Refugees, Immigration, and Other Complexities (split from News)

[gaggedLouise]

Responses are kind of heating up here in Sweden too (where immigration and refugees has been a hot topic for the last couple of months). A local politician representing the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats, got into the following hot-water exchange on Facebook. To get the geography right, Denmark is poised between Germany and Sweden and the several miles long bridge across the Öresund strait is the main gateway into Sweden for trains and cars from the European mainland

Gunilla S: /politician/: "Denmark and Germany are cutting down on their daily handouts for refugees - but not Sweden, hell no. Of course they wanna go on to Sweden! Won't some persons step up on the Öresund bridge with machine gun in hand?"
*** (name masked by the newspaper): Where did you get those supposed facts about support money on the German side? And what do you propose those people should do with them machine guns?
Gunilla S: "You must be extremely thick. End of discussion!"
*** : "Shouldn't you be the one on the bridge waving that machine gun, Miss?"

After those lines hit the news, said local politician blanked her lines and pleaded that she had been "swayed by a state of affect". ^_ ^

She is however also a lay juror at the local town court (nominated by her party). A senior judge at the court hinted that it could prove difficult for her to continue after that outburst. ;)

[LtSurge]

Food is indeed not infinite.  That's why headlines like these are so unsettling.

Although the tomatoes that grew in my compost pile would make a case for food being a bit closer to free than many would suspect.  I bought one tomato, consumed most of it, and got six more from the one slice that sprouted.

Oh? You're growing tomatoes? Neat! I'm growing lemons using just about the same method you did

[consortium11]

     I'm more concerned there with first, whether the countries could find work for people to begin with.  If they have made it too difficult for people to get in and work at all, isn't that a problem they have created for themselves?

Sweden and Denmark have unemployment rates at 7.8% and 6.3% respectively, well below the EU average of around 9%. Norway's is around 4%, one of the lowest across the entire EU. Low unemployment rates indicate that it's relatively easy to get a job. In addition to use Sweden as an example, if you look at the list of professions where they have labour shortages you'll see lots of construction and industrial jobs (as well as old standbys like waiters and chefs) which are jobs where a lack of higher education or great language skills aren't necessarily a huge drawback and thus are common professions for immigrants to go into when they first arrive (in the UK for example the construction sector is largely dominated these days by Polish and other Eastern European workers). But there's still this massive unemployment rate among non-Western immigrants.

By focusing on select countries, you're also limiting the pool so that we don't have similar data on other countries.  Or to put it another way, closer to what you seem to be saying anyway, we can't know exactly what would happen in other countries if they don't make it possible for immigrants to try there.  (Though I'm still uncomfortable because you've stepped back from providing comparative information for what we do have, however qualified that might have to be.)

I was focusing on those countries because on paper they should be the best countries for an immigrant to arrive in and quickly become a net contributor to the economy. I can bring up others... in the UK it is estimated that immigration from outside the EU between 1995 and 2007 cost £120 billion, in France it ends up costing around 26 billion euros a year with immigrants being twice as likely to be unemployed as the existing population and in Spain it's at roughly 25 billion euros.

I feel we shouldn't simply assume the work and social cultures of Germany and the Scandanavian countries are all that similar without investigating them all.  The needs of some Euro countries may be quite different from others, too.  Consider just for one example, this comparative aging chart.  In 2040, picking the more visible dark blue line for each country, around 23-25% of the Swedish, Danish and Norwegian populations will be over 50.  However in Germany, the number is closer to 33%.  It would seem to me that this suggests Germany may be more in need of young laborers, even relatively less skilled ones, to provide service jobs or manufacturing - or whatever it needs that the elders are not going to be supplying.  The Scandinavian countries have small populations and a lot of open space; Germany has packed urban areas stretching over much more of the country.  I haven't checked, but is the pension system completely comparable either?  Etc.

