Immigration thread. - The Bear and Badger

Funkstain

IanHamlett wrote:

Out of interest, what would everyone do about people crossing the mediterranean?

Force the EU to recognise their duties under the treaty, and actually fund proper, civilised holding / processing centres (NOT detention, you can leave (to go back to your country) at any time) which quickly and efficiently determine which country you should be re-settled in.

Proper, well-funded re-settlement facilities, with language classes, child support, legal and other kinds of support (housing, health, employment etc) that help with introduction and integration within the new country / city / area.

The question of whether someone has the right to settle somewhere in Europe, from anywhere else in the world i.e.: what happens after the comfortable, polite, efficient processing centres, is one that I personally don't believe we should be asking - I believe that national borders are a simple way of perpetuating the leadership of our global overlords via demagoguery and xenophobia and are a blight on humanity.

GurtTractor

IanHamlett

That seems like a reasonable thing to do for people that arrive in europe but I don't think that's where the problem is. I'm stuck on what we should do about people in crappy boats. If we help them across the med, are we encouraging more to make a dangerous trip and basically doing the job the people smugglers are taking money for?

beano

Facewon wrote:

Too diverse?

Is Britain becoming too diverse to sustain the mutual obligations behind a good society and the welfare state?

Prospect article from 2004. Interesting reading. "progressive dilemma" seems an interesting/useful concept. Although in the intervening 11 years, maybe it's been poisoned, so who knows. Either way, file under #long and #foodforthought IMO.

That written by one of the guys discussed by Kenan Malik, in the previous article you posted.

Facewon wrote:

Red flags ahoy in the second half of the article. Woah.

What did you expect

Roujin

Obligatory posting of this video, because I cant think of anything else everytime immigration is mentioned now, thanks to this eskimo faced cunt from the 90s.

http://youtu.be/Ft338yltVLE

Facewon

beano wrote:

Facewon wrote:

Too diverse?

Is Britain becoming too diverse to sustain the mutual obligations behind a good society and the welfare state?

Prospect article from 2004. Interesting reading. "progressive dilemma" seems an interesting/useful concept. Although in the intervening 11 years, maybe it's been poisoned, so who knows. Either way, file under #long and #foodforthought IMO.

That written by one of the guys discussed by Kenan Malik, in the previous article you posted.

Facewon wrote:

Red flags ahoy in the second half of the article. Woah.

What did you expect

Yeah, pretty sure that's where I came across the link.

His supposed "third way" between multiculturalism and monoculture is so poorly thought out. It's basically: take the best bits of these two things and everything will be gravy. Yeah, nah.

Facewon

IanHamlett wrote:

That seems like a reasonable thing to do for people that arrive in europe but I don't think that's where the problem is. I'm stuck on what we should do about people in crappy boats. If we help them across the med, are we encouraging more to make a dangerous trip and basically doing the job the people smugglers are taking money for?

Here, have a pre-prepared slippery slope:

That line of reasoning is exactly what successive governments here have used to lock people up in detention, where they are literally being raped and murdered. Amongst other nasty issues and dehumanising acts.

Now we're at the point of turning the boats around, under a shroud of military secrecy, and paying smugglers to take them back.

If you want to talk about what would "encourage" folk, you then look at what might "deter" them, and once they're dehumanised, by say, telling people they're throwing their kids overboard when you know it's a lie.

You can then do whatever you want.

Like sending legit refugees back to afghanistan, where their family members have been killed and disappeared.

Apologies. Went off on one a little, and the numbers coming do actually make the european situation different. But we're in fucking twilight zone evil shit here.

IanHamlett

So what would you do? Explain a slippery slope to them?

IanHamlett

We did have a case of people allegedly being thrown overboard a few months back.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/04/migrants-thrown-overboard-mediterranean-toll-rises-150417002608859.html

Facewon

funk has a good start, and his final para touches on part of the problem.

The issue lies at the other end, where there's a fucking shit tonne of problems, being not helped by various foreign policy. Unlike that prospect article, I don't just gloss over "human rights" and think that any dangerous over population issues in most western democracies is overblown, it certainly is here. The number of asylum seekers in the border countries dwarfs even what is hitting europe, so maybe the answer is actually getting on with claims and resettlement in border countries to western/financially viable countries.

I wrote this rant last year. Only got around to posting it last week.

“The case of Latifa, a 31-year-old woman of the persecuted Rohingya people of Myanmar” seems a nice piece of “moral blackmail” for Tony and co. She had “ spent nearly 10 years in a refugee camp in Malaysia.” Only to end up with her baby taken from her:

[Latifa]is being locked up for 18 hours a day in a detention centre in Brisbane while her week-old baby remains in hospital with respiratory problems.

She was separated from her baby on Sunday, four days after a caesarean delivery, and has since been allowed to visit him only between 10am and 4pm in Brisbane’s Mater Hospital. The boy, named Farus, has respiratory problems and needs round-the-clock medical care.

10 freakin years.

IanHamlett

I'm all for abolishing nation states if that's what you mean. I'm all for taking more immigrants and doing it in all in a nicer way. I'm all for making it nicer in the countries that people are fleeing from. But chances are there are people drowning in the Med right this very second and there will be more tomorrow. I genuinely do not know the best way to prevent this.

