Comment by em-bee | Hacker News Reader

Comment by em-bee | Hacker News Reader

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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.

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