To maintain Germany's current age ratio would, following current demographics, require increasing the population from 82 to 490 million and the arrival of 261 million immigrants over the next 90 years (that's around 2.9 million a year). Even if all those immigrants became net-contributors to the economy that doesn't strike me as a realistic option (for comparison since WW2 Germany's population has only increased by around 15 million in 60 odd years). In addition Germany currently has a fairly low demand for low skilled workers to begin with (and I'd note the point above about the sectors that have labour shortages in Sweden). Frankly I'd also hold Germany up as a good example of why the "use immigrants to fill the low skill manual labour jobs market" position is a weak one; they did exactly that in the 1960's and 70's with Turkish workers during the Wirtschaftswunder. Today those Turkish immigrant communities (and their children) are stuck in an economic underclass with low levels of employment, income or integration.

I'm doubtful it makes practical sense to read it that way.  If Europe as a whole needs that many people -- which is how I understood the report to be paraphrased -- then it's still a net loss doing what they're doing (i.e. restricting immigrants in principle to port of call countries which don't seem to want so many, or turning many away outright) unless they get them from -- where?  They generally don't take them from the U.S. without super specialized skills as it is.  Who does that leave that would be allowable under their policy, considered 'Western,' and not a let loss for Europe?  I don't imagine it's much easier for Aussies to get in, though I could be wrong?  Perhaps some Brits, if Britain wasn't being counted in the figure, but I suspect they were included in that definition of Europe.

On a technical point Australians do have somewhat of an easier time emigrating to Europe, generally going through the UK.

But frankly, you've accurately summed up the issue with the "we need more immigrants" position. The immigrants we "want" (for lack of a better term) to make up for an aging population with longer life spans and low(er) birthrates are those who are net contributors to the economy and from the demographic evidence we have that means Western or EU immigrants, not those from outside the EU or the "West". It also doesn't mean low-skilled workers... not only are there limited opportunities (even noting the point about Sweden above) but that's a market largely filled by Eastern European immigrants who are more likely to return to their country of birth in their old age and thus put less pressure on the welfare state. If the immigrants coming from outside the West and/or EU were all highly skilled experts who could quickly get into the job market and required minimal financial support by the state then the position would be strong... but they're not.

The position that we need more immigrants to save us only works if it's the "right sort" of immigrants... but there aren't enough of them.

[Caehlim]

On a technical point Australians do have somewhat of an easier time emigrating to Europe, generally going through the UK.

Being part of the commonwealth doesn't help all that much. It's great if you want a short visit (technically I don't even need a visa to do that), but they don't give us the same latitude in living and working there. My sister is married to an Englishman, constantly struggles with organizing to continue to stay in the country and still hasn't been able to obtain citizenship yet.

I mean yes, we've got a bit of name recognition going on when we say we're from Australia and I think we get some subconscious leeway from immigration officials (especially after ticking the white and speaks English boxes). However when they started exiling the Irish across the waves to their new prison colony they never really planned on allowing them to come back.

[kylie]

I was focusing on those countries[western Scandinavia] because on paper they should be the best countries for an immigrant to arrive in and quickly become a net contributor to the economy. I can bring up others... in the UK it is estimated that immigration from outside the EU between 1995 and 2007 cost £120 billion, in France it ends up costing around 26 billion euros a year with immigrants being twice as likely to be unemployed as the existing population and in Spain it's at roughly 25 billion euros.

Fair enough, but I'm not sure if absolute cost per year should be enough to sway people from bringing in refugees.  How much of a relative cost is that, really?  What else have those countries done with similar sums of money recently?  Granted there's always someone who says 'not one dime of mine' for this or that and it seems easy to say that if "that" is funding for someone labeled as a different group somehow at the start.  But that may still be more a political will problem than a simple feasibility statement.

     Perhaps for some comparison, here's an argument that Canada for example could afford to catch up with say, German levels of immigration -- at least, by a fraction.  This speaks to both how cheaply (relatively!) immigration can be subsidized, and what might be possible when people do have the will and not just a spirit of "no one rides for free in my great country, everyone should suffer as I have all their life!" 

