Main reason for seeing 'multiculturalism' as a failure

[Tee Kay]

2. They exist because people have extremist viewpoints that have transcended into violence and threaten our citizens.

Multiculturalism not necessary.

3. They exist because they imported their extremist viewpoints from other countries.

As if Your Culture doesn't have your own brand of extremists.

4. They were able to import their extremist viewpoints because of loose immigration policies.

"Loose immigration policies"? I know people who have to deal with the Department of Immigration and Citizenship here and I can tell you that's definitely not the case.

I just don't get it. Why would you want to blindly admit anyone into your nation when you can filter out those who would be a negative force on your society and get the best quality immigrants possible.

That's the thing. Australia at least does not "blindly" admit anyone into the country, and ultimately it shouldn't. If you don't have close family here and aren't in the "high demand" occupations (like doctors and engineers) and don't speak English then you can forget about coming to Australia. We accept refugees only if they come by plane; ie, rich ones. Now, I support immigration reform here, closing some loopholes but at the same time opening new opportunities for immigrants and refugees, but a multicultural policy is not an open borders policy.

Well, you don't have a lot of Muslims, and you don't have a lot of them coming from problematic societies.

1.7% of the population here are Muslim. It's 0.8% in the United States, 2% in Denmark and Sweden, 2.7% in the United Kingdom, 3% in Belgium and 4% in Germany. France is by far the highest in Western Europe at 6%. It's not like Europeans are really being swamped by Muslims either.

As for Muslims from problematic countries, here in Melbourne I've met Bosnians, Afghans, Somalis, Sudanese, Turks and Iranians. We've 80,000 Iraqis here and 20,000 Pakistanis.

You do not have a lot of immigrants lend themselves to problems.

You're kidding. 25% of our population is foreign-born.

And even with that there's been plenty of problems with Muslims in Australia. You have no shortage of globally controversial Islamic clerics per capita. Why would you want to have an influential Islamic cleric comparing women who utilize western liberal freedoms as "meat," and blaming the victim when they are victims of sexual assaults?

a) I think he actuallly has a good point, you've got to take measures to protect yourselves in public and b) more importantly, you've the right to freedom of speech no matter how unsensitive it is.

But really, you don't have enclaves of problematic communities. Your Muslims are Turkish, Bosnian, Lebanese and Indonesian, traditionally more liberal societies.

If I get a dollar every time I hear or read about Germans complaining about their Turks not assimilating...

But just because we have a good system doesn't mean that we can't improve upon it. And it doesn't mean that 9/11 couldn't have been prevented with a better immigration system.

Terrorist operatives don't get to be terrorist operatives without knowing how to conceal himself and his true motives. If I was an Al Qaeda operative I'd be presenting myself to Immigration as a liberal ex-Muslim. I'd have little trouble entering the country or even immigrating unless the system excludes all Muslims, which is probably not what you're advocating.

To deal with terrorism, we don't need an exclusionary immigration system, we need better intelligence.

 

[BuckeyeJim]

Yes, I said multiculturalism isn't necessary for number 2. Yes, I have acknowledged that we have home grown extremists, and religious sects of people who abuse others. This does not mean that we should have an extremely loose immigration policy that will exacerbate the control of violence further than it already is. It would be much easier for us to address sexual abuse in Amish and the Mormons if we have a had a more pragmatic approach to allowing Somali's to immigrate and create a completely alien problem to mainstream culture. By being forced to address FGM on our soil, we are diverting resources that could be used in some other mutually exclusive alternative. At your comment about number four, I'm not talking about Australia specifically. I was talking about nations where problems associated with immigration exist. Perhaps one reason why Australia seems to have a lower rate is because they have a more stringent policy than France. However, you agree with my simple position about closing loopholes. That is what I am advocating here. Identifying problems, identifying multi-faceted causation for these problems, and ultimately developing solutions to prevent the problems from occurring in the first place. Solutions like: closing loopholes that encourage and allow the importation of extremist ideology and potentially violent individuals from entering into western liberal democracies.

