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I like how “integration” is but worth a 30 second to 1 minute mention in the video. Racism and a resistance to integrate newcomers has a negative effect: no surprise there. Make them feel at home, treat them well, be inviting, and they will want to contribute.
Integration is good, but even there it’s complicated. I think he does a fair job of discussing the subject, so to me it’s a little strange with all the negative votes. Isn’t a fact based and fairly neutral video on the subject appreciated?
Facts are good, but I’m saying he missed an important aspect which colored his final opinion on the subject. He bifurcated it to either you have
- social cohesion, less growth, and less immigrants
- less social cohesion, more growth, and more immigrants
And as usual in life, there aren’t only 2 options. He completely missed the reason why low skilled workers are migrating. Reasons include: we extract wealth from their countries and let our companies run rampant there, we fight our proxy wars and trade wars there, our pollution is causing the climate to change so much there that it’s becoming much less livable - and that’s not “it happened centuries ago”, it’s going on right now.
Again, IMO, the biggest reason immigration isn’t “saving” Europe’s economy is because of shitty integration. Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands supposedly have the best “integration models”, but that’s completely relative, because actually they all suck. They’re just better than the rest of Europe, which suck more.
Wat do?
Bind social welfare to education progress: you do badly at speaking the language and are not willing to learn --> less money. But that also means qualified teachers should be provided or trained that treat them with respect. Also, it shouldn’t cost a fortune for low-skilled immigrants to get language courses. Germany is good in this regard because they are freely available by public institutions and German TV is freely available without DRM. Denmark has the downside of having a terrible language, but the courses are free for low-skilled immigrants, high-skilled immigrants don’t even have to bother learning if they speak English - which isn’t good either. And the Danish courses are expensive af for high-skilled immigrants. The Netherlands is just a complete fucking mess, so let’s not get into that.
Then, don’t put low-skilled immigrants in low-income neighborhoods, far away from amenities, where there are less opportunities to find jobs, public transport is worse, and they cannot integrate. Of course they won’t learn the language as quickly, their kids will go to worse schools, hang out with the wrong people, and worse. It’s something that’s been known for decades and yet the same old policies still apply.
Want to lower the number of low-skilled immigrants? Invest in the communities abroad where these refugees and low-skilled workers are coming from. They won’t have to emigrate if there’s nothing to escape from or if they like it there more than here. Or invest in the people that immigrated. Remittance is a large part of what they do to help out the families abroad, which partially addresses the problem too.
And of course, make your own damn country better for low-skilled, low-wage domestics. There’s no “wage war” with low-skilled immigrants if you have a highly educated and capable domestic work-force. Invest in your own citizens. Raise the minimum wage and make education one the biggest expenditures. Teacher should be paid wages of engineers and managers and CEOs. A good teacher can provide way more to the economy in terms of workpower than a company. Companies depend on skilled workers. It makes absolutely no sense to reduce the wages and worsen the working conditions of those that teach them those skills. It’s idiotic beyond belief.
It would’ve made his video longer or he could’ve teased with: “but there is one important aspect I didn’t talk about: why do we have immigrants in the first place?” or something like that.
Again, facts are good, context is also very important. I could tell you right now that some viruses are made in a lab, but if I don’t answer “why”, well… you see what happens.
I think they should contribute by default when they come to a different country. A country that is accepting migrants is already giving them a lot by allowing them to live in peace.
Edit: I think it is crucial to have sensible migration policies sth similar to what australia has. At least adapt the credits part. Via policies like this, countries can benefit from migration.
A country that is accepting migrants is already giving them a lot by allowing them to live in peace.
Migrants are people who come to the country whether legally, illegally, out of duress or not, with high or low skill. A Brit moving to Australia is a migrant, a Pole moving to Estonia, is a migrant and a Malawian moving to France, is also a migrant.
You’re talking about refugees and most likely also economic migrants. Ask yourself why they are fleeing or migrating. Someone fleeing Afghanistan for example is fleeing a country that was the playground for proxy wars between Russia and the USA. A Sudanese refugee is fleeing a civil war funded by American, German, Polish, and French arms manufacturers. Economic migrants from Congo, Kenya, Burundi, and other countries are hoping to find a better life away from a country at war with militias funded by Western companies to destabilize the area in order to get to ground resources cheaply.
If you are Western, you buy good funded by all of that. You give your money to companies actively making other countries less secure, less affluent, and more difficult to live in. The you probably vote for a party that doesn’t want to punish any of those companies, nor strike fair deals with the countries affected by their greed.
Do you think these people would flee a country with a bright future for them? We participate in the robbery of their future and wealth and then want to erect walls to keep them there. And they dare get out and make up less than a single percent of the migrant population, we have people who demand we send them back to the hell we created for them.
I think there is quite a clear difference between a country and a charity. It’s not necessarily fault of western companies that some other countries have terrible governments that make bad decisions.
Of course, it’s horrible but it’s not necessarily my fault and hence I think basic rules should be set. So the migration is also beneficial for the country accepting the refugees.