I don't think the UK's foreign policy can be blamed for the people leaving Eritrea. The UK hasn't done the best job in encouraging their human rights record but it's done the usual amount of badgering and (I think) there's some investment coming to Eritrea if they tidy up a bit.

adkm1979

IanHamlett wrote:

I'm stuck on what we should do about people in crappy boats. If we help them across the med, are we encouraging more to make a dangerous trip and basically doing the job the people smugglers are taking money for?

We help. And we help some more. We do whatever we can.

I know it's a different situation, but eighty years ago the people of this country went to every length to help protect foreigners in danger. The country stood up to a well-equipped aggressor and made itself a target in the defence of others. Now, as people are so desperate for help they're risking death to find it, sections of the public are talking about other humans as though they are a disease, something we need to protect ourselves from.

So yes, we help.

GooberTheHat

They weren't brown though.

IanHamlett

If we help them across the med, are we encouraging more to make a dangerous trip

We help. And we help some more. We do whatever we can.

If you mean help by sending more ships even closer to where they're leaving from, are the various navies just propping up people smuggling operations? Is that really helping? Will that encourage more people to agree to sail in even crappier boats? Will that result in more death and general human misery?

And what of the people smugglers? What are they doing with that money? From the accounts I've heard they are not nice men.

Funkstain

If you mean "prevent this" in the short term, then there's not a lot other than sending in actual navies and / or opening the actual floodgates to let them in for free and safely. Which will not happen. But then neither would any of my or Face's stuff "prevent this" in the long term, because they won't happen either, because basically humans are shitty, I declare, as I sit in my comfortable hotel room typing on my expensive macbook contemplating having a wank.

What do you want someone to say? That they, through your kind and patient guidance on the forum, have finally realised that everything's shit, and become a fellow nihilist pretending to be sharp challenger of unrealistic hopes?

There's only hope and dream of, and maybe even support, something different; become the driver of that something different; or give up on it all and watch game of thrones for the funny rapes. For most of us option 1 will just have to do I guess.

IanHamlett

I'm not a nihilist and people aren't shitty.

Funkstain

can't talk, masturbating

IanHamlett

Morally it's quite easy to decide what to do with people when they get here. Treat them with respect and see what we can do. I'm just having genuine difficulty seeing a morally righteous way to deal with the boats and smugglers. It's like one of those questions with a bunch of people on a train track.

IanHamlett

I'be never had any particular problem with murdering the guy on his own in this one though.

Funkstain

The only things that could be done to help will never be done to help.

If that's not because humans are generally shitty then it must be some other reason or group of reasons but it doesn't change that fact.

So it's more like the bald ethicist totally ignoring the power he has to lessen the horror, whilst looking on in shock and pity at the resulting carnage.

Funkstain

Eventually the situations they are running from will calm a bit, enough that spending generations' worth of life savings to likely die at sea with all your family, only to be greeted with hatred, revulsion and detention should you be lucky enough to survive, doesn't seem such an attractive alternative.

And then there will be something else to get depressed about on the news.

adkm1979

IanHamlett wrote:

people aren't shitty.

If people weren't shitty, we wouldn't be not helping because we're selfish I'm-alright-Jacks, we'd have nobody to help because it wouldn't be happening.

The poor fuckers are fleeing from fuckers actively making their life hell to fuckers who couldn't give a toss either way.

I'd like to think I'm not shitty, but the sum total of my assistance is writing a couple of posts in this thread about what we should do. Elsewhere I'm moaning about HDMI ports and pondering whether to buy the ten or twenty pound version of another videogame I'll barely play, all the while filling my face with wine and chocolate. I'm pretty shitty, and I'm by no means the worst.

IanHamlett

People do shitty things, fuelled by shitty ideas, but I don't think people are shitty.

GooberTheHat

People smugglers are pretty shitty and do it for greed, not some ideology.

IanHamlett

I meant to put "often fuelled". I don't think all of the worlds problems are ideology driven.

adkm1979

IanHamlett wrote:

People do shitty things, fuelled by shitty ideas, but I don't think people are shitty.

I say a similar thing about bad people. I've only met a small handful of actually bad people in my job. Proper evil. The rest are just people who've done bad things.

Shitty is different, though. I think people are pretty shitty.

IanHamlett

Fair point. Are you a copper? Almost all the career criminals I've met have been okay people with understandable reasons for being where they are. Maybe a couple of sociopaths, It's hard to tell when people are on coke.

Facewon

GooberTheHat wrote:

People smugglers are pretty shitty and do it for greed, not some ideology.

Definitely worth distinguishing between grunts and bosses on that front though. The actual dudes on the boats are frequently in a very shitty situation. Been a number of articles reports on em over the years out here.

IanHamlett

Looking around, it doesn't seem like many people have much of a choice about the things they do. There's a high up gangster/property guy that's recently got out of prison a few towns over. I think he had half a million buried in his garden last time the police got him.

I've been told he can't leave the business, even though he's the boss as far as anyone round there is concerned.

JonB

Talk of ideology is interesting.

Saying 'people are shitty' is ideological. It's a way of dealing with that massive contradiction between people's misery elsewhere in the world and our consumer comforts (and the connection between them in many cases). It switches absolute belief in a God, nationalism etc. for an absolute belief in an essential unchanging human nature, which then offers a way out of any guilt or sense of impotence. It may be far better informed and more realistic than a lot of other ideologies, but it's an ideology nonetheless. And of course it works as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

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