When I was speaking about immigrants in individual nations, particularly Muslims who pose the greatest objective threat to our societies, I was not speaking in percentages. I do not think percentages are an adequate measure of problematic populations. Your nation may have 2% Muslim populations, but the number that constitutes that percentage is quite small. And they are scattered across the nation. And, as you said, you have standards for them to immigrate that are stiffer than the UK and France. And, like I said before, your nation predominately has Muslim immigrants Europe and secular Arab nations, including Iraq. I know that you have immigrants from other Islamic cultures. But it is raw quantity and concentration that has a tendency to generate heard mentality. If you only have a small number of Somali's that are scattered or surrounded in your nation, they will have less tendency to embrace extremist ideology. But if you have them in large concentrations and if they begin to take on anti-social behaviors, you will have problems like we do here in Ohio. The Somalis were brought here out of kindness. It was an invitation. This area has bent over backwards to accommodate them but their numbers have grown and extremism, while not by any means predominate, is present and becoming more of a problem.

When I was speaking of immigrant populations I missed a word. I know Australia has 25% immigrants. But the vast majority of those immigrants come from backgrounds that allow them to easily blend and adapt to your society. You have a very small quantitative number of immigrants coming from problematic backgrounds compared to the UK, France, and Germany.

Your last comment doesn't make much sense. It's like your saying they will find ways around our systems so we should just stop trying to combat terrorism. You're correct that we need to improve our intelligence gathering systems, but we also need to do everything in our power to vet immigrants so that we don't have a failure like we did on 9/11.

 

[Tee Kay]

Solutions like: closing loopholes that encourage and allow the importation of extremist ideology and potentially violent individuals from entering into western liberal democracies.

That's the thing. Our legal system already discourages violence and extremism. We already extensively check immigrants' backgrounds and criminal records. So what more can we do? Exclusion based on a "potentially violent" criterion means punishing people for crimes they have not committed, and that's not western liberal democracies should stand for.

When I was speaking about immigrants in individual nations, particularly Muslims who pose the greatest objective threat to our societies, I was not speaking in percentages. I do not think percentages are an adequate measure of problematic populations. Your nation may have 2% Muslim populations, but the number that constitutes that percentage is quite small. And they are scattered across the nation.

We're comparing the demographic composition of different countries. Absolute numbers aren't very helpful here. India has far more Muslims than Egypt, but which country is dominated by Muslims?

The vast majority of Australian Muslims can be found in the two largest capital cities: Sydney and Melbourne. So, no, they're not really "scattered", either. In some Melbourne or Sydney suburbs 20 or 30% of residents are Muslims. Go to rural towns like, say, Dubbo, NSW, and the Muslim population there is negligible. IIRC it's a similar situation in Europe, where immigrants also tend to settle in major cities.

The point was the concentration of Muslims in many European countries like Denmark or Sweden aren't really significantly higher than in Australia, and the point stands.

If you only have a small number of Somali's that are scattered or surrounded in your nation, they will have less tendency to embrace extremist ideology. But if you have them in large concentrations and if they begin to take on anti-social behaviors, you will have problems like we do here in Ohio.

Yes, we do have areas where immigrants settle in larger numbers than average. In fact I live in one such area. I'm not denying there can be problems absorbing immigrants (people who expects immigrants to settle, feel grateful and assimilate right away are kidding themselves) but things like high crime rates, anti-social behaviors, etc aren't exclusive to immigrant communities and it's less a critic of the policy of multiculturalism as it is of law enforcement and availability of economic opportunities. There have been racially-motivated assault in my area, but what's needed in these sort of instances is fair and level-headed law enforcement without panicked finger-pointing or ostracizing a particular ethnic group.

