Timsup2nothin
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You said something to the effect of "ignore fools rather than encourage them with attention." My response referred to the expected longevity of fools.
[RD] The impact on western nations of allowing in millions of Muslim "refugees"
- Thread starter CavLancer
- Start date
You said something to the effect of "ignore fools rather than encourage them with attention." My response referred to the expected longevity of fools.
Trump is the oldest person to ever be elected President.
Timsup2nothin
Deity
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Perhaps I should have said "availability" instead of "longevity." Or I may have lost which attention grubbing fool you were referring to somewhere in the translation.
Most Irish overstay their welcome. I hope Trump does something about it.
Ajidica
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I'm lost as to why we are talking about the Irish in a thread about removing "barbaric" people from a country who carry out terrorism campaigns, bomb civilians, and were instrumental in causing forty years of bloodshed.
Oh wait, I just described the Irish.
Nevermind. Looks like they are next on Glorious Leader Trump's ban-list.
Oh wait, I just described the Irish.
Nevermind. Looks like they are next on Glorious Leader Trump's ban-list.
Terxpahseyton
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Nope
But when Cuba helped Cubans to go to Florida, the US quickly came around to accommodate the Cuban leadership.
Make of that what you will.
Long story short:
Which we already knew. without all your hypotheticals. It seems you are going around in a circle without coming to any proper conclusion:
Nobody is denying that.
That is your personal impression, and it's off.
No. But if you like me to, I will contest it.
Not at all. I explained how the concept of 'integration' is misguided. We already have multicultural societies. We should learn to deal with that.
You certainly could. But you could start with trying to read properly.
Not really. They are a perceived problem. In reality minority criminality isn't that much higher than average.
I'm not. But you are. And not very well, I might add.
Well, fortunately for you, people have also investigated that. Perhaps you should take note of their suggestions instead of posting articles without properly reading them.
Which we already knew. without all your hypotheticals. It seems you are going around in a circle without coming to any proper conclusion:
Nobody is denying that.
That is your personal impression, and it's off.
No. But if you like me to, I will contest it.
Not at all. I explained how the concept of 'integration' is misguided. We already have multicultural societies. We should learn to deal with that.
You certainly could. But you could start with trying to read properly.
Not really. They are a perceived problem. In reality minority criminality isn't that much higher than average.
I'm not. But you are. And not very well, I might add.
Well, fortunately for you, people have also investigated that. Perhaps you should take note of their suggestions instead of posting articles without properly reading them.
Moderator Action: I'm doing a bit of cleanup on the last few pages: I'll do my best to preserve the flow of genuine conversation, but please let me know if I delete something that should have been kept.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889
This is getting ridiculous. My original claim was that immigrants increase crime. I have also proven that claim. If you want to debate this matter further, then either refute my data or bring up your own. Sticking fingers in your ears and screaming "lalala I can't hear you" is not an argument.
The way I interpret this statement is that you admit minorities are over-represented in crime.
Ah, so integration was never the goal? The idea was that we just import all the violence, political instability, dictatorships and religious fundamentalism into the West, to live in parallel communities? No integration needed? Well I guess by those standards multiculturalism can be considered a success.
Time and time again I have shown you statistics proving my point, while you've not been able to come up with even a coherent argument.
I misread something? Where? Care to show me?
yung.carl.jung
Hey Bird! I'm Morose & Lugubrious
(1) Thank you very much for your kind words. I have been looking for a well-informed conversational partner for this specific discussion, for a long time, but have been utterly disappointed so far. This has been the first truly fruitful discussion of the refugee and/or migrant situation in Germany and I'm glad I decided to reply to this thread. If it dies down, It would be nice if we could stay in contact via E-Mail, I'll send you a PM if it happens, seeing as to how some people just like to fling ***** instead of actually arguing, sometimes even the opening poster of the respective thread, I'd say it's just a matter of time. I am always looking to take in arguments from the "other side" (quotation marks since we actually agree on a lot of things and I don't want to paint you as "right wing" or "anti immigration", or any other useless buzzwords). because with the way media and information technology nowadays works, it is almost impossible not to get caught up in a positive feedback loop where one is completely removed from the big picture of what is going on in the world and lives in his own ideological bubble.
(2) I am not trying to refute the facts you provided, because I cannot. I just wanted to point your attention towards statistics that can be misleading. So while I don't doubt in the slightest that the majority of journalists have a tendency towards leftist political affiliation and neither do I doubt that the majority of reports about immigration/refugees is positively connotated, I just wanted to make you aware of the often ambivalent nature of German news: Big, leftist, overly positive and noncritical magazines, websites and so forth still use rhetoric like "Flüchtlingswelle", "Flüchtlingsstrom", "Flüchtlingskrise". The main reason why this is the case is obviously money, fearmongering sells well. But with subversive wording like this you can easily also manipulate your readers. So while, even generally speaking as you said, the majority of the media reports positively and uses almost exclusively positive adjectives and so forth, the reality of the situation is much more complex. Even the most liberal of magazines love to sell out and overthrow their agenda if it makes them any money.
(3) This is a highly interesting point. I do think you might be onto something there: Because western Germany has enjoyed freedom of press for such a long time and also because, in my opinion, while western German press has also been manipulative, always, it was much more subtle. It could really be the case that people in eastern Europe or Germany not only are more critical towards news sources, especially government funded ones, but also much better at analyzing them. Just how gullible people are is portrayed almost daily by Facebook "fake news" that one could refute with a single google search, or by people sharing articles from satire magazines, thinking they are real.
(4) First off, where exactly do you draw the distinction between refugee and migrant? Some people itt have argued that, as soon as you are accepted to a country, say Hungary, but you want to move further, say Germany, you are an economic migrant, not a refugee. I don't necessarily agree with that and would like to hear your own definition. Now I would like to get into your news source. As always, I researched the author beforehand, and Tichy seems like a respectable journalist. I have just a few gripes that I want to present you: First off, the author implies in some of the first lines of the text, that economic refugees somehow don't deserve the title of refugees. While I do think refugees that are fleeing from war or persecution should have priority, I still think economic reasons are a legitimate reason to flee, which is also why I despise the devaluing of the word economic refugee into a pejorative. Clearly, someone leaving his country because he is unsatisfied just to live off of German welfare is not an economic refugee. But someone who lives at the absolute limit, someone who cannot afford food, fresh water, toilet paper, clothing and other necessities is a legitimate refugee and should be treated as such. Let's continue on. Tichy says, that because everyone is called a refugee, he or she therefore always has the right for a fair trial and it takes a long time for the Abschiebung, sorry for the lack of word. This is not true however, since a lot of eastern European countries have now been declared "save states", meaning people can be sent back instantaneously. Furthermore, 99% (actual figure, not made up or used for exaggeration) of economic refugees from "save states" are actually sent back, so it is not just a formality. However, of course the author does have a point. Among the people commonly referred to as refugees, there are a lot of people who are not fleeing. There are also people with a fake Syrian passport, clearly. I do not agree that "ISIS terrorists" are necessarily among them, as do German safety specialists. At least for now. It certainly is not impossible, so I will hold my tongue here.
