Elsewhere (129)
Theodore Dalrymple on the values and inversions of the British underclass:
Certainly the notions of dependence and independence have changed. I remember a population that was terrified of falling into dependence on the state, because such dependence, apart from being unpleasant in itself, signified personal failure and humiliation. But there has been an astonishing gestalt switch in my lifetime. Independence has now come to mean independence of the people to whom one is related and dependence on the state.
Mothers would say to me that they were pleased to be independent, by which they meant independent of the fathers of their children — usually more than one — who in general were violent swine. Of course, the mothers knew them to be violent swine before they had children by them, but the question of whether a man would be a suitable father is no longer a question because there are no fathers: At best, though often also at worst, there are only stepfathers. The state would provide. In the new dispensation the state, as well as television, is father to the child.
See also this, especially the last two paragraphs.
Ed Driscoll quotes Daniel Henninger:
The IRS tea-party audit story isn’t Watergate; it’s worse than Watergate. The Watergate break-in was the professionals of the party in power going after the party professionals of the party out of power. The IRS scandal is the party in power going after the most average Americans imaginable.
See also Roger Kimball on de-unionising the IRS. Paul Caron’s exhaustive archive covering the scandal is of course still growing.
And somewhat related to this, Christina Hoff Sommers on sporting gender quotas and law gone bad:
Because of pressure from women’s groups like the National Women’s Law Centre and the Women’s Sports Foundation, Title IX evolved into a rigid quota regime that dictates equal participation in sports by both sexes regardless of interest… Schools are cutting back on male teams and creating new women’s teams, not because of demand, but because they are afraid of a federal investigation. [Feminist advocates] have persuaded courts that if there are fewer women than men on college varsity teams the only explanation is discrimination. [But] the evidence that women taken as a group are less interested than men in competitive sports is overwhelming.
As always, feel free to share your own links and snippets in the comments. It’s what these posts are for.
A good example of what WTP is complaining of in your comments, where is anyone defending state power ? Dicentra in particular was actually drawing attention to the way the power of the state is being misused
She was urging that the authority of the state should be exerted more vigorously by building fences to keep out foreigners.
Yet again you take a figure of speech and proceed to build a strawman with it. Comparing a government restricting people to their home towns with having controls on immigration is ludicrous.
It is not ludicrous, it is the same thing being done to a different degree. You need to explain why there is a difference in principle if you want to justify one but exclude the other.
You also ignore my real point, which was that it is economic activity which adds value and increases growth that matters
that is an ideological point. I think it is the wellbeing of people within the economy that matters. Which I guess is why we disagree so much on how policy should be managed.
Yet you think that poor people benefit from trading their labour across borders, which they often do, I don’t see how that is compatible with a non belief in free trade.
Because the trade isn’t free. Governments dictate which people can work where. the market is rigged.
OK so Mexico is improving economically but the poor aren’t doing so well yet and instead of letting things take their course until they do they must be allowed to compete with other
So, let me get this straight, you do not believe that free trade is beneficial? Not for poor people anyway? I think the Mexican migrants are best placed to decide what is to their benefit, don’t you? And there is no evidence that migration impoverishes the host nations. In fact the opposite seems to be true, a thought that occurs to me every time I go out for an Indian.
mexico is not exporting crime over the border. The US has created an insane prohibitionary system which criminal take care of as ever. Decriminalise drugs and migration and it melts away. But then, what would all those border officials and DEA officers do to top up their pensions/
A life raft, yes. But not a great nation like the USA.
What kind of magical thinking is that? Do you think our resources are infinite? All the Treasury has to do is keep running the printing presses (which is what they’re doing) and wealth is magically generated?
(Which, if that’s all it takes, why the hell are taxes levied?)
Are you HIGH?
You remind me of the petulant teenager who has zero concept of his parents’ income and so reckons that the reason they won’t buy him a new car is that they’re just mean.
The United States is the BROKEST nation on the earth: $17 trillion in operational debt and $100+ trillion in unfunded liabilities (“entitlements”). There’s not enough money on the planet to pay that debt.
What cannot go on forever won’t. When the dollar goes into hyperinflation, the illegals will be the first harmed. They have the fewest assets, so when it all goes pear-shaped, they’ll be the highest and driest.
Islands can just as easily be reached by immigrants as anywhere else, especially today.
Islands have controlled points of ingress: our land-based borders do not. That’s simple geography and yet you’re wilfully ignoring it. Based on reason my pasty white arse.
I think you need to explain why you do not want to prevent the wealthy of the South migrating to the US, but only the poor.