Your last comment doesn't make much sense. It's like your saying they will find ways around our systems so we should just stop trying to combat terrorism. You're correct that we need to improve our intelligence gathering systems, but we also need to do everything in our power to vet immigrants so that we don't have a failure like we did on 9/11.

I'm saying a "better" immigration system, ie one that according to you should screen for "potentially violent" people, actually does little to combat terrorist without the accompanying improvement in intelligence, so we actually know which people are in fact extremist and violent and which are just ordinary tourists or law-abiding people genuinely wanting a fresh start as an immigrant, and not simply unfairly targeting a particular group of people defined by their ethnicity, nationality, religion, economic or social background.

Also, 9/11 is not a failure of immigration policies/multiculturalism. For one thing the hijackers weren't immigrants. None of them had US citizenship. Muhammad Atta, the guy who flew one of the planes into WTC, entered the US on a business visa. The hijackers from Saudi Arabia arrived on tourist visas courtesy of the American-Saudi alliance in the form of a program that essentially allowed Saudi nationals to jump the queue without having to prove their identities. All were trained by Al Qaeda to blend into Western society and culture (as much as A-rabs can anyway). Airport officials, in the absence of good intelligence, wouldn't have any more reason to deny these sort of people entry into the country than they would with rich businessmen from the UAE, or a liberal-minded novelist from Egypt, or a doctor from Syria.

 

[Arwon]

You know the best thing about that whole silly Sheik Hilaly "uncovered meat" comment? Mate of mine was talking to his conservative Christian grandparents about it, and they were saying how awful it was, and he pointed out that they agreed with the sentiments expressed, and they recognised this, but said it wasn't okay coming from Muslims.

Also: Muslims "scattered around"? Well yeah, I guess some live in Auburn (40% Muslim), some in Lakemba (20% Arabic-speaking, 20% Muslim)...

 

[Loppan Torkel]

That's the thing. Australia at least does not "blindly" admit anyone into the country, and ultimately it shouldn't. If you don't have close family here and aren't in the "high demand" occupations (like doctors and engineers) and don't speak English then you can forget about coming to Australia. We accept refugees only if they come by plane; ie, rich ones. Now, I support immigration reform here, closing some loopholes but at the same time opening new opportunities for immigrants and refugees, but a multicultural policy is not an open borders policy.

Thanks for the clarification. I was wondering about the success you've had. Multiculturalism with a high degree of selection to increase the competitiveness of the nation, why would anyone argue against that? Of course there are moral aspects to consider if you don't live in a giant island far from any problematic areas.

I would've appreciated if this was brought forth at the beginning of the discussion when I asked about your selectiveness. So, your version of multiculturalism is terrific only under certain conditions, yours specifically?! If you for a minute avoid bringing Germany or France up, what would you suggest a nation such as Sweden, which obviously at the very least does as much as Australia to ease up the entry into a new society but doesn't have the luxury of being as selective, to do to solve or decrease the integration issues that de facto exist or will continue to increase under current policies?

 

[Arwon]

Taillless: Don't forget about 40% of the permanent settlement in Australia is family vias for people already hjere as refugees or skilled migrants, rather than for skilled migrants themselves, and a lot of people enter under schemes other than the straight "needed skills" programs. Employers and states bring in all sorts of not partiuclarly high-skilled people. The list of needed jobs changes every year - for a while it was hairdressers, for example.

Loppan: TBH it sounds like Sweden doesn't have much of an actual problem so much as a perception problem. The most telling thing is the way you guys keep quoting tiny numbers as though they're scary.

 

[metatron]

[...]

 

[Loppan Torkel]

TBH it sounds like Sweden doesn't have much of an actual problem so much as a perception problem. The most telling thing is the way you guys keep quoting tiny numbers as though they're scary.