I want to specifically adress the "Obergrenze", because this is a highly sensitive topic where people leave out some of the biggest factors, in my opinion. So first of all, of course there is nothing wrong with it in theory. Just technically speaking, we could have set it at 5 million (not a realistic figure), a figure we are likely never going to reach. But one always has to think about the effects of such a figure. If Germany was to announce a concrete figure, say 2 million, don't you think that this would lead to panic, not only from the people in countries that are in war/civil war et cetera, but also from people who are already in Europe, on their way? Or panic in refugee camps? Panic from people that are waiting for their families? The problem with the "Obergrenze" is that it should have been set right at the moment the framework was being laid down for the distribution of refugees in Europe. At that point (almost) no one in Germany felt like there were "too many" and likely the outward message would have had little to no effect. If you however announce such a maximum limit in late 2015, the effects could have been devastating. Now of course this is speculation, but it is important to keep in mind. I also think that just announcing a maximum limit of say 2 million would have convinced a lot of people to move towards Germany in the first place, because they are now aware that it is their last chance. He also says that "Germany has reached its limit, without any doubt", which certainly is debatable and a rather subjective statement phrased like an absolute truth.
That one mistaken Tweet about passports was likely one of the most meaningful press errors since Schabowski. It is true that it changed the entire situation and I still don't understand why there was no proper damage control. However, clearly a lot of the fault also lies with Hungary and Austria. Also, Merkel really did not have to go along with the Tweet. They could have also fired the representative and refuted the statement, taken a clear stand. I agree with the point the author makes in another paragraph, that the media essentially molded Merkel's identity into something she really wasn't. On the second page the author talks about how the terrorists of Brussels and Paris came from German refugee camps. Any kind of evidence for that? There is nothing cited. Also on the second page, the author says, quote: "Mittlerweile ist unbestritten, was im besoffenen Jahr bestritten wurde – dass mindestens 70 Prozent der Merkel-Flüchtlinge junge Männer sind – was für ein Heldenmut, Frauen und Kinder im Bombenhagel zurückzulassen und sich selbst in Sicherheit zu bringen". This I think is incredibly petty. Clearly what happens is that Syrian families only have enough money to send a single person to Europe, in hope of them sending money back, to help the rest of the family escape. Young men are simply the most obvious choice. Also, I found at least 2 spelling errors in a single paragraph, which was kind of embarrassing. Not relevant to the discussion though. The last paragraph about the islamazation of Germany I feel offers only a single good argument: That liberal muslims living in Europe might experience a backlash, that women who dressed as they wanted now will be more hard pressed to wear a Burka. Aside from that, I think the entire paragraph is, to be frank, some dumb bs
I am ambivalent on a prohibition of Burkas. I don't consider myself a feminist, rather an egalitarian, so personally I would never encourage a women to wear a Burka, at all, even if it is her cultural heritage. In fact I would probably be weirded out if one of my turkish friends would do that and maybe confront her about it. But that does not mean I want there to be legislation for it. I think this is such an arbitrary, largely irrelevant topic, as opposed to the hard pressed issues we are discussing!The study from Uni Münster more or less confirms a lot of things we already knew about: There is some weak or strong antisemitism among migrants (about 21%), what surprised me is the disapproval of atheists (27%). Some figures look bad at first glance, but are actually promising. For example looking at structural, cognitive and social integration. They keep going up by a lot for the 2nd/3rd generations, which in itself implies that people are actually able to adapt different values, mingle more with Germans and perform better in schools and jobs. The same goes for gender roles. I actually had no idea that 2nd/3rd generation migrants were so close to Germans in their perception of women (only a 4% difference for the first graph). That is encouraging.One part of the statistic which is hilarious is religious self-perception. 72% of young muslims consider themselves very religious, but are far less conservative than their parent generations and often drink, gamble and do drugs, from my experience
The statistics towards religious fundamentalism are indeed worrying, but there still is a strong downwards trend for younger generations. One thing that I thought of as worrying as well, was that only 61% thought that "Islam fits into the western world". That means almost half don't agree with that statement. The category "association with Islam" is also a very positive aspect I feel. Many muslims have a different perception of their religion than Germans do, unsurprisingly. Can you talk a little bit more in-depth about the Amadeo Foundation? I have researched them, but found very little information. It seems they mostly provide information (and defamation 
), but they seem rather powerless to me, no? Frankly, with the recent revelations about the Verfassungsschutz, I have lost all hope in similiar institutions. I was never a proponent of prohibiting the NPD anyway. The real problem are their underground organizations, such as Burschenschaften and Zellen, not the party. Yes, I suppose it is true that "Einzelfälle" are almost ever reported aside from local news, but what exactly is your gripe with that? I mean, you see the situation as already terrible, do you think it would be better to hear about a rape case from a migrant on television every day? The only problem with this is that it drives peoples away from media towards "alternative media", but I see no way to stop that evolution in any case. I also agree with your notion that people shouldn't just be ignored as "Nazis" or with any other pejoratives really, but if anything this has caused a backlash which made the word almost a non-insult for people in far-right circles. The word has lost so much of its meaning, because it keeps getting used in the wrong way. So really, this whole thing backfired on the people quick to call someone out as a Nazi.
yung.carl.jung
Hey Bird! I'm Morose & Lugubrious
(5) I think your perception of the Green Party is much too swayed by the media. If you look at the actual party program, identity politics are far from the most important and adressed issues. The focus has shifted, but not by much. Environmentalism is still the first and foremost important aspect uniting the party. I would hardly call them far left, but again, we are working with different definitions I suppose. About Roth - I have never cared for her. Obviously supporting "Der Schwarze Block" is a stupid thing in and of itself, but far worse if you are an established politician. I don't care at all for nationalism, but neither do I care for anti-nationalism. To be honest, in general I think this is a non-issue and really more of an individual acting in a stupid way than a general trend..
(6) I personally do not subscribe to any of these magazines, but my dad used to get both Spiegel and Süddeutsche, which he gave me after he was done. He switched from Süddeutsche to Zeit about a year ago, I quite like it I must say. Though I pretty much never have my opinions swayed by political articles anyway, I think Zeit is best when they talk about science or emerging technologies and the arts. Most of the articles regarding politics tend to be rather uninteresting to me, I much prefer peer-reviewed sources to form my own opinion, so I understand your sentiment to some extent
(7) As I said earlier, I must admit I cannot really refute your point here -- I have not watched TV in about four years and I don't read any German newspapers besides Spiegel, Zeit and DLF/Bay2. Most of my world news I get from a selection of different sources: Reading scientific papers, reading Reuters, Independent, BBC, Guardian, the Economist, the Atlantic and Al Jazeera, and of course every now and then I check Breitbart, Stormfront, certain subreddits and so forth to keep an eye on what is going on with the far-right. That being said most of these sources are left-biased and only very few are conservative, so I try to keep their biases in mind. In general I think you have a better picture of what is going on with the big press organs like Focus, Welt et cetera. I won't try to act like I know what I am talking about when I don't.
(8) They do reports based on facts, that is undeniable. But on the other hand, they use terrible, aggressive language for absolutely no reason, which makes them unsympathetic to me. It's not nearly as bad as the Clinton E-Mail guy, but it's noticeable for sure. That in itself does not make them an illegitimate news source or anything and I figure on people like you it will not have any effect at all, but other readers might be swayed by their wordings. I figure you at least cannot deny that almost all of the vocabulary used in the articles by Soeren Kern contains language that is not only negatively connotated, but also threatening, no? That is another thing I derive their agenda from, not just the owners as individuals.