I’m asking that all who come to live here enter by the front door, not that the poor stay out. Again, a malicious misreading of my intent, which is not appreciated. You just can’t bring yourself to see that my motives can be good (or at least reasonable) and that our disagreement isn’t a matter of Whose Character Sucks Worse.
Why is that?
Thinking things through to their final consequences is not a lack of compassion; rather, it’s the very soul of it. Those morbidly obese people who cannot leave their beds are being fed by someone who is motivated by “compassion,” usually family members who do so out of extraordinarily misguided love. The obese, food-addicted relative cajoles and cries and complains about being hungry, then slathers on the guilt about “being a good son/daughter/mother” and not making me staaaaarve!
Sometimes, the most compassionate thing is to say “NO,” or “Yes, but not that way.”
Or do you really, REALLY need me to be a hateful bitch so that you can congratulate yourself on Not Being One Of Those People?
Also consider that there are scads of worthy poor folks in the Philippines and Africa and the Mid-East and India and Malasyia who also want to immigrate here but they don’t have the dumb luck of sharing a physical border with us. I knew a Congolese man who had to wait more than a year to bring his wife and son over. The number of low-skilled jobs is not infinite, so those non-American immigrants who come over here have a harder time finding work.
Or maybe they don’t speak Spanish like the rest of the employees, so they’re at a distinct disadvantage. When the Europeans migrated to the U.S., they spoke different langauges and so were forced to speak English to each other. Having a large linguistic minority isn’t good for the country (Canada can testify to that), but as long as there are large numbers of Spanish-speakers around, people can live here for years and not learn English. That holds them back considerably from an economic standpoint.
Countries get to decide who crosses their borders and whether they stay or go. If a bunch of us yanquis went to Mexico and colonized the place — against Mexican law — and we began to demand that gubmint services be provided in English and that we get off work for the 4th of July and other Ugly American behavior, you’d condemn us.
Unless you’d like to see a single jurisdiction on the planet, Mr. Soros. That wouldn’t concentrate a helluva lot of power in a few hands, would it?
She was urging that the authority of the state should be exerted more vigorously by building fences to keep out foreigners.
To prevent people from entering without permission.
MY STANCE ON IMMIGRATION: “Yes immigration but not illegally, because not entering through the front door causes innumerable headaches including for the illegal aliens themselves.”
Merely granting amnesty to those already here doesn’t solve the problem of not knowing who is here in the first place.
Complexity happens, and simplistic answers from lofty intellectual perches usually make things worse.
Even illiterate campesinos know what they don’t know and have the modesty not to presume otherwise. Minnow, however, thrives on intellectual arrogance without ever having to deal with the consequences of his prescriptions.
Typical.
Nik, I don’t understand your confusion.
I don’t think it is the business of any government to say who can go where and who can work for whom. I am amazed at the number of people who think it is not only acceptable that governments have this power, but good.
My confusion is essentially this – I see the government and the law as more or less two sides of the same coin. Moreover, I understand that the government represents the views (albeit imperfectly) of the majority will of the electorate – i.e. “the citizenry or a country” as you put it.
So to me, you seem to be saying that the people (in the form of the electorate) should prevent the people (in the form of the government) from doing what the people (once again, the electorate) want to see happen.
Eh?
That suggests that either the electorate is schizophrenic (which I suppose is true from a certain point of view) or more likely that the electorate chose a government that you personally don’t care for. Which, you know … life is just like that sometimes. You have to suck it up.
So anyway, when you say that immigration regulations are not the business of the government, to me you are – by extension – saying it is not only not the business of the government but it is also not the business of the electorate – and yet it’s the very same electorate that you seem to be appealing to in order to get rid of the government that they chose to elect. (Eh?)
When you say, rather flippantly I might add, I mean the citizenry or a country it’s confusing (to me) because it appears to contradict the basis of your previous argument.
It’s as if you’re logic is something like:
Immigration control is not the business of the government.
The government is elected by the citizenry / the country.
Therefore the citizenry / the country should stop the citizenry / the country making decisions on immigration.
Eh?
What?
For one thing, what would “the citizenry / the country” even mean in a world in which borders are completely dissolved? Surely if anyone was allowed to move and to work anywhere then the electoral system would become dysfunctional because you would have X amount of ‘residents’ (who couldn’t vote) in a country of Y amount of citizens who could.
I suppose it’s true that the government may not be expressing the will of all the electorate (how can it, why should we expect it to?) all of the time, but it is (we hope) expressing the will of the majority of the people at least some of the time.
