I remember back when I was living in Britain during Brexit that there were such ridiculous situations as the Polish lady who was pro-Leave very overtly to “stop more people coming over”. Most of the people the Brexiters were complaining that “too many of them are coming over because of the EU Freedom Of Movement” were Poles.
I’ve seen this kind of thing often described as “pulling the ladder up after you’ve climbed it”.
When it comes to immigration, I’ve seldom seen a discussion which is not self-serving in some way or other and whilst that’s pretty self-explanatory for the anti-immigration crowd, even a lot of the pro-immigration crowd are either self-serving (rightwingers who want an increase and less price-sensitivity in the Offer side of the market for Workers, to push salaries down) or whose pro-immigration stand is only because they believe they themselves will not be negativelly impacted by it rather than being a genuine desire of increasing the common good.
There is very little discussion anchored on Principles such as “we have a moral obligation of treating those we invited in as Guests” or “there is a lot of suffering, both here and abroad, so given that we don’t have the resources to help 8 billion people, what’s the best way to reduce that suffering that doesn’t just move it around or destroys the very things that make possible that prosperity we have to help with that”.
Most of the thinking around this an hyper-simplistic side-taking rather than actually trying to do things like reducing pain as much as possible without actually moving the pain around or creating ghettos in the countries taking in immigrants with a new underclass defined by their country of birth or even race (go look at the Paris baudelieres for a good example of that)
For example, I think Europe should not accept immigrants who chose to cross the Med in boats trying to illegally enter Europe, because they are either the stronguest amongst those in need or driven by greed rather than need, and from the very start they think the Law should not apply to them which makes it more likely they will continue to act like that when in Europe, yet at the same time I think Europe has moral obligating of going to the many refugee camps out there and find the people more in need and help them, including bringing them over if they do so desire, since as we are unable to help everybody, the most pain-reducing way of all to help the subset of people we can help is to find and help those hurting the most - helping the strong should have far less priority than helping the weak and we have no moral obligation at all of helping the greedy.
I also think that a lot of the problems that cause the pain that then leads to immigration is because of the acts of Western elites (and not only elites, though a disproportionate fraction of the gains ends up in the hands of such elites) - it’s why we should be going after those causing Global Warming (which is increasing Climate problems that turn into catastrophes in many poorer countries), people exploiting the resources in those countries, providing support to dictatorial regimes in poorer countries (not just arm sellers and countries arming or even directly intervening to prop-up “friendly” dictators but also those people who help corrupt leaders there enjoy the luxury that their stollen money buys) and so on.
IMHO, immigrantion is to a large extent a very indirect symptom of unbridled Capitalism in the West.
“It is recognised in the 1951 Convention that people fleeing persecution may have to use irregular means in order to escape and claim asylum in another country – there is no legal way to travel to the UK for the specific purpose of seeking asylum.”
Oh yeah, the UK is properly fucked up on that regard.
Some of Continental Europe is better, but nowehere is the system properly designed for helping the ones who need it the most, much less to balance it with not negativelly impact those who make the system have the means to helps some of those who need help.
I remember back when I was living in Britain during Brexit that there were such ridiculous situations as the Polish lady who was pro-Leave very overtly to “stop more people coming over”. Most of the people the Brexiters were complaining that “too many of them are coming over because of the EU Freedom Of Movement” were Poles.
I’ve seen this kind of thing often described as “pulling the ladder up after you’ve climbed it”.
When it comes to immigration, I’ve seldom seen a discussion which is not self-serving in some way or other and whilst that’s pretty self-explanatory for the anti-immigration crowd, even a lot of the pro-immigration crowd are either self-serving (rightwingers who want an increase and less price-sensitivity in the Offer side of the market for Workers, to push salaries down) or whose pro-immigration stand is only because they believe they themselves will not be negativelly impacted by it rather than being a genuine desire of increasing the common good.
There is very little discussion anchored on Principles such as “we have a moral obligation of treating those we invited in as Guests” or “there is a lot of suffering, both here and abroad, so given that we don’t have the resources to help 8 billion people, what’s the best way to reduce that suffering that doesn’t just move it around or destroys the very things that make possible that prosperity we have to help with that”.
Most of the thinking around this an hyper-simplistic side-taking rather than actually trying to do things like reducing pain as much as possible without actually moving the pain around or creating ghettos in the countries taking in immigrants with a new underclass defined by their country of birth or even race (go look at the Paris baudelieres for a good example of that)
For example, I think Europe should not accept immigrants who chose to cross the Med in boats trying to illegally enter Europe, because they are either the stronguest amongst those in need or driven by greed rather than need, and from the very start they think the Law should not apply to them which makes it more likely they will continue to act like that when in Europe, yet at the same time I think Europe has moral obligating of going to the many refugee camps out there and find the people more in need and help them, including bringing them over if they do so desire, since as we are unable to help everybody, the most pain-reducing way of all to help the subset of people we can help is to find and help those hurting the most - helping the strong should have far less priority than helping the weak and we have no moral obligation at all of helping the greedy.
I also think that a lot of the problems that cause the pain that then leads to immigration is because of the acts of Western elites (and not only elites, though a disproportionate fraction of the gains ends up in the hands of such elites) - it’s why we should be going after those causing Global Warming (which is increasing Climate problems that turn into catastrophes in many poorer countries), people exploiting the resources in those countries, providing support to dictatorial regimes in poorer countries (not just arm sellers and countries arming or even directly intervening to prop-up “friendly” dictators but also those people who help corrupt leaders there enjoy the luxury that their stollen money buys) and so on.
IMHO, immigrantion is to a large extent a very indirect symptom of unbridled Capitalism in the West.
“It is recognised in the 1951 Convention that people fleeing persecution may have to use irregular means in order to escape and claim asylum in another country – there is no legal way to travel to the UK for the specific purpose of seeking asylum.”
Oh yeah, the UK is properly fucked up on that regard.
Some of Continental Europe is better, but nowehere is the system properly designed for helping the ones who need it the most, much less to balance it with not negativelly impact those who make the system have the means to helps some of those who need help.