(9) Yes, I would agree with that. You represented my position correctly.
(10) I hope you don't find my examination of these facts too rigorous or fastidious (penibel.. ). Ever since I entered Uni and learned about Forschungsdesign, Sampling, et cetera I have been hyper critical of any scientifical examination and will try to highlight every single factor to get the full truth out of it. Since clearly researchers, just like Journalists, have inherent biases or even exterior motives, I always apply extreme scrutiny when reviewing my sources. This might come across as asinine, but I refuse to lower my standards. Before we start, let us talk terminology. The current issue at hand is whether or not people from a different cultural background commit more crimes than Germans do. This is crucial because essentially we are having a debate about multiculturalism and integration. In statistics, migrants with a German passport are counted as German, so this makes the issue at hand much, much easier to resolve. The second issue is that of non-Germans, the most critical term in this discussion. Non-Germans includes tourists, illegals, refugees, migrants, Sinti & Roma and other groups. Let's start with the wikipedia source:
>foreigners, who make up about 10% of the population, in 2013 were involved in between 26% and 33% of crime
First off, you make a very crucial mistake and misrepresent this statistic. I'm sure it was just a reading error since you have been very much honest and I see zero malicious intent in your posting. The statistic provided does not represent involvement in crime, but rather "Tatverdächtige", a.k.a. being a suspect of crime. That is of course a huge difference. Especially if you take into account that non-Germans are more likely to be suspects. Now incarceration rates are I think a better factor than suspects of crime, but still don't work as being representative, here is why: Theoretically let's say non-Germans are more likely to commit severe crimes, but unlikely to commit non-severe crimes. That would mean that many of them would go to jail, for a long time. Meaning they are overrepresented in jail, but not in crime in general. I think you see the point I am making here. Incarceration rates can give you a good idea, but are not a direct correlation to crime rate at all.
>This article references that foreigners were involved in 28% of all crimes in 2014. The author filters out the crimes that could only be committed by foreigners and arrives at 24.3%
Once again, you conflate involvement in crime with suspects of crime. I will quote from the article you posted:
The two most important points are: It is not sure whether the crimes were even commited and it is not sure whether the suspect was actually involved. This data is just 100% completely omitted from the statistic.
The article does mention an interesting other statistic though. In this one from the Univesity of Siegen, non-Germans and "Germans" are compared on a basis of wealth. In their respective levels, it turns out, non-Germans commit less crime than their German counterpart. Once again, this is from the article that you provided. The first logical conclusion would be that non-Germans are overrepresented because poor people in general are overrepresented in crime. However I don't think it's that easy. First off, the study only represents "working migrants", who make up 85% of the non-German group, so a big percentage. A lot of people are excluded, for example illegals, tourists, Sinti, Roma and so forth. That is good however, because these groups, especially illegals, tend to commit a disproportional amount of crime. A big chunk of drug, human trafficking and similiar acitivities can be associated with illegals. Second of all, once again this author also relies on the PKS, so we are not counting crimes commited, but rather suspects of crimes! This means that these numbers here are also conflated. Furthermore these "social classes" the author of the study constructs are based mostly on speculation, which is why I won't cite them. I will however cite a different part of the study, which was very enlightening:
This supports my hypothesis that it is other non-German groups, like illegals involved in organized crime, that are suspects of the bulk of this 28,2% number! Hopefully I did not seem too dismissive of your sources, I really did try my best to examine them as good as I can and I certainly didn't just dismiss them because they did not fit my narrative.
(11 & 12) I am sorry, but with this speculation I definitely cannot go along. Let me make a few points as to why the maths does not work out at all: First off, 70.000 crimes were commited in the last three months. This does not at all mean that is was 70.000 the previous month, or will be 70.000 the next month. Maybe this month was especially good, maybe (hopefully not) it was a month with especially low crime. We do not know. Also since we do not have any numbers to go off in regards to how many refugees there really are, it is relatively pointless to just assume 1.5 million, when it could be 2 million or 1 million. Furthermore please take into account that, as you correctly pointed out, young men are overrepresented with refugees. They are also overrepresented in crime statistics, to be concrete out of all the population groups young men commit the most crimes. So one would have to account for that factor, too.
However, I am not even denying your attempt to illustrate that refugees commit more crime than Germans do. In fact, I agree. But the reason why they commit more crimes is precisely because they are refugees, because they live in camps, because they are under stress, because they are often young and male, suffer from PTSD or other disorders. Really, when I said with certainty that non-Germans don't commit more crimes than Germans clearly what I meant is that people who actually have a life here in Germany do. A decent chunk of these refugees will be abgeschoben based on criminal activity. Another chunk may leave. The people that remain, once they have a house, maybe a job.. Then we can actually attempt a direct comparison. That is why, in the other paragraph, I focussed on "economic migrants", people who are non-Germans, but 1) live in Germany 2) have a life in Germany (work, for example) 3) have a permit for permanent stay 4) don't suffer from any of the severe exterior factors that refugees do. In this way, the comparison is much more relevant and fair. This class of "economic migrants" also includes lots of muslims and it almost exclusively has people of "different cultural background", so I think it is an almost perfect measurement for comparison.
(13) I agree that we can expect some degree of thankfulness from refugees. I don't know whether we should, everyone's moral compass is different. If you are asking me directly, as a person, yes I would be highly grateful to be accepted and would probably try my best not only to fit in, but also to respect all the rules of the country accepting me. I do not like to make my ethics universal though
(14) I lived in Chemnitz from 2014 until August this year, so exactly when it all happened The refugee camp was the biggest one in the entire area afaik, it is called "Flüchtlingserstaufnahmestelle Chemnitz-Ebersdorf". There are many other really small ones not comparable to this one. I think very few muslims were living in Chemnitz beforehand. I would say even now very few muslims live there.
(15) I fully agree and you make a very valid point. Cannot really refute anything of what you said, as a woman you are much more vulnerable and also prone to be a victim, sadly, so my personal experience definitely is skewed due to that.
(16) Those numbers are terrible and discomforting, especially for me, living in Saxony. I think even if you accounted for sample numbers they would still be overrepresented, so point taken. You personally didn't say it was Morrocans or Algerians, yes, but the article you quoted did, so it did not talk about migrants in general, rather those two groups.
>Erstmals gibt die Statistik auch Auskunft über die Straftaten von Flüchtlingen. Laut Innenminister Markus Ulbig (52, CDU) wurden 6,7 Prozent der Zuwanderer straffällig, 93,3 Prozent aber nicht.
is a quote from the article. I think again what we are seeing here is "Intensivtäter" who are often young and male and commit a lot of crime, not really a general trend, especially if you look at the number of 93,3% not committing crimes at all.
(6) I personally do not subscribe to any of these magazines, but my dad used to get both Spiegel and Süddeutsche, which he gave me after he was done. He switched from Süddeutsche to Zeit about a year ago, I quite like it I must say. Though I pretty much never have my opinions swayed by political articles anyway, I think Zeit is best when they talk about science or emerging technologies and the arts. Most of the articles regarding politics tend to be rather uninteresting to me, I much prefer peer-reviewed sources to form my own opinion, so I understand your sentiment to some extent
(7) As I said earlier, I must admit I cannot really refute your point here -- I have not watched TV in about four years and I don't read any German newspapers besides Spiegel, Zeit and DLF/Bay2. Most of my world news I get from a selection of different sources: Reading scientific papers, reading Reuters, Independent, BBC, Guardian, the Economist, the Atlantic and Al Jazeera, and of course every now and then I check Breitbart, Stormfront, certain subreddits and so forth to keep an eye on what is going on with the far-right. That being said most of these sources are left-biased and only very few are conservative, so I try to keep their biases in mind. In general I think you have a better picture of what is going on with the big press organs like Focus, Welt et cetera. I won't try to act like I know what I am talking about when I don't.