Contrary to popular perception, the government of Canada pays very little to support refugees arriving in Canada. Financial support can be provided for up to one year or until they find work, whichever comes first. In Ontario, a single refugee could receive up to $781 per month for a year, in addition to a one-time allowance of $905. Germany calculates that they spend slightly more, about $11,600 (in Canadian dollars) per new refugee. Increasing our refugee intake by a factor of 20 would cost approximately $2.2 billion a year.

That might sound like a lot, but it works out to $63 per Canadian. The parties would only need to give up a few of the boutique tax credits they are sprinkling across the country. Better yet, the government could pledge to match whatever the public promises up to a maximum of $1.1 billion. This would cut the cost in half and force Canadians to put up or shut up. When this approach has been used in the past, to address an overseas natural disaster for example, the public has been extremely generous. We might surprise ourselves.

Frankly I'd also hold Germany up as a good example of why the "use immigrants to fill the low skill manual labour jobs market" position is a weak one; they did exactly that in the 1960's and 70's with Turkish workers during the Wirtschaftswunder. Today those Turkish immigrant communities (and their children) are stuck in an economic underclass with low levels of employment, income or integration.

Again that's fair enough if you assume nothing else can/should ever change to deal with the present situation better...  But Germany doesn't generally use the same logic to drive policy and thus just kick the Turkish community out, either (as far as I know, though some rightists might prefer to).  The United States is more or less aware that the Black population, or take the Filipino population in Hawaii, or some of the Native American population in quite a few states, or much of the Latino population now are not making huge financial headway... 

     All of these are de facto economic underclasses.  The existence of underclasses -- and state interest in having them -- isn't a result of "generous" immigration policy.  That's just rhetoric the far right trots out whenever they think they can get some votes and rally the people against a handy scapegoat/distraction, particularly when the overall economy is suffering and the middle class is getting dragged down too.  But the Western economic models generally require an underclass; the only question is how many is too many to be merely as 'flexible' (i.e. to fill the quota of expendables) as the market wishes. 

    If you really have a problem with encouraging underclasses as such, then perhaps adopt a model that distributes wealth more equally than what we have (here's Europe just for example, have talked about the US enough elsewhere).  Then it's more convincing to argue about how relatively affordable or not taking in more people on subsidies is, in some larger picture of what's feasible.  Governments have already been funding the policy of encouraging underclasses for a very long time.  While there might be some limit to just how many people a country can take in on some basis or other, it's odd to say they don't want to fund what they are otherwise funding until we have a really convincing reason for drawing the line in some particular place.

[kylie]

... in the UK it is estimated that immigration from outside the EU between 1995 and 2007 cost £120 billion...

      A technical curiosity btw.  If this is the number from the same source in question (it appears very close on the figure), then it seems like it's become the subject of some debate. 

      Aside but it's quite a contradiction:  Others have looked at the same time period and come up with a (slight, few billion) positive fiscal impact for immigration into the UK.  Though they were looking more at people from say, Eastern Europe and I might doubt that refugees from Syria would have quite as much to start with on average.

Dustman and Frattini say it is misleading to use the £118bn figure as the Telegraph and Mail have done. As they point out, this is based on the cost of all immigrants living in Britain between 1995 and 2011. This isn’t migrants who arrived in Britain in the late 1990s and 2000s but all the non-UK born people living in Britain at that time. More than 90% of them will have arrived in Britain long before 1995, including Britain’s large long-settled Asian and Caribbean communities who were born abroad.

The authors say that, for example, the calculation will include people who came to Britain in 1950 but only what they paid into the state and took out in benefits and public services after 1995.

The authors say this doesn’t tell us anything about how much these people have cost Britain in net terms because it ignores their contribution during the first 45 years of their residence.