It’s not necessarily fault of western companies that some other countries have terrible governments that make bad decisions.
That is true, but it doesn’t help that the west is putting its fingers in everybody’s pies and reinforcing the bad behaviors that exist. It’s beneficial to influence such countries in order to keep them easily swayed.
it’s not necessarily my fault
Just because you don’t feel it’s true, doesn’t mean it isn’t. Maybe you buy products made from materials mined by children. Maybe you wear clothes sewn by women working on a minimum wage. Maybe you consume food picked by underpaid and often underage people who struggle to survive (chocolate is notorious for that). It wouldn’t surprise me if you voted for a party that gave less than a shit about these people abroad. Maybe you even voted for party that voted against punishing companies who use such labor and materials in order to force them to find fair trade sources.
There is a cause and effect, a reaction for every action, no matter how small. And just like a deluge of raindrops can lead to breached dike, a deluge of individual actions (or inactions) can lead to the things we see today. Everyone plays their part and no one is innocent.
So you are talking about how children have to work. My question is: why do they have to work? Why their governments aren’t doing anything about it?
It’s not western countries forcing them to work.
Have you seen what Western countries do when a government refuses to do their bidding? They just pay the opponent to supplant them.
Look up Patrice Lumumba. Look up Rwanda and Congo. Look at Venezuela.
What do you think the US has done to hold influence in countries? There’s an incredibly huge list.
Western companies like Steinmetz influenced government officials in a multitude of countries for decades. Only in 2023 were they sentenced.
So, why do children have to work? Because western companies roam rampant in their countries, western countries (the worst of which is the USA in recent history) do so too and they do not punish their national companies either. Look at the stink the US is throwing when the EU - an ally and fellow western country - takes action against their multinationals. Read up on the US response to the Digital Services and Digital Markets Act. Read up on how the USA influenced the Netherlands to stop their golden goose from selling chip making machines to China. If the US could do that to the EU, what do you think European countries can do to developing countries that aren’t part of a union, have little to no power, and no courts to turn to with any power.
And of course the banking system is setup in a manner that makes it difficult to climb out of poverty. Developing countries are given loans for things the bank knows they can never achieve nor pay back, so the countries are constantly in dept, making it harder for them to invest.
It’s good that you’re asking questions. I’d advise you to search for the answers yourself too to understand how the world works.
Yeah, so it’s mostly fault of those countries having very poor leadership that is not capable of protecting their citizens.
There are several countries that were rather undeveloped but managed to overcome this, for example South Korea, Taiwan or UAE.
E.g. in Germany, refugees are forbidden from working and forced to live on social aid in the beginning. How long that beginning stretches heavily depends from case to case and can easily be years or until deportation.
Then Germany has stupid refugees policies which only cost them money.
Yep. But these came about in the 90s, as a reaction to Nazis burning refugee housing, to assure voters that foreigners were not “taking German jobs”.
Regardless of your home country though, this area of policy is full of own goals perpetrated on us by xenophobic and populistic politicians.
Right now, Germany is introducing a payment card for refugees. The stated goal is for people to send less money home and for them to not be able to make frilly purchases and thus limiting “unwanted” migration. The system is a lot more expensive than the previous cash-based system: For reasons, refugees still need to go through personal monthly check-ins with a government office but the the government now also pays a private payment provider in addition. Refugees also never got much money in the first place, they are now barred from many cash-only events/stores like second-hand sales or smaller bakeries. And sending money home actually helps people in poorer countries stay where they are.
Honestly, refugees rarely take jobs of the original population. Rather they fill the blank space.
Hence why I do not necessarily understand the approach where refugees are kept on social assistance. It is very disadvantageous for both sides.
Far better approach would be to make a list of scarce jobs - e.g. those ones where people are missing and accept refugees who have these capabilities. That would be a win win situation for both sides.
Hence why I do not necessarily understand the approach where refugees are kept on social assistance. It is very disadvantageous for both sides.
The point of these kinds of politics is to temporarily quell irrational fears of the genpop. Solving (or at least not worsening) issues is not a reason for these politics.
that comment section is … disappointing.
It’s a topic that brings out the worst people, which probably is why it’s so hard to talk about.
too many people conflate “not wanting foreigners to come to our country” with “not liking foreigners”.
don’t get me wrong, i have no problem with foreigners. I’m not a racist. But i don’t like them coming to our country.
I understand that we have to accept them, because (a) they need help and (b) we’re the reason they need help (the western world caused the wars in the middle east).
Still I think it’s wrong to uproot the lives of many people (moving them from one country to another). Especially I think it’s disgusting how european politicians are discussing refugees as a way to “support our economy”, as if they were a mere tool of production. We have to put people first and economy second again.
Tldr: Its complicated
It is.
The least surprising to me is that generally refugees are a cost. I would assume as much. You accept refugees because they need shelter and help, not because they can contribute something. If they can, great, but that’s not why you take them in.
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