(8) They do reports based on facts, that is undeniable. But on the other hand, they use terrible, aggressive language for absolutely no reason, which makes them unsympathetic to me. It's not nearly as bad as the Clinton E-Mail guy, but it's noticeable for sure. That in itself does not make them an illegitimate news source or anything and I figure on people like you it will not have any effect at all, but other readers might be swayed by their wordings. I figure you at least cannot deny that almost all of the vocabulary used in the articles by Soeren Kern contains language that is not only negatively connotated, but also threatening, no? That is another thing I derive their agenda from, not just the owners as individuals.
(9) Yes, I would agree with that. You represented my position correctly.
(10) I hope you don't find my examination of these facts too rigorous or fastidious (penibel..
). Ever since I entered Uni and learned about Forschungsdesign, Sampling, et cetera I have been hyper critical of any scientifical examination and will try to highlight every single factor to get the full truth out of it. Since clearly researchers, just like Journalists, have inherent biases or even exterior motives, I always apply extreme scrutiny when reviewing my sources. This might come across as asinine, but I refuse to lower my standards. Before we start, let us talk terminology. The current issue at hand is whether or not people from a different cultural background commit more crimes than Germans do. This is crucial because essentially we are having a debate about multiculturalism and integration. In statistics, migrants with a German passport are counted as German, so this makes the issue at hand much, much easier to resolve. The second issue is that of non-Germans, the most critical term in this discussion. Non-Germans includes tourists, illegals, refugees, migrants, Sinti & Roma and other groups. Let's start with the wikipedia source:>foreigners, who make up about 10% of the population, in 2013 were involved in between 26% and 33% of crime
First off, you make a very crucial mistake and misrepresent this statistic. I'm sure it was just a reading error since you have been very much honest and I see zero malicious intent in your posting. The statistic provided does not represent involvement in crime, but rather "Tatverdächtige", a.k.a. being a suspect of crime. That is of course a huge difference. Especially if you take into account that non-Germans are more likely to be suspects. Now incarceration rates are I think a better factor than suspects of crime, but still don't work as being representative, here is why: Theoretically let's say non-Germans are more likely to commit severe crimes, but unlikely to commit non-severe crimes. That would mean that many of them would go to jail, for a long time. Meaning they are overrepresented in jail, but not in crime in general. I think you see the point I am making here. Incarceration rates can give you a good idea, but are not a direct correlation to crime rate at all.
>This article references that foreigners were involved in 28% of all crimes in 2014. The author filters out the crimes that could only be committed by foreigners and arrives at 24.3%
Once again, you conflate involvement in crime with suspects of crime. I will quote from the article you posted:
The two most important points are: It is not sure whether the crimes were even commited and it is not sure whether the suspect was actually involved. This data is just 100% completely omitted from the statistic.
The article does mention an interesting other statistic though. In this one from the Univesity of Siegen, non-Germans and "Germans" are compared on a basis of wealth. In their respective levels, it turns out, non-Germans commit less crime than their German counterpart. Once again, this is from the article that you provided. The first logical conclusion would be that non-Germans are overrepresented because poor people in general are overrepresented in crime. However I don't think it's that easy. First off, the study only represents "working migrants", who make up 85% of the non-German group, so a big percentage. A lot of people are excluded, for example illegals, tourists, Sinti, Roma and so forth. That is good however, because these groups, especially illegals, tend to commit a disproportional amount of crime. A big chunk of drug, human trafficking and similiar acitivities can be associated with illegals. Second of all, once again this author also relies on the PKS, so we are not counting crimes commited, but rather suspects of crimes! This means that these numbers here are also conflated. Furthermore these "social classes" the author of the study constructs are based mostly on speculation, which is why I won't cite them. I will however cite a different part of the study, which was very enlightening:
This supports my hypothesis that it is other non-German groups, like illegals involved in organized crime, that are suspects of the bulk of this 28,2% number! Hopefully I did not seem too dismissive of your sources, I really did try my best to examine them as good as I can and I certainly didn't just dismiss them because they did not fit my narrative.
(11 & 12) I am sorry, but with this speculation I definitely cannot go along. Let me make a few points as to why the maths does not work out at all: First off, 70.000 crimes were commited in the last three months. This does not at all mean that is was 70.000 the previous month, or will be 70.000 the next month. Maybe this month was especially good, maybe (hopefully not) it was a month with especially low crime. We do not know. Also since we do not have any numbers to go off in regards to how many refugees there really are, it is relatively pointless to just assume 1.5 million, when it could be 2 million or 1 million. Furthermore please take into account that, as you correctly pointed out, young men are overrepresented with refugees. They are also overrepresented in crime statistics, to be concrete out of all the population groups young men commit the most crimes. So one would have to account for that factor, too.
However, I am not even denying your attempt to illustrate that refugees commit more crime than Germans do. In fact, I agree. But the reason why they commit more crimes is precisely because they are refugees, because they live in camps, because they are under stress, because they are often young and male, suffer from PTSD or other disorders. Really, when I said with certainty that non-Germans don't commit more crimes than Germans clearly what I meant is that people who actually have a life here in Germany do. A decent chunk of these refugees will be abgeschoben based on criminal activity. Another chunk may leave. The people that remain, once they have a house, maybe a job.. Then we can actually attempt a direct comparison. That is why, in the other paragraph, I focussed on "economic migrants", people who are non-Germans, but 1) live in Germany 2) have a life in Germany (work, for example) 3) have a permit for permanent stay 4) don't suffer from any of the severe exterior factors that refugees do. In this way, the comparison is much more relevant and fair. This class of "economic migrants" also includes lots of muslims and it almost exclusively has people of "different cultural background", so I think it is an almost perfect measurement for comparison.
(13) I agree that we can expect some degree of thankfulness from refugees. I don't know whether we should, everyone's moral compass is different. If you are asking me directly, as a person, yes I would be highly grateful to be accepted and would probably try my best not only to fit in, but also to respect all the rules of the country accepting me. I do not like to make my ethics universal though
(14) I lived in Chemnitz from 2014 until August this year, so exactly when it all happened The refugee camp was the biggest one in the entire area afaik, it is called "Flüchtlingserstaufnahmestelle Chemnitz-Ebersdorf". There are many other really small ones not comparable to this one. I think very few muslims were living in Chemnitz beforehand. I would say even now very few muslims live there.
(15) I fully agree and you make a very valid point. Cannot really refute anything of what you said, as a woman you are much more vulnerable and also prone to be a victim, sadly, so my personal experience definitely is skewed due to that.
(16) Those numbers are terrible and discomforting, especially for me, living in Saxony. I think even if you accounted for sample numbers they would still be overrepresented, so point taken. You personally didn't say it was Morrocans or Algerians, yes, but the article you quoted did, so it did not talk about migrants in general, rather those two groups.
