Comment by throwawayqqq11 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwawayqqq11 | Hacker News Reader

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> The refusal to treat large scale immigration as a cultural and economic phenomneon

> and insult opponents of this position as racist

On the other hand, you treat the negative effects of current immigrant milieus as eternal and innert to their ancestry (dare to say: genes).

This way, you can look at integration as if it has to happen in a single generation and also, allows you to ignore the more important part of diminishing social mobility, which effects the natives as much.

Look at germany, where after WW2, alot of turkish "guest workers" were invited and stayed. After several generations the descendant of those immigrants are as german as you can be. They are still soft muslims, drink alcohol, engage with german bureaucracy, have a heavy turkish accent -- some of them are even candidates for the far right AfD. Please note, they migrated into an economic boom.

Isnt that utterly ridiculous? When time proves you wrong, it reveals your narrow mindedness.

And when you reduce immigrants to percieved negative innert properties, isnt that racist? When you broaden your scope, youll see the bigger problems are elsewhere, dont get distracted by bigotted populists, that are as clueless about problems or their solutions.

> hand, you treat the negative effects of current immigrant milieus as eternal amd innert to their ancestry (dare to say: genes).

I don't think they did say any of this. I don't understand why people who debate against limiting immigration (and it often is only this way round) continually mis-represent the person's clear, stated concern and try and replace it. It is a completely transparent attempt, and no one is fooled. This isn't 2015 when an accusation of racism was taken seriously, because who would mis-accuse someone of such an awful thing? Well, it turned out millions of people would do that. The US President would do it[0].

As for the genetics comment, this is ridiculous on its face as well. Race and culture are in no way tied. But culture survives for many generations, particularly when the immigrating group is large enough. This is obvious. Germans in the 1900s could move almost anywhere in the world and become the best brewers in the region, not because they have the genotype of a brewer, but because they had (and still have) an incredible brewing tradition handed down from parent to child. Culture doesn't change because you move into another country. It moves because you assimilate, make lots of native friends, and learn the language. Lots and lots of people are not doing that.

[0] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/kyle-rittenhouses-mothe...

I think racism comes from a cognitive bias, that eg, lets you read a text without ever engaging with the broader explanation offered (social mobility, time scale of integration) but instead engange with a side remark about genes.

GP ties negative properties to entire groups without differenciation, this is by definition racist.

To end on a constructive upside, if GP was really concerned about eg womens rights, any kind of stateful intervention should only target that. By being racist and eg trying to associate this issue with brown skins, stateful intervention becomes sweeping. By being more precise, migration politics that targets them all becomes social politics wich only effects some.

Can you see it now?

> By being racist and eg trying to associate this issue with brown skins

I have only seen you associate cultural issues and non-integration from mass immigration as being race-related. I have no idea who you think you're talking about when you say people are doing this.

> GP ties negative properties to entire groups without differenciation, this is by definition racist.

Only if they're racial groups, and you're literally the only one trying to box people up by their skin colour.

>On the other hand, you treat the negative effects of current immigrant milieus as eternal and innert to their ancestry

A bad faith misrepresentation of the issue. The issue is why should existing citizens have to suffer the backwards views of the immigrant population while immigrants "assimilate over multiple generations"? Why should the host country have to absorb increased crime, feeling less safe, having their culture changed, etc for the sake of the immigrant population? Where does this supposed moral impetus come from?

Congrats, you touched my time scale argument, the other commenter didnt engage with anything important. Unfortunately you didnt touch the systemic problem of social mobility, which is much more striking.

To return the facor, the "moral impetus" comes from not elevating your culture as the only origing of truth, goodness, etc., but instead codify common basic needs, human dignity, etc. into law and sanction/integrate nased on this.

Im not saying that immigrarion is frictionless, the same way you non-racist arent saying, some undesirable negative traits (like crime) cannot emerge in the native population without immigration. The solution to native or migrant crime is identical.

Why you should take the hassle and hopefully adress social mobility and organize integration? Because of demographics and economic contribution -- the bigger picture yet again.

>To return the facor, the "moral impetus" comes from not elevating your culture as the only origing of truth, goodness, etc.

A country doesn't need to see its culture as an objective ideal to justify protecting its citizens from non-citizens that would victimize, cause discord, or otherwise strain the social fabric and institutions. A government's first and most important mandate is to act in the interests of its citizens. What impetus does a nation have to help non-citizens at the expense of the prosperity and comfort of citizens?

Immigrants economic contributions are net-positive, its not at the expense of anyone bc economies are no zero sum games. This is scientific consens.

Protecting citizens with closed borders and potentially harming them in the long term with or protecting them with capable institutions based on individual cases? (Hope you see the racism trick question here.)

>Immigrants economic contributions are net-positive

No they are not. Studies of Danish Ministry of Finance and independent institutions say otherwise.

https://docs.iza.org/dp8844.pdf

There was a study done in Sweden on the economics of immigration during the large immigration crisis of 2015, and the result was a significant net-negative of 7 800 € per person per year. Taking in a large number of refugees with significant lower education and overall wealth compared to existing populations, with a welfare and healthcare system that Sweden has, cost significant more than what it produce in increased taxes.

There is the concept of social dumping where municipalities try to get immigrants on welfare to move to other municipalities in order to reduce costs and balance the budget, and those other municipalities are now complaining loudly that their budgets have major deficits because of this strategy. Schools also complain about this issue since a large influx of low-income citizens put an increase budget costs without any increase in tax revenue, meaning higher costs and fewer teachers per student.

A more recent study in 2025, ordered by the government, calculated that the cost per refugee today to be around 2 500€ per year per person, while work related immigration gave a positive benefit of 4 800€ per year per person. This report however do not account for increase crime, integration initiatives, increased cost to the education system, health care and other things.

It should also be mentioned that only about 1/3 of refugees ever becomes economical self-sufficient.

Your comment comes across as very dishonest. You provide alot of subtext without clear statements.

> Taking in a large number of refugees with significant lower education and overall wealth

Implies education and wealth is needed for the workforce. It is not. Just a strawman.

> healthcare system that Sweden has, cost significant more than what it produce in increased taxes

How profitable are swedish schools? Rhetorical question to highlight your dumb-think. Services cost money, they are not meant to produce anything else.

> There is the concept of social dumping

> Schools also complain about this issue

Which can also be explained with regular budget pressure from neoliberal fiscal hawks. I dont know the swedish specifics.

> This report however do not account for crime ...

Which allows you to vaguely gesture / associate yet again.

Unfortunately, you didnt link any studies. Searching for "economic contribution migration" on any scientific platform, comes out as unanimously net-positive.

Here is the OECD saying the same.

https://www.oecd.org/en/topics/sub-issues/economic-impact-of...

> It should also be mentioned that only about 1/3 of refugees ever becomes economical self-sufficient.

First generarion? And yet again you just glimpse at it without explanation. Whats the subtext here? Lazyness? Genetic inferiority? Without an explanation, this isnt an argument for anythig, yet tou yield it like it was. And that is dishonest. So understand better, i could use it as an argument myself, "see how bad systemetic discrimination is!?"

The internet abuses cognitive biases around cultural self-identity and foreign disgust and in the end, people group together, thinking they are the reasonable ones, the more educated...

You lack basic knowledge of how Sweden work and seem to construct a straw man arguments based on that lack of knowledge.

In Sweden everyone must by law go through basic education as children, and all education is free, including higher education. The government get no profits from schools as there is no fees for the government to collect. It is all paid through taxes. Your are using that "dumb-think" of yours, assuming that immigration from countries that does not provide basic education for all their citizens will have the same level of education as people from countries that do.

> Which can also be explained with regular budget pressure from neoliberal fiscal hawks. I dont know the swedish specifics.

You clearly do not understand how Sweden operate or how local government functions, are clearly too lazy to look it up. The budget for municipalities primarily comes from local taxes, paid by citizens that live in that region. There are a national budget posts that get distributed between municipalities, but they only cover some parts of the local budget. Regions with a lot of high income and high tax paying citizens will have more money to spend than regions with a lot of citizens that are unemployed and on welfare.

And naturally I can give you links to Swedish articles that also direct you to the research study and the government study, in Swedish. https://frihetsnytt.se/invandringens-pris-vad-farska-studien...

1/3 of refugees never becomes economical self-sufficient. That is basic statistical fact. If you don't like the statistics you can pretend that math is racism or something dishonest like that. The plain fact is that taking in refugees has costed Sweden money, and the more refugees that comes in the higher the cost is. The math doesn't say if the cost isn't morally worth it, or if refugees children or children children will some day repay the cost, or if then it is worth to pay a cost now for a possible profit in the future that we don't know. All the math say is that there is a cost per person and year from taking in refugees that will not be repaid by those refugees.

> 1/3 of refugees never becomes economical self-sufficient

I am not questioning this, or that math is racist. You are misrepresenting me, which is dishonest. My main point is why and what you make of it.

And you yield statistics as a definite conclusion, while you kind of contradict yourself.

> The plain fact is that taking in refugees has costed Sweden money

> The math doesn't say if the cost isn't morally worth it [in the future]

> All the math say is that [...cost...] _will_ not be repaid by those refugees

I assume this is just a slight grammar slip but i can think i can call the broader argument dishonest again, because like i said way earlier, by narrowing down the time scope, you are constructing partial views as arguments. Its like saying "brushing your teeth costs money, but is it really worth it?" I repeat, services cost money and integration isnt frictionless.

When you see immigrants as just people subject to socialization, that want a stable and fullfilling live, as much as you do, you woudnt make sweeping selective arguments and oppose immigration in total. The debate subject changes from immigration:yes/no to how/why. This perspective is missing today and i repeat/paraphrase yet again, the problems immigration are not soley caused them but can arise/effect natives as much. A broader discussion would address this too...

> Immigrants economic contributions are net-positive, its not at the expense of anyone bc economies are no zero sum games.

It's at the expense of women and their safety, for example. Between years 2010 and 2015, 60% of rapes in Sweden were perpetuated by people of foreign origin: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8330751/. That was back when foreigners made up about 20% of their population, which I think is now over 30%, extrapolating, the immigrant rape problem is likely even worse. At what point do we stop putting economic growth over the well being and safety of citizens?

This is just another example of Americans projecting the unique American context to the rest of the world. As the other commenter stated, immigrants aren't universally an economic benefit to the host country. The particulars of the immigrant and the context are highly relevant to outcomes.

Aside from that, this elevation of economic concerns as paramount is a strange outgrowth of Americas unique position of economic powerhouse with shallow cultural roots. You cannot expect other countries to also see economic growth as the metric that subsumes all other concerns. Harm is multifaceted and is very much up to local sensibilities to determine what they value and how to preserve it.

> cultural and economic phenomenon

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