We're doing alright, but probably not as good as you and it's not due to us not giving immigrants a chance or incentives to integrate. There's obviously some discrimination as in any society, but less so than in most. What annoys me is the persistent belief that lumping people of different cultures together would have some sort of inherent economical benefit. It doesn't. If you're selective, it might be beneficial, but if you don't have that luxury, you should be clearsighted enough to understand that things will not sort themselves out when left for themselves. You either restrict your immigration policies or you need to have a good understanding of cultures and religions and a plan for realistic plan for integration. (Unless your a politician on the left and rely on the support from weaker demographics - then, having populations with a high reliance on social welfare is a good thing)

I'm not sure of what numbers you refer to. The ones I've presented have been relevant in my mind.

 

[Arwon]

Humanitarian visas are not about economics. Working visas are.

 

[Loppan Torkel]

Humanitarian visas are not about economics. Working visas are.

So?! we still face different realities when accepting asylum seekers it seems.

 

[Yeekim]

BuckeyeJim:

 

[Camikaze]

And they are scattered across the nation.

As has been pointed out (specifically for Muslims), this is not the case when it comes to pretty much every recent immigrant group I can think of (i.e. post White Australia immigrant groups). Concentration is heavy in the suburbs of the major cities. You will be hard pressed to find more multicultural cities than Melbourne and Sydney. The only one I can think of that holds a candle to them is London.

 

[sav]

I started a thread asking why every other thread was mostly about US politics when there was so much more to talk about, and it got shut down as 'spam'.

 

[Tee Kay]

... in fact I'd edit that post if I don't want an infraction for PDMA.

Answer to your question: because half the posters here, generally the more vocal half, are Americans.

 

[BuckeyeJim]

taillesskangaru: I know that Australia has a productive immigration system. My points on what differentiates your nation still stand and I won't waste our time repeating them. When it comes to not admitting people based on what they may potentially do I disagree somewhat. Immigration policies in Australia, and any sane western nation, will have caps and quotas. There will be specific allotments as to how many immigrants can come into the nation. It is in my opinion that immigration should be rooted around what produces the best result. If you have a pool of applicants then we should pick out who we believe will make the best fit, and contribute the most to our society. So if I have a person who has a murky background, and someone who's exceptionally skilled and passionate about becoming a citizen and living here, why would I leave the door open to a potential future problem?

I don't understand why you don't think raw numbers matter. England has five small burroughs that contain more Muslims than you have spread across your entire continent. Heard mentality isn't something that is a figment of our imaginations. It is very real. And when you end couple a poor filtration method with a high concentration of people from suspect countries you are going to have problems. Your 300,000 Muslims are spread out across the suburbs of two enormous metropolitan areas and are from predominately secular/liberal Islamic nations. England has that kind of number concentrated over an a tight area, and they have immigrants from more suspect locations. It takes an extreme level of deniability to ignore quantitative populations as a problem. Also, the quantitative raw number of Muslims in India is most certainly a contributor to tensions in India. High concentrations of Muslims will lead to higher concentrations of extremist viewpoints, and allow it to proliferate. I am not concerned about Norway or Denmark; those are faux criticisms. I am concerned about Sweden, where Al-Shabab has been able to actively recruit and send teenage Somali's to wage jihad and establish an Islamic state in Somalia. The neighborhoods that high numbers of Somali's live in Sweden are exceptionally concentrated. And there are Somali's that know that nobody in Sweden will do anything to question them. When you couple Sweden's laissez faire multiculturalist policies, their loose standards for immigrating Somali's, and high concentrations of people that are coming from one of the most radicalized populations on earth, you are going to have problems. And they do have problems. And Sweden's insistence on not questioning or monitoring the Somali's in the first place has helped roll the rock from the start. You guys insist that small percentage points of a population cannot change things, but Sweden was extremely leery about marking Al-Shabab as a terrorist group because they feared violent backlash! To this point, it's easy to see how concentrated, maladjusted, populations can hold sway and carry great power in our nations. Need we discuss the Prophet Mohamed cartoons? Single digit proportions of a populace pushing the nations they live in to conform to their anti-western ideas and beliefs.