>Erstmals gibt die Statistik auch Auskunft über die Straftaten von Flüchtlingen. Laut Innenminister Markus Ulbig (52, CDU) wurden 6,7 Prozent der Zuwanderer straffällig, 93,3 Prozent aber nicht.
is a quote from the article. I think again what we are seeing here is "Intensivtäter" who are often young and male and commit a lot of crime, not really a general trend, especially if you look at the number of 93,3% not committing crimes at all.
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http://www.economist.com/news/brief...rime-even-face-high-unemployment-and-economic
Yes, but most trends show that crime in the immigrant communities, like in Germany, is also on the decline. I mean, aggregate crime has continued to decline sharply even as immigrant populations have grown, so even that should indicate something.
http://andrewhammel.typepad.com/.a/6a00d834516a2569e2017d408625b2970c-popup
The Swedish crime survey shows no remarkable change since 2005: https://www.bra.se/bra/bra-in-english/home/crime-and-statistics/swedish-crime-survey.html
You would hardly get that impression from some of the apocalyptic coverage of the country.
Here is an Yle article on the situation in Finland: http://yle.fi/uutiset/3-8268286
So, just so you know, we are talking about an increasingly minor problem. With the aggregate numbers rapidly becoming trivial; crime will be soon extinct in the West. It has become a nuisance rather than a real problem.
Meanwhile, all you can do is complain that immigrants make up a larger share of this trivial number, even as the number is going down for everyone. So why get so worked up about a problem that seems to be solving itself? By all indications, immigrant crime is an ephemeral problem.
And it's not as if the problem is likely to ever effect you. Immigrant crime is usually isolated to a handful of troubled neighborhoods.
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I know several people who claimed asylum in Europe and i knew them in their home country, they weren't even that bad off. I mean there was even a TV presenter here who left for Europe claiming to be Syrian until he was recognized.
Of course these are just people I know so I can't claim to say how many people who are not poor or very poor are among the economic migrants.
However I think it's likely people who are in very desperate circumstances probably in many cases couldn't find the money to pay smugglers.
Another reason to discourage it, this encourages people to make the dangerous journey across the sea where many will drown.
It also strains the resources available for legitimate refugees. People lie to get accepted which puts further suspicion on people who are legitimate refugees.
I met someone once who told me he was in England when he was 20 but told authorities he was 16 and he was placed with a family.
Of course these are just people I know so I can't claim to say how many people who are not poor or very poor are among the economic migrants.
However I think it's likely people who are in very desperate circumstances probably in many cases couldn't find the money to pay smugglers.
Another reason to discourage it, this encourages people to make the dangerous journey across the sea where many will drown.
It also strains the resources available for legitimate refugees. People lie to get accepted which puts further suspicion on people who are legitimate refugees.
I met someone once who told me he was in England when he was 20 but told authorities he was 16 and he was placed with a family.
You really, really haven't. Immigration only marginally increases crime rates, which, as mentioned, are dropping - and have been dropping for quite awhile. So you would need to prove that this drop in overall crime rates is somehow nullified by immigration. And you have done nothing of the sort.
You want me to admit a statistically rather well-known fact? But wait, here's where we're going:
Again, you are making a number of unfounded statements that lack any relation to statistical facts. So I'll just stick with the first: integration was never the goal. No, it wasn't, as our 'guest workers' were expected to leave after a job well done.
The next two we'll just do in reverse order:
To the first: read above. To the second: as already mentioned, you've done a fine selection of statistics that serve your purpose, yes. Unfortunately, statistics are rather useless without an overall picture and context. What you do is proceed from your context to the statistics that agree with your picture. Unfortunately that doesn't help anybody, as it explains nothing and suggests no solution.
Migration is a thing of all ages. One can either complain about it without relevant facts, or one can deal with it. What characterizes populism today is, sadly, just the first.
This point about crime was only one minor point in my original post, until Agent327 questioned it, so I showed it to be true. But yes, overall crime has been going down. Let us hope that this trend continues ad infinitum. However some groups are so vastly over-represented that I suspect it will take quite a while until their crime rates reach native levels. Furthermore, at least in Finland, there was a substantial increase in sex crimes in 2016. Now I realize this is only speculation, but I have to wonder if it had anything to do with the refugee crisis
Everything you say is absolutely common sense. Quite a few people here have also reached the same conclusions as you. Yet many on the left feel like those are "far-right" talking points and that they shouldn't even be seriously discussed. This is how inflamed the discussion has become. We can't even have an honest discussion about this. Meanwhile, the lefties wonder why they are losing votes.
I did no such thing, nor did you. I questioned its relevance.
Crime rates would have dropped even more, had we not taken in these high crime minorities. As evidenced by the over-representation.
Well, finally. At least we're making some progress.
I was talking about immigration in general. As for quest workers specifically, integration wasn't the goal? Even when it turned out they were going to stay?
I presented you with all the relevant facts and a solution. Do not take them in. We do not need them. We do not want them. So why on earth should we be forced to have immigration which clearly is not in our best interests? Even if all the newcomers were model citizens (I daresay that is not the case) we still do not need them.
As for facts, it is you who seems to be struggling with relevant facts. You seem to be grasping straws to support your untenable position.
"Fairy tale". That quote sounded like you questioned the validity of the point about immigrant crime. But feel free to backtrack as you like.
I am not sure how is this multi-kulti enrichment supposed to work but it looks a lot like: we invade and rape your country and then we open our borders so you can come and rape us back.
Sweden:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/23427...ur-knife-five-afghan-migrants-swedish-forest/
Austria:
http://mobil.krone.at/phone/kmm__1/story_id__542882/sendung_id__32/story.phtml
Sweden:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/23427...ur-knife-five-afghan-migrants-swedish-forest/
Austria:
http://mobil.krone.at/phone/kmm__1/story_id__542882/sendung_id__32/story.phtml
@yung.carl.jung: Without wanting to bore anyone, I would just like to stress again that it is very pleasant to converse with you, despite us having different opinions on a few of these issues. You have no problem listening to the other side's arguments and will happily concede several of the points I make. On the other hand, where you don't agree you are careful to address my arguments accurately and respond forcefully with your own evidence-based arguments. This is how discussions should be, so it may seem strange to emphasize this so much, but, as I think you agree, our capability to speak to another in such a constructive fashion seems to have dwindled in recent years.
Unfortunately, I may not have quite as much time for these extensive dialoges in the coming days. I was ill this week and stayed home from school. Now that I'm feeling better my job calls again and with it loads of work. :-( I hope we can continue our conversation, I just won't be able to respond as frequently or as lengthy as I have been. In light of these time restrictions, I would suggest we leave the topic of German media bias be. It seems like we are not so far apart on this issue any, though we may slightly disagree about the extent to which manipulation in the mainstream media is taking place. Also some other parts of your post I will have to brush over or leave unaddressed, though you can be sure that I read everything you wrote carefully and thank you for your perspective.
In regard to the topic of crime, it is of course a very vague statement to say that foreigners commit more crime than Germans, because it tells us nothing about which groups of foreigners are more involved than others. I believe we can agree that certain nationalities or ethnicities are way more involved in crime than others. The Chinese or Vietnamese are way underrepresented, while North Africans are strongly overrepresented. The problem in regard to the migrant crisis is of course that many of the migrants come from countries whose populations that are already here tend to be strongly overrepresented in crime.
