil fuel.

As long as the global economy revolves around greed of destroying the environment and privatizing the winnings in the pockets of a few multinational corporations and socializing the losses to the governments, environment and the working class taxpayers, your individual actions and sacrifices are in vain, while you're proposing the European working class should pay for this damage when it's not their fault nor responsibility since they're not profiting from this.

So squeezing the European working class further into poverty, in the name of some virtue signaling for the sake of the world (which the US, India, China and the Middle East aren't doing), is how you get another Adolf elected in Europe.

I'm not legally nor morally obliged to provide them shelter

i beg to differ. morally we absolutely are obliged to give them shelter.

When there are no locals struggling to afford shelter, then we can talk about helping strangers from other places

most of the germans who are homeless failed to take advantage of available support to get it, not because they couldn't afford it. otherwise if they didn't get support then the problem is a failure in the bureaucracy, not a lack of available space or resources. it is a fallacy to think that refusing help to refugees would improve the situation for locals. if it was that simple we could have solved those problems a long time ago.

this is the kind of rhetoric that stirs up xenophobia and plays into the hands of the kind of politicians that according to your last paragraph you also don't want to see elected.

>morally we absolutely are obliged to give them shelter.

We'll have to agree to disagree.

>most of the germans who are homeless failed to take advantage of available support to get it

What if the system is poorly designed getting people slipping through the nets? I don't agree being so dismissive and throwing all the blame onto them.

> it is a fallacy to think that refusing help to refugees would improve the situation for locals

It's not a fallacy, it's basic economics.

>this is the kind of rhetoric that stirs up xenophobia and plays into the hands of the kind of politicians that according to your last paragraph you also don't want to see elected.

Then maybe the politicians should fucking listen for once and actually do what the people want them to do instead of doing something else and being shocked people don't like it.

What if the system is poorly designed getting people slipping through the nets? I don't agree being so dismissive and throwing all the blame onto them.

i am not, see my next sentence: "otherwise if they didn't get support then the problem is a failure in the bureaucracy, not a lack of available space or resources."

the point is, what ever the reason for being homeless, it is not because refugees took away resources.

do what the people want them to do instead of doing something else and being shocked people don't like it

but that doesn't work if the people are being misled about the cause of the problems they are facing.

>but that doesn't work if the people are being misled about the cause of the problems they are facing.

Who says people are being mislead? You? Isn't it how democracy should work? If Mainstream politicians refuse to listen to the people why are they surprised when they elect an autocrat who promises to do what the others don't want to listen to?

people are being misled by the claim that refugees and other immigrants are the cause for their problems. and that stopping refugees and immigrants and sending them back will improve our lives. it won't.

our problems are caused by greed, selfishness and ignorance. we need to learn to care for others if we want to solve our problems. the homeless aren't being helped by sending refugees away. if we want to eliminate homelessness we need to actually investigate and address the causes that make them homeless. we need to treat them with dignity. the same goes for unemployment. "creating more jobs" isn't enough.

education is really the only way out. in our country and anywhere else. education will improve peoples lives and it will stop wars and conflict. and it will help us learn how to solve our problems.

"and exactly where should these refugees have gone to instead? you think the situation is better anywhere else? "

why should we care?

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