[Dashenka]

Denmark shut down it's train system to and from Germany because 3.000 immigrants had stormed the trains. When they were stopped to be registered, they refused to get out because they wanted to get clear passage to Sweden and did not want to be registered in Denmark.

About hundred left the train to be registered.

This is no longer Hungary or Greece we are talking about. This is Denmark, in a recent survey, the same country that got choses as one of the happiest places on earth. Yet still these immigrants refuse everything.

I wonder how much longer you all can keep protecting your beliefs that these 'refugees' are really that. They are leeches, leeching off the system of Europe. Really desperate refugees would have gotten off the train and get registered before travelling on to Sweden, as they should and like these 100 actually did.

There is just so much wrong with this whole 'refugee' stuff and it goes beyond just the immigrants. It's a collosal fuck up of the US, the UN, the EU and every other humanitarian organization all over the world. When there is a war to be fought, the US dive in headfirst, when there is a country invaded by the big bad guy, NATO dives in headfirst.

When there is Ebola in Africa, nobody gives a fuck. When countries in Europe get swamped by so called refugees, nobody gives a fuck.

Sigh....

[Iniquitous]

When there is Ebola in Africa, nobody gives a fuck. When countries in Europe get swamped by so called refugees, nobody gives a fuck.

Sigh....

Generalizations again. The US DID send troops to Africa to help in the Ebola crisis. We also had American doctors there. Might want to research a little more instead of letting your hatred for the US completely blind you.

[Dashenka]

Generalizations again. The US DID send troops to Africa to help in the Ebola crisis. We also had American doctors there. Might want to research a little more instead of letting your hatred for the US completely blind you.

It wasn't my hatred against the US, it was my disbelief at humanity in general.

[gaggedLouise]

Well, clearly this is something that could keep going for a long time, it's not like the flow of people from Africa and the Middle East is going to let up quickly. The "hardline solution" would be for some western countries to just set up their own colonial banners in some of the countries where there is a war or serious unrest now, such as Libya, Syria, Mali and Sudan/South Sudan, or some indigenous dictators who could keep the situation in check like Qaddafi used to do, but that's not really practicable anymore...or morally acceptable for most people.

[kylie]

      You can't "leech" (lovely demonizing, dehumanizing word there btw?) off something that isn't there anymore, or is less there, to be had in the first place. 

Many refugees are reluctant to register in Denmark, where a centre-right government has cut benefits.

      Plus, the Danes are trying to restrict their movement apparently on behalf of other states, which (not for the first time in all this) doesn't bode well for the whole 'borderless European area' concept unless there is some solution to the crisis appearing soon.

       Personally, I find the whole notion of being beholden to the official "country of entry" concept a little odd.  Who benefits really?  You would think, Austria or some countries with few borders to the outside, but with all these differential policies in practice maybe it's not that simple.  If it's an economic union, why not make some central authority on immigration with a more uniform policy?  Just don't make it a corporate contract like they did with patrolling the Mediterranean and repatriating people found there; that's been a disaster already. 

[kylie]

     Meanwhile, there are arguments that Russia and Iran are quite active in support of Assad, including supplying weapons and proxies, possiby in ways that might draw out the refugee crisis longer.  The article isn't very specific about exactly what relationship is being assumed between these involvements and the refugee numbers, though I'd guess the general 'the longer Assad keeps at this, the longer the nasty stuff happens' principle could be involved. 

     For Dash: I'd be more open to claims of "not refugees", at least from Syria, when I hear fewer reports of cities being bombed, Isis blowing up monuments and trying to enforce some extremist idea of sharia law and general sexual abuse, chemical weapons being deployed and impoverished Turkish border camps swelling with people who can barely seem to get even if they're likely to be stranded.

some 4m Syrians had fled their homeland since the conflict began there to 2014. Meanwhile, the EU's entire 2014 asylum influx accounted for just 0.03% of its population as a whole.