I don't want to go into any more number crunching on how more likely which migrant groups are to commit crimes, because frankly I find that rather boring. For our intent and purpose I believe it is sufficient that we both acknowledge that our recent migrants commit far more crimes than the national average (which you did admit, if I understood you correctly). Where we differ is that you don't stop there, but try to relativise this finding. You say that the crime is due the migrants being in stress from living in refugee camps, that they suffer from mental disorders, and, most importantly, that they are mainly young males. Now, all this is absolutely correct! If your guiding question was whether the average German or the average Syrian / Moroccan / Algerian etc was more likely to commit crimes, these are definitely factors that we would have to weigh in. But I don't really care about that question. What I care about is the actual crimes that our migrants are committing in the circumstances they are in.
I said from the beginning of the crisis how catastrophic it was that most of the migrants were young Muslim men. If we had an influx of a million Japanese grandmas into our country, we would not be experiencing a noticable increase in crime. It matters that they are men, that they are young; and that they are largely Muslims doesn't help either, statistically speaking. Likewise, they will obviously have to live in refugee camps. Some of them will obviously have mental disorders. And obviously their socialisation in largely illiberal and violent societies will make them more prone to crime. I am not ignoring these factors, quite the contrary. It is because of all these factors why I am so worried about the decreasing public safetly in our country.
----------------------------------------------------
What I would like to spend more time on is your question regarding the distinction between a refugee and an economic migrant, since I view this as highly relevant for the general discussion. Legally speaking, this distinction is actually very well defined. The UNHCR defines a refugee as someone who
Now, I take your point that many migrants, due to the detrimental status in their own country (lack of opportunity, famine, civil war etc) come from situations which make it perfectly understandable why they would try to migrate to another country. I worked in Cameroon for a while, where I taught in a school in the capital of Yaoundé. I know what I am talking about in regard to extreme poverty and the depressing realities that many people from such countries have to endure. Nevertheless, there are a few problems with this approach.
First, I'd like to underline what NovaKart has mentioned here, and which meanwhile should be common knowledge, namely that the migrants who came here are largely not the poorest of the poor. A lot of money and physical strength is required to undertake such a long journey. By just looking at the arrivers we can see that these are not mal-nourished people who barely survived the trip. They are often middle-class people who simply seek better opportunity. Some were in fact criminals in their home countries, involved in drug dealing and similar endeavours, who have nothing to lose. Most of them are decently dressed, have modern smartphones and are in good physical shape. That doesn't mean that life was perfectly rosy where they came from, but they certainly are not the people who should get the most attention if we are serious about helping people in need.
Second, I have to strongly oppose your statement,
To make matters worse, the population in the developing parts of the world, especially Africa, is growing with unprecedented speed. By 2050 the population of Africa will have gone up from 1 billion to about 2.4 billion. By 2100 it will have reached the 4 billion mark. The migrant situation we see today is nothing compared what we will face in the coming decades. Even if it were possible to take in hundreds of millions migrants, which it isn't, this wouldn't help the developing countries at all, since the emigrants would quickly be replaced. It would just pull Europe down as well and decrease our ability to offer actual help. The only way to deal with this development is to rigorously seal off our borders and provide help in the countries of origin. Which brings me to my next point.
It has been estimated that, on average, for every migrant from a developing country who we take in to our society, we could help 20 others in the country of origin. The migrant crisis is first and foremost a grandios opportunity cost. It is often argued that we have humanitarian responsibility to let these people in, but that couldn't be further from the truth. Our resourced are not unlimited. And for every person we let in and use our resources on, there are a potential 19 people who we can't help. Factor in that those deserving our help the most, families with little children who are really starving, are those who can't undertake the journey to another country in the first place, and this babble about humanitarian responsibility becomes revealed for what it is, namely emotion-driven narcissistic help syndrom by people who want to feel good about themselves, but which is in fact catastrophically counter-productive.
------------------------------------------------
So to conclude, let us speak about the costs and the gains of letting in millions of migrants from the developing world. The costs come in several forms., the most obvious being the financial cost. I find the figure of 50 billion euros that Germany alone supposedly has to pay every year to for the migrant crisis to be strongly underestimated. I have seen much higher predictions - the economist Bernd Raffelhüschen for example has calculated costs of 900 billion euros for the next years, and that is in the unlikely case that the migrants integrate seamlessly into our job market. But even if we were to go with the conservative estimate, we are talking about a horrendously large financial burden for our country.
Furthermore, we have the cost of destabilising our society. We have talked about the increase of crime, however high it may actually be. Even more important than crime is the destabilising of our society by bringing in millions of people who largely hold illiberal beliefs, in regard to women, homosexuals, Jews, atheists, freedom of speech etc etc, in short everything that constitutes our modern, secular society. In a time when we should have long surpassed religious beliefs being virulent in the public and political spheres, we are now, out of falsely understood tolerance and political correctness, regressing into a time where we are having discussions about the burka, gender segregation, religious sensitivities, limits to free speech, religious privileges etc etc. In other words, we have exacerbated the Islamisation of our society with all its ugly heads, like creeping sharia, division of society along religious lines resulting in Islamic parallel societies, outdated barbaric practices like FGM, the likelihood of terror attacks and so on and so forth. Since most of our Muslims had been from Turkey, a comparatively secular country (though this seems to be changing rapidly as well), the problems that Islam cause to a society were not as noticable as, say, in Britain or in France. But importing further millions of Muslims from the most backward areas of the world is downright suicidal to our nation's health. Keep in mind that Muslims have way higher birth rates than everyone else; their number will therefore further increase which will lead to yet more and greater problems. In case I sound too hawkish on this point, please read this article by Salim Mansur, a Canadian professor and practising Muslim, who comes to the same conclusions.
Moreover, the migrant crisis has totally divided our society and poisoned the political atmosphere, with delusional multiculturalist leftists on the one side, who will ignore facts and label everyone who wants to have an honest conversation as a racist or a Nazi, and on the other side a rise of nativist movements which we had long surpassed, as well as a general distrust of any politicians or journalists.
And last but not least, by making it increasingly arbitrary who lives here and by what rules, by chipping away at the foundations of what we intuitively think about what is German, however strongly that may vary, we are losing a sense of belonging, we are losing our spiritual home. Anabel Schunke, a writer on Tichys Einblick, has captured this point compellingly.
So, in light of these immense costs, what then are the gains? In what ways do we as a society benefit from letting in millions of people from developing, mostly Islamic countries? I'd argue that we gain very little. The migrants are poorly educated and can't even speak German, so they are more or less useless for the job market. And Muslims have proven to be extraordinarily resistant towards integration. We don't gain much culturally, since Islam as a way of life has virtually nothing to offer that we haven't long superceded that that isn't an outright affront to our liberal values. Of course many individual migrants, Muslim or not, may be totally charming people. As a teacher I probably have had more contact with such people than most, especially since my school has had to arrange a few classes for migrant children, which I have taught myself. But on a societal level I'd argue that the our gains of importing millions of Muslims into our society are miniscule, whereas the costs are exorbitantly high.
If, then, even the humanitarian argument fails, which it does, as I hopefully convincingly demonstrated, there is literally nothing left to justify the migrant politics we have seen in the last year. It has led to extreme costs, won't benefit us in any way, and forcloses the possibility to help those who are really in need. I am naturally curious whether you see the situation similarly bleak, or if you can spot a silver lining to all of this which has just escaped my attention.