I agree with the first part of your last comment. And somewhat agree with your second comment. When we read the 9-11 commission report we find out what allowed the problem to happen, and what methods we could implement to prevent it from happening again. Intelligence is undoubtedly a primary player. But so wasn't immigration. Those items you note are still a part of the immigration process. Business visas, tourist visas, and education visas are still immigration. And we greatly altered the processes and procedures in the wake of 9-11 to prevent this sort of thing from happening again as best we can, and to make life more difficult for those who will seek to infiltrate our country. You need intelligence to figure out who is a danger and to vet people. But the point of entry is still the best place to control any influx of extremism and violence into a western nation. The UK, France, Germany, and to an extent Sweden and the Netherlands haven't taken this approach. They've had blind misdirected immigration and multicultural policies that have allowed extremism to foment within their nations. And they will sleep in the bed they've made.

Uhm...
That guy that shot US military personal in Frankfurt a few days ago was a rather normal dude until a few month ago. And he didn't go to a training camp in Afghanistan either. Apparently he radicalised himself. On the internets.

So how would our immigration policies be relevant in that case?

It wouldn't. As someone with a communications degree, working on his PhD at Ohio State, with 5 years of communications work in the private sector, and a three years of service working for the federal government on complex communication theory, I can tell you that it is unclear what your point is.

 

[Reginleif]

European saying "multiculturalism" is bad is similiar to what right-wing pundits in America do with California, as a universal, transnational symbol of liberal values. Europe has traditionally been terrible on immagration and unlike Canada or USA, has had little experiance in assimilating differant peoples into the national fabric.

Also, the underlying premise in the article was that to be multicultural you must accept the immagrants veiws on women, household authority, honour killing etc. No Europe, stop being dumb.

 

[Loppan Torkel]

Translation from a kolumn in a major Swedish newspaper -

Low expectations often lead to poor results. Maybe it's one of the reasons that Canada manages to integrate immigrants. And to Sweden succeed worse.

Canada and Sweden are similar. Both are modern welfare states, remote northern location and sparsely populated. Both have received many immigrants. Canada mainly migrant workers and Sweden mainly asylum seekers.

But this difference is not enough to explain the employment rate among immigrants is high in Canada, while it is low in Sweden. For even among Canada's refugees, labor force participation high.

No numbers are given but perhaps a better ratio between labor immigration and asylum seekers, from the same culture, would be something to aim for. It would of course mean that nations like Australia would have to take a larger responsibility...

 

[Singularity]

I am not concerned about Norway or Denmark; those are faux criticisms.(...)To this point, it's easy to see how concentrated, maladjusted, populations can hold sway and carry great power in our nations. Need we discuss the Prophet Mohamed cartoons? Single digit proportions of a populace pushing the nations they live in to conform to their anti-western ideas and beliefs.

Sorry for dissecting your post a bit there. But that's a nice piece of inconsistent argumentation you've got right there.

There's a systemic and ideological mire surrounding the utopia that is universal multiculturalism. One has a lot of political corpses in it and is easy to quote statistics from, the last one is much more diffuse with less empirical cases to draw from. But I think the cartoon incident is one of the few out there.

 

[Hakim]

Is there anybody who thinks that "multiculturalism is a failure", and also supports emigration of Muslims into their own country?

That would be me although I wouldn't use the "multiculturalism is a failure" phrase to describe my feelings. Whoever uses that phrase is probably referring to immigration or consider the terms pretty much synonymous. Multiculturalism to me means mosaic/salad bowl kind of society with Little Italys and Chinatowns and groups getting handed minority cards to wave for special treatment.

Seems to me that the most dangerous minority for a country is the one with origin in a neighbouring country and thus I'm more sceptical about German or Russian immigration than middle eastern/African. A country like Estonia where one city - Narva - is about 80% Russian could probably benefit with a bunch of Somalis (saying wacky things) to put things in perspective.