          The same Economist article notes, among other things -- Eek.  Edit, I read the wrong column.  They list acceptance rates and Denmark's rate is pretty high, but their absolute numbers are pretty low.  Then again their population is low to begin with, so they have let in quite a few compared to that.  All this being said...  It still makes sense to me if immigrants can keep up with the fact that popular sentiment is not running so much toward likely letting them in, as it used to be?  And again, if that's the case, they might not want to stop there and risk being deported now?  (Or perhaps they'd rather go to Sweden, which has a higher absolute population of immigrants accepted lately?  It's a thought, and it also would seem to make it more likely that some recent refugees would know someone there already.)

[gaggedLouise]

      You can't leech off something that isn't there anymore, or is less there, to be had in the first place. 

      Plus, the Danes are trying to restrict their movement apparently on behalf of other states, which (not for the first time in all this) doesn't bode well for the whole 'borderless European area' concept unless there is some solution to the crisis appearing soon.

       Personally, I find the whole notion of being beholden to the official "country of entry" concept a little odd.  Who benefits really?  You would think, Austria or some countries with few borders to the outside, but with all these differential policies in practice maybe it's not that simple.  If it's an economic union, why not make some central authority on immigration with a more uniform policy?  Just don't make it a corporate contract like they did with patrolling the Mediterranean and repatriating people found there; that's been a disaster already.

It would have been considerably easier to manage if there had been a real "United States of Europe" with common taxation, armed forces, social, educational and workplace policies - if such a structure had existed for real all across these 28 countries and had been in charge instead of national governments being at the top, these operations would have become more streamlined and simpler to handle. At least from the point of view of bureaucrats, agency chiefs - and the police. But there isn't quite that kind of hard executive White House, Federal Cabinet and Pentagon at the centre. Not nearly so. Germany has taken the lead because it has more economic clout and more people than anybody else, but it's a pygmy in military terms and really doesn't want to be seen to force the rest of Europe their way, for some obvous historical reasons...

Yes, there's a steady lack of people taking charge on this, and I think that's to do with the EU itself: what does it mean that it styles itself  "union"? State union? Fiscal union? Some of the political people and some others really would like to move towards a truly unified space, a real "USE" (United States of Europe), but there's never been a clear mandate from below for it and everyone knows that in many member states, most people are against the idea, including the middle classes. No party in power in Paris, London, Stockholm, Rome or Prague would campaign for "let's move closer to a real union, let's build a Euro-Washington" at home. It's like, we're not gonna sell our national sovereignty for some kind of slogan.  :P

So there's a real contradiction here. The problem with a flood of refugees and migrants and a few wars going on quite close to Europe is a trans-European problem, it's not something that a single country could carve out and solve for itself, this is widely understood, and some politicians and some business people would want a firmer top structure to the EU to drive unified, streamlined solutions - but that won't wash with most ordinary people or even any governments: they want a final right to negotiate and to have their own way within their own country.

I bet some top politicians and diplomats will have swallowed quite a bit of pride over working out the plan that was presented the other day: to bring in 160.000 refugees ("real" refugees, by any standard) from camps in Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon, and distribute them across Europe. Those refugees would be on top of the ones who are already on the move and essentially every country would be obliged to take their quota - a country could opt out on some of those refugees with special reasons but it would cost the government quite a high fee. That is not always going to be easy to sell at home.

The feuding between neighbours like Austria, Hungary and (non-EU) Serbia or Sweden, Denmark and Germany over immigration policies and other stuff are the kind of turf fights that a firm top command would have forced down if there was one. But there isn't. Brussels or Berlin aren't able to do that except in the dreams of certain politicians and thinkers, and that's a continuous back story to the whole saga, though I guess it's not easy to see to non-Europeans.

[kylie]

      Oh no I didn't think there was central control on the policy really...  I just wondered if it might make a certain pragmatic sense by now, if there were more of it. 

      For whatever particular motives, Angela Merkel seems to think so too (same Economist article).