---------------------------------------------------
I wanted to end with the more or less unrelated, but nevertheless important topic, the Amadeu-Antonio-Stiftung. This is an organisation which receives government support, and in fact has been ordered by our minister of justice, Heiko Maas, to search for and report so-called "hate-speech", especially in the Internet. The crux of the matter obviously lies in the definition of what "hate-speech" is. It turns out that hate-speech is only on the "right". Everything that goes against the migrant policy, for example, is certainly "hate-speech". Say the wrong things, wear the wrong clothes, like the wrong pictures on Facebook, and you can get charged fines of several thousand euros if the Foundation finds out about your "hate".
What hate is, is of course defined solely by the Foundation. To give you one example of how absurd it gets, saying that you are against child abuse can get you into trouble, since this could be interpreted as an attack against the Green party, who have a history of child abuse, and the Greens are the biggest proponents of migration. You can't make this stuff up. Needless to say, this kind of "attitude control" is completely undemocratic and shakes at the foundations of our free society. The Amadeu-Antonio Foundation is led, of all people, by a former Stasi worker, Anette Kahane. You can't blame them for not choosing people with experience. I should add that Islamists, for instance, or Antifa members, who spout their real hatred towards everyone who doesn't agree with them, are not even on the radar of this organisation. In fact, a member of the Foundation herself, Julia Schramm has tweeted the most obnoxious things, like "Bomber Harris Flächenbrand, Deutschland wieder Ackerland”, or "Sauerkraut, Kartoffelbrei, Bomber Harris Feuer frei". That is of course not hate speech.
Many people have been "caught" already by the Foundation. There have even been cases when the police have raided houses in the middle of the night, confiscating all computers and devices. This is an interview which features such a victim, whose "crime" it was to like a picture on Facebook. The guy is an utter loon, but that is hardly a reason to have your house raided.
For more information I can offer you two articles from Tichys Einblick (here and here, I also recommend the comments which are usually very well thought-out on Tichy), though you should be able to find plenty of other information about the abominable practises of this organisation. Now just imagine, we have essentially a new Stasi, installed and supported by the government, controlling what you are allowed to think and say, and nobody is even aware of it. The mainstream media certainly don't report about it (hell, they invite Kahane for interviews so she can ramble on about the "evil right"). My colleges largely don't know about it. My family didn't know about it. You didn't know about it. I wouldn't know about it if I hadn't stumbled on it by accident. Yet it is happening right in front of our eyes. I hope you can appreciate the scope of what is going on here.
I wish I could end on a lighter note, but Germany in 2016 has become quite depressing.
Unfortunately, I may not have quite as much time for these extensive dialoges in the coming days. I was ill this week and stayed home from school. Now that I'm feeling better my job calls again and with it loads of work. :-( I hope we can continue our conversation, I just won't be able to respond as frequently or as lengthy as I have been. In light of these time restrictions, I would suggest we leave the topic of German media bias be. It seems like we are not so far apart on this issue any, though we may slightly disagree about the extent to which manipulation in the mainstream media is taking place. Also some other parts of your post I will have to brush over or leave unaddressed, though you can be sure that I read everything you wrote carefully and thank you for your perspective.
In regard to the topic of crime, it is of course a very vague statement to say that foreigners commit more crime than Germans, because it tells us nothing about which groups of foreigners are more involved than others. I believe we can agree that certain nationalities or ethnicities are way more involved in crime than others. The Chinese or Vietnamese are way underrepresented, while North Africans are strongly overrepresented. The problem in regard to the migrant crisis is of course that many of the migrants come from countries whose populations that are already here tend to be strongly overrepresented in crime.
I don't want to go into any more number crunching on how more likely which migrant groups are to commit crimes, because frankly I find that rather boring. For our intent and purpose I believe it is sufficient that we both acknowledge that our recent migrants commit far more crimes than the national average (which you did admit, if I understood you correctly). Where we differ is that you don't stop there, but try to relativise this finding. You say that the crime is due the migrants being in stress from living in refugee camps, that they suffer from mental disorders, and, most importantly, that they are mainly young males. Now, all this is absolutely correct! If your guiding question was whether the average German or the average Syrian / Moroccan / Algerian etc was more likely to commit crimes, these are definitely factors that we would have to weigh in. But I don't really care about that question. What I care about is the actual crimes that our migrants are committing in the circumstances they are in.
I said from the beginning of the crisis how catastrophic it was that most of the migrants were young Muslim men. If we had an influx of a million Japanese grandmas into our country, we would not be experiencing a noticable increase in crime. It matters that they are men, that they are young; and that they are largely Muslims doesn't help either, statistically speaking. Likewise, they will obviously have to live in refugee camps. Some of them will obviously have mental disorders. And obviously their socialisation in largely illiberal and violent societies will make them more prone to crime. I am not ignoring these factors, quite the contrary. It is because of all these factors why I am so worried about the decreasing public safetly in our country.
----------------------------------------------------
What I would like to spend more time on is your question regarding the distinction between a refugee and an economic migrant, since I view this as highly relevant for the general discussion. Legally speaking, this distinction is actually very well defined. The UNHCR defines a refugee as someone who
This is similar to our Grundgesetz article 16 about who is potentially allowed asylum in Germany. This is a rather narrow definition (note that it does not include people escaping a war, for example), but it is the legal definition according to our law, and I'd warn about arbitrarily widening the term, if we want to keep our laws from being reshaped at a whim, depending on what may sound nice. It is also a definition that shows that only a tiny minority of the migrants who recently came to Germany are refugees.
Now, I take your point that many migrants, due to the detrimental status in their own country (lack of opportunity, famine, civil war etc) come from situations which make it perfectly understandable why they would try to migrate to another country. I worked in Cameroon for a while, where I taught in a school in the capital of Yaoundé. I know what I am talking about in regard to extreme poverty and the depressing realities that many people from such countries have to endure. Nevertheless, there are a few problems with this approach.
First, I'd like to underline what NovaKart has mentioned here, and which meanwhile should be common knowledge, namely that the migrants who came here are largely not the poorest of the poor. A lot of money and physical strength is required to undertake such a long journey. By just looking at the arrivers we can see that these are not mal-nourished people who barely survived the trip. They are often middle-class people who simply seek better opportunity. Some were in fact criminals in their home countries, involved in drug dealing and similar endeavours, who have nothing to lose. Most of them are decently dressed, have modern smartphones and are in good physical shape. That doesn't mean that life was perfectly rosy where they came from, but they certainly are not the people who should get the most attention if we are serious about helping people in need.
Second, I have to strongly oppose your statement,
You are illegitimately broadening the term "refugee". People like this are not refugees, and we cannot just ignore our legal definitions and pretend that they are. This may sound like I lack empathy, which is not the case. The problem is that a refugee has certain rights and claims which other migrants don't. If we were to count everyone who has difficulties surviving each new day as a refugee, there would be hundreds of millions, if not billions of refugees. And they all would potentially have claims to asylum in Europe. Obviously, this would be completely unfeasible.