So can your basic point be most simply expressed as:
The people I really wish had won the last UK election, didn’t
Well fuck me! Who knew?
Shorter WTP: it’s not fair, they won’t agree that words mean what I say they mean!
Really? From the little piss ant who whined about crossing thread subjects being bad form? Why you little worthless tick of an ass on the ass of a worthless ass. You withering pile of stinking camel cheese. You smug smegma-sucking dole sloth. You pompous stuck up snot nose giant twerp scumbag…you dung beetle…you…you fish called Minnow.
Now we can play I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I until the internet runs out of storage space and you still will not have produced one useful, concrete bit of fact/knowledge to back up one tenth of the worthless drivel you’ve spilled here. You are nothing more than the personification of MP’s Dead Parrot sketch.
I asked you specific questions looking for specific answers and you do nothing but obfuscate and weasel. You have nothing to say yet burn paragraphs saying nothing. Since you won’t address the questions asked without being a dick, can I get a one-word answer to just one question? True or false. On average, people who hold jobs running businesses provide more value to society than the average welfare mother.
As for water, David, like WC Fields I never touch the stuff. Fish f*ck in it. But thanks for the sammy’s. Well, when they get here, that is. And sorry about the carpet. I’ll ring round later and make it up to you. Promise.
Why you little worthless . . . . .
That’s top swearing, Glenn, well done.
In the alternate universe, I’m accused of advocating for the genocide of the white race or something.
For one thing, what would “the citizenry / the country” even mean in a world in which borders are completely dissolved?
I’m interested in hearing more about the virtues of this single-jurisdiction world. I bet it’s just like Star Trek!
In the alternate universe, I’m accused of advocating for the genocide of the white race or something.
Oh, di. Advocating genocide again? Tsk. I’ve told you about that.
[ Wags finger disapprovingly. ]
What kind of magical thinking is that? Do you think our resources are infinite?
very nearly, yes. I think you have fallen for the zero sum economic fallacy. Workers entering the USA add vale to the economy rather than subtracting to tit. If they are allowed.
MY STANCE ON IMMIGRATION: “Yes immigration but not illegally
But ‘illegally’ is a policy prescription,. We can change what ‘illegally means, and you are for making more illegality and using the powers of the state to police it more vigorously. I want to increase the basic human freedoms of movement and association that you wish to limit.
Merely granting amnesty to those already here doesn’t solve the problem of not knowing who is here in the first place.
I don’t think the state or anybody else has the right to know who is anywhere. Mind your own business. It will make you happier in the end.
Countries get to decide who crosses their borders and whether they stay or go.
yes, but they shouldn’t. Freedmso of movement and association is are basic human rights and states should not interfere in that. I am surprised that you do not find this blatant infringement of liberty troubling.
When you say, rather flippantly I might add, I mean the citizenry or a country it’s confusing (to me) because it appears to contradict the basis of your previous argument.
I find it hard to believe this is really difficult for you to understand. I mean the citizenry in a democratic country should get to decide the government of that country in the usual way and the government of the country should set the laws in the usual way. Ideally those laws should be just. I don’t see why immigration should complicate things. My people were immigrants but they managed to get the hand of voting.
For one thing, what would “the citizenry / the country” even mean in a world in which borders are completely dissolved?
Maybe this is the root of the confusion. To clarify: I am not suggesting that borders could or should be dissolved, merely that they should be opened. This is perfectly feasible, has happened often in the past and does not make for any ontological difficulties concerning citizenry.
Minnow,
1
I find it hard to believe this is really difficult for you to understand. I mean the citizenry in a democratic country should get to decide the government of that country in the usual way …
Well, I was writing the from the pub last night with perhaps expected results although I think I was likely aiming to be rhetorical rather than obtuse.
But anyway, I think my previous point appears to still stand then:
So can your basic point be most simply expressed as:
The people I really wish had won the last UK election, didn’t
2
I am not suggesting that borders could or should be dissolved, merely that they should be opened.
I really don’t think you have thought this through at all.
It’s fine, I suppose, to support the idea of having open borders as a vague general principle but it seems to be extraordinarily naïve not to consider the specific impacts and outcomes that such a policy would have at a specific and particular point in time.
The use of ‘merely’ in that sentence above is really rather telling about just how little you seem to have thought about what happens to real people in really existing communities in real time if the government were to take up your idea.
Unlike your general statement of principle, any real government worth its salt needs to think very carefully about the concrete circumstances under which it makes sense to encourage immigrants into the country (e.g. Australia in the 70s, the UK in the 50s-70s), or, conversely when it makes more sense to manage and control the flow of that migration.