Speaking in Berlin on Monday, Angela Merkel, Germany's chancellor, called for a unified European migration policy, with refugees "fairly" distributed among EU member states. (She also noted that those migrants without a right to stay in Europe should be returned home.)

[gaggedLouise]

Mmm, yes, I figured you'd be clear that we're not one third of the way to a USE yet, absolutely! Just wanted to address this underlying constitutional and political issue because I think it brings an added bit of confusion, and something politicians themselves really don't like to admit to.

The European commission is a *sort* of Euro-government but it doesn't come close to the executive authority and ability to take decisions for everybody below that most national cabinets have.

[Dashenka]

Meet Europe's least favourite woman... Petra Laszlo...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JPs4kyBr7g



At least she got fired.

[gaggedLouise]

Well, Germany and Austria have decided to return to normal border control after a few days when tens of thousands of people passed through - especially according to the police, the flow was getting close to the limits of what one could manage. They will still be allowing people over of course, but with more checks. This presumably means more migrants getting bottled up in Serbia and Hungary.

There's no question that there's a need for some kind of coherent political solutions.

[Caehlim]

There's no question that there's a need for some kind of coherent political solutions.

I don't think anyone on either side of the issue, whether you're for or against refugees would disagree there. It's obvious that the current situation just isn't working and I don't think anyone is happy with it.

[Dashenka]

That's what I've been saying from day one. But everybody got all emotional over seeing the drowned babies and then just opened the floodgates and let them run freely throughout Europe.

Germany's reaching the limits of what they can handle or have already reached it. Now that we got that point, suddenly everybody agrees it should be limited and all.

Why now?

Why not a month ago? Am I the only one who could see this coming?

[Caehlim]

That's what I've been saying from day one. But everybody got all emotional over seeing the drowned babies and then just opened the floodgates and let them run freely throughout Europe.

Germany's reaching the limits of what they can handle or have already reached it. Now that we got that point, suddenly everybody agrees it should be limited and all.

Whoa, you're getting a bit ahead of yourself there I think. There's a big difference between saying "Wow, we should have had a co-ordinated, well-organized and international approach to this issue" and saying "Wow, we should have had Dashenka's co-ordinated, well-organized and international approach to this issue".

[gaggedLouise]

Yeah, I understand Germany hasn't said they are not letting more people in - they're still committed to accepting a six-figure number of migrants and refugees through this year. They're putting up a closer control at their borders, but they're not putting up any kind of iron wall.

[Dashenka]

Whoa, you're getting a bit ahead of yourself there I think. There's a big difference between saying "Wow, we should have had a co-ordinated, well-organized and international approach to this issue" and saying "Wow, we should have had Dashenka's co-ordinated, well-organized and international approach to this issue".

What's the difference?

[Caehlim]

What's the difference?

I think you may have inadvertently fallen into a False Dilemma approach, in which the only two possibilities are 1) The present handling or 2) Your proposed handling. Just because someone criticizes the present handling of the situation doesn't mean that they endorse your proposed handling of the situation.

For example and this is incredibly broad strokes so please don't bog down in details here, but I believe that an international effort should have been raised before these people even left Turkey, both taking large numbers of refugees off Turkey's hands and giving some aid money from the international community to assist them in handling the remaining number. This is different from both the present method and your suggestion, thus making a third option. There would be many other possibilities as well.

[Dashenka]

All I said before was to regulate the flow of immigrants, which is exactly what countries as Germany and Austria now want.

So what I said a week orso ago and what the politicians say now, is the same. Only I was sooner to see it.

I'm all for the hold responsible those who are resposible in the first place. But blaming NATO/US/Europe for destablizing the Middle East doesn't help the refugees.

[Caehlim]

Ah, so you weren't responding to me. Your "That's what I've been saying from day one" came immediately after my post so I assumed it was directed to what I had said, rather than the German police whom Louise quoted in an earlier post. Never mind, I see where we went astray from one another.