To make matters worse, the population in the developing parts of the world, especially Africa, is growing with unprecedented speed. By 2050 the population of Africa will have gone up from 1 billion to about 2.4 billion. By 2100 it will have reached the 4 billion mark. The migrant situation we see today is nothing compared what we will face in the coming decades. Even if it were possible to take in hundreds of millions migrants, which it isn't, this wouldn't help the developing countries at all, since the emigrants would quickly be replaced. It would just pull Europe down as well and decrease our ability to offer actual help. The only way to deal with this development is to rigorously seal off our borders and provide help in the countries of origin. Which brings me to my next point.
It has been estimated that, on average, for every migrant from a developing country who we take in to our society, we could help 20 others in the country of origin. The migrant crisis is first and foremost a grandios opportunity cost. It is often argued that we have humanitarian responsibility to let these people in, but that couldn't be further from the truth. Our resourced are not unlimited. And for every person we let in and use our resources on, there are a potential 19 people who we can't help. Factor in that those deserving our help the most, families with little children who are really starving, are those who can't undertake the journey to another country in the first place, and this babble about humanitarian responsibility becomes revealed for what it is, namely emotion-driven narcissistic help syndrom by people who want to feel good about themselves, but which is in fact catastrophically counter-productive.
------------------------------------------------
So to conclude, let us speak about the costs and the gains of letting in millions of migrants from the developing world. The costs come in several forms., the most obvious being the financial cost. I find the figure of 50 billion euros that Germany alone supposedly has to pay every year to for the migrant crisis to be strongly underestimated. I have seen much higher predictions - the economist Bernd Raffelhüschen for example has calculated costs of 900 billion euros for the next years, and that is in the unlikely case that the migrants integrate seamlessly into our job market. But even if we were to go with the conservative estimate, we are talking about a horrendously large financial burden for our country.
Furthermore, we have the cost of destabilising our society. We have talked about the increase of crime, however high it may actually be. Even more important than crime is the destabilising of our society by bringing in millions of people who largely hold illiberal beliefs, in regard to women, homosexuals, Jews, atheists, freedom of speech etc etc, in short everything that constitutes our modern, secular society. In a time when we should have long surpassed religious beliefs being virulent in the public and political spheres, we are now, out of falsely understood tolerance and political correctness, regressing into a time where we are having discussions about the burka, gender segregation, religious sensitivities, limits to free speech, religious privileges etc etc. In other words, we have exacerbated the Islamisation of our society with all its ugly heads, like creeping sharia, division of society along religious lines resulting in Islamic parallel societies, outdated barbaric practices like FGM, the likelihood of terror attacks and so on and so forth. Since most of our Muslims had been from Turkey, a comparatively secular country (though this seems to be changing rapidly as well), the problems that Islam cause to a society were not as noticable as, say, in Britain or in France. But importing further millions of Muslims from the most backward areas of the world is downright suicidal to our nation's health. Keep in mind that Muslims have way higher birth rates than everyone else; their number will therefore further increase which will lead to yet more and greater problems. In case I sound too hawkish on this point, please read this article by Salim Mansur, a Canadian professor and practising Muslim, who comes to the same conclusions.
Moreover, the migrant crisis has totally divided our society and poisoned the political atmosphere, with delusional multiculturalist leftists on the one side, who will ignore facts and label everyone who wants to have an honest conversation as a racist or a Nazi, and on the other side a rise of nativist movements which we had long surpassed, as well as a general distrust of any politicians or journalists.
And last but not least, by making it increasingly arbitrary who lives here and by what rules, by chipping away at the foundations of what we intuitively think about what is German, however strongly that may vary, we are losing a sense of belonging, we are losing our spiritual home. Anabel Schunke, a writer on Tichys Einblick, has captured this point compellingly.
So, in light of these immense costs, what then are the gains? In what ways do we as a society benefit from letting in millions of people from developing, mostly Islamic countries? I'd argue that we gain very little. The migrants are poorly educated and can't even speak German, so they are more or less useless for the job market. And Muslims have proven to be extraordinarily resistant towards integration. We don't gain much culturally, since Islam as a way of life has virtually nothing to offer that we haven't long superceded that that isn't an outright affront to our liberal values. Of course many individual migrants, Muslim or not, may be totally charming people. As a teacher I probably have had more contact with such people than most, especially since my school has had to arrange a few classes for migrant children, which I have taught myself. But on a societal level I'd argue that the our gains of importing millions of Muslims into our society are miniscule, whereas the costs are exorbitantly high.
If, then, even the humanitarian argument fails, which it does, as I hopefully convincingly demonstrated, there is literally nothing left to justify the migrant politics we have seen in the last year. It has led to extreme costs, won't benefit us in any way, and forcloses the possibility to help those who are really in need. I am naturally curious whether you see the situation similarly bleak, or if you can spot a silver lining to all of this which has just escaped my attention.
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I wanted to end with the more or less unrelated, but nevertheless important topic, the Amadeu-Antonio-Stiftung. This is an organisation which receives government support, and in fact has been ordered by our minister of justice, Heiko Maas, to search for and report so-called "hate-speech", especially in the Internet. The crux of the matter obviously lies in the definition of what "hate-speech" is. It turns out that hate-speech is only on the "right". Everything that goes against the migrant policy, for example, is certainly "hate-speech". Say the wrong things, wear the wrong clothes, like the wrong pictures on Facebook, and you can get charged fines of several thousand euros if the Foundation finds out about your "hate".
What hate is, is of course defined solely by the Foundation. To give you one example of how absurd it gets, saying that you are against child abuse can get you into trouble, since this could be interpreted as an attack against the Green party, who have a history of child abuse, and the Greens are the biggest proponents of migration. You can't make this stuff up. Needless to say, this kind of "attitude control" is completely undemocratic and shakes at the foundations of our free society. The Amadeu-Antonio Foundation is led, of all people, by a former Stasi worker, Anette Kahane. You can't blame them for not choosing people with experience. I should add that Islamists, for instance, or Antifa members, who spout their real hatred towards everyone who doesn't agree with them, are not even on the radar of this organisation. In fact, a member of the Foundation herself, Julia Schramm has tweeted the most obnoxious things, like "Bomber Harris Flächenbrand, Deutschland wieder Ackerland”, or "Sauerkraut, Kartoffelbrei, Bomber Harris Feuer frei". That is of course not hate speech.
Many people have been "caught" already by the Foundation. There have even been cases when the police have raided houses in the middle of the night, confiscating all computers and devices. This is an interview which features such a victim, whose "crime" it was to like a picture on Facebook. The guy is an utter loon, but that is hardly a reason to have your house raided.
For more information I can offer you two articles from Tichys Einblick (here and here, I also recommend the comments which are usually very well thought-out on Tichy), though you should be able to find plenty of other information about the abominable practises of this organisation. Now just imagine, we have essentially a new Stasi, installed and supported by the government, controlling what you are allowed to think and say, and nobody is even aware of it. The mainstream media certainly don't report about it (hell, they invite Kahane for interviews so she can ramble on about the "evil right"). My colleges largely don't know about it. My family didn't know about it. You didn't know about it. I wouldn't know about it if I hadn't stumbled on it by accident. Yet it is happening right in front of our eyes. I hope you can appreciate the scope of what is going on here.
I wish I could end on a lighter note, but Germany in 2016 has become quite depressing.
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Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
Are you guys even trying, at this point, to pretend you haven't just dredged up old Klan literature and swapped "Negros" for "immigrants"?
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