Incidentally, I am not actually taking a position against immigration per se. I see it as something which has a range of potential benefits. However, as noted, that does not mean I am in favour of it at all times and in all places. It is something that does need careful monitoring and management.
This is perfectly feasible, has happened often in the past and does not make for any ontological difficulties concerning citizenry.
I really can’t agree with this – yes there are real benefits to immigration but there are also real consequences and some communities are impacted far more than others. When that happens, strain and tension can easily become too much and boil over into all sorts of unpleasantness.
The fact that you appear not to acknowledge this as a real possibility but rather breezily say ‘Oh my ancestors managed so it’ll obviously be alright for everyone this time around’ is unbelievably irresponsible.
[PS Just by the by, my (great) grandparents are Irish Catholics on one side and Polish Jews on the other, both of whom arrived in London sometime around the 1890s or 1900s.]
I really can’t agree with this – yes there are real benefits to immigration but there are also real consequences and some communities are impacted far more than others. When that happens, strain and tension can easily become too much and boil over into all sorts of unpleasantness.
Where people mix together there is always happiness and unpleasantness both, but we need more than a fear of unpleasantness before we remove basic human rights, such as freedom of movement and association. Of course there will be difficulties, but the benefits according to all data we have, will outweigh them. Your great grandparents were from precisely the poor, despised categories of immigrants that people like Dicentra fear and wish to keep at bay. They were hated and there were always warnings of the awful consequences of admitting them (look at the slums they live in! Look at the diseases they bring! Look at their lawless children, their failure to speak English, the way they club together to do down the natives!).
But we don’t need to remove border control over night, simply make it a five year target policy and gradually bring it down. We could start with countries within the EU, see if we get flooded by them (still no sign but maybe the tsunami will come in the autumn. Or winter, or next year …), and then work out.
By the way Nik, I just can’t work out what you are trying to say with: ‘So can your basic point be most simply expressed as: The people I really wish had won the last UK election, didn’t’, so I haven’t responded.
I am impressed that you comment from the pub, though. I hope your date is a tolerant sort.
Minnow,
Where people mix together there is always happiness and unpleasantness both, but we need more than a fear of unpleasantness before we remove basic human rights, such as freedom of movement and association
I’m afraid I need to return again to my earlier comments: I just cannot grasp why you seem to have such a cavalier attitude to what is a profoundly complex issue unless, as I also mentioned before, it’s because you are speaking in very vague general terms which, nice though they might be in some alternate universe, cannot be ‘merely’ or ‘simply’ applied without incurring significant consequences.
For example, you say that the freedom of movement is a basic right – and as a general statement of principle, I agree. However, I can only agree to a limited extent because it is only one right of many and it shouldn’t really come as a surprise to find that the right of a migrant to enter a country may be in conflict with the rights of the indigenous citizenry to property, to security, to participation in their own government and so on.
The right to freedom of movement cannot and should not be allowed to trump the rights of the people who live in the place you want the freedom to move to. Surely it’s not unreasonable for migrants to be able to both understand and respect that principle? (I regularly work with colleagues from Spain, France, Germany, Colombia, Russia, Lithuania and Poland who’ve been in the UK for some years now and I would say all of them understand and respect the latter point.)
Less abstractly, the resources any one country has are not finite so as I said before it is naïve in the extreme not to think that an open border policy will have very practical consequences on everything from rent and wages to the use of services, public health and education.
It is surely irresponsible to say, as you have done …
we don’t need to remove border control over night, simply make it a five year target policy and gradually bring it down.
… while taking absolutely no consideration whatsoever on the wider consequences this could have.
You seem to be so convinced that the only obstacle is fear and xenophobia that you have quite lost sight of the fact that such a policy could wreak financial and social havoc – if left unmanaged.
The population of the UK in 1945 was a bit around 35 million, today it’s about 63 million and current predictions reckon it to be about 70 million + by 2025. Given these figures, I hardly think it fair to characterize concerns over immigration policy as being ignorant, backward, xenophobic etc.
Of course there will be difficulties, but the benefits according to all data we have, will outweigh them.
Not necessarily – as I’ve said, as a principle I think immigration has a great deal of potential benefit, but those benefits won’t be realized unless the government is carefully monitoring and managing the process.
I am not a fan of UKIP and tend to think of Nigel Farage as a bit of an arse on the whole, but that said I cannot see any reason why a Canadian or Australian style points system couldn’t work for the UK as it has worked in the latter two countries.
Your great grandparents were from precisely the poor, despised categories of immigrants that people like Dicentra fear and wish to keep at bay.
I’