 

[Tee Kay]

If you have a pool of applicants then we should pick out who we believe will make the best fit, and contribute the most to our society. So if I have a person who has a murky background, and someone who's exceptionally skilled and passionate about becoming a citizen and living here, why would I leave the door open to a potential future problem?

Except 90% of the time it's not as clear cut as that.

I don't understand why you don't think raw numbers matter. England has five small burroughs that contain more Muslims than you have spread across your entire continent. Heard mentality isn't something that is a figment of our imaginations. It is very real.

Herd mentality, by definition, is a product of the mind. What's more it's not based on facts and rationality but fear.

Australia has 300,000 Muslims out of a population of 21 million. Britain has two million Muslims out of a population of 62 million. India has 160.9 million out of a population of 1.2 billion. Raw numbers are next to useless in comparing the concentration of Muslims between countries.

Your 300,000 Muslims are spread out across the suburbs of two enormous metropolitan areas and are from predominately secular/liberal Islamic nations. England has that kind of number concentrated over an a tight area, and they have immigrants from more suspect locations.

Stop. You keep repeating this claim about Australia having immigrants from non-problematic countries and Europeans somehow getting landed with immigrants from problematic countries. But here we have sizable Somali, Lebanese and Iraqi Muslim communities, countries which have gone through violent civil wars. The thing is the nationality of the immigrants doesn't matter as much as you think they Think about how the French complains about their Algerians, Moroccans, Tunisians; all ostensibly more liberal and secular nations, or how the Germans and Austrians complain about the Turks; again an ostensibly more liberal and secular nation. With Pakistanis in the United Kingdom, there are those people who grew up in an urbanized, liberalized environment and also those who grew up in a more conservative environment.

High concentrations of Muslims will lead to higher concentrations of extremist viewpoints, and allow it to proliferate.

Now you're just being outright biased towards Muslims, saying that the mere presence of Muslims will inevitably cause extremism to proliferate.

I am concerned about Sweden, where Al-Shabab has been able to actively recruit and send teenage Somali's to wage jihad and establish an Islamic state in Somalia. The neighborhoods that high numbers of Somali's live in Sweden are exceptionally concentrated.

I believe this was already addressed by someone in this thread. It's less a critique of multiculturalism than the lack of a properly inclusive multicultural policy and implementation of the policy.

You guys insist that small percentage points of a population cannot change things, but Sweden was extremely leery about marking Al-Shabab as a terrorist group because they feared violent backlash!

The right response to terrorism is better law enforcement, not condemning entire ethnic groups.

Intelligence is undoubtedly a primary player. But so wasn't immigration. Those items you note are still a part of the immigration process. Business visas, tourist visas, and education visas are still immigration

What we think of immigrants, we think of people coming to settle on a semi-permanent or permanent basis in the country, and multiculturalism as a policy to integrate immigrant or other culturally-diverse populations into society. The 9/11 hijackers were not immigrants. That's the key point here. 9/11 was not the fault of American multiculturalism.

But the point of entry is still the best place to control any influx of extremism and violence into a western nation. The UK, France, Germany, and to an extent Sweden and the Netherlands haven't taken this approach.

I know the United Kingdom has a list of "hateful" individuals who are barred from entering the country. I believe other EU countries have measures to screen new arrivals as well.

European immigration policy isn't blind in the sense that it is an open borders system. I agree it is misdirected, but we disagree on the details. Yes, it's important and desirable to stop the spread of extremism. Yes, immigrants should be those who are able to integrate into society, obey the laws, learn the language, etc. But all that is possible in a multicultural country. In fact, it's only possible in a multicultural country, unless we only choose to admit immigrants from the same ethnic/cultural stock, and force existing minorities to conform to the cultural norms of the majority, as Australia did for half a century. Personally I find the idea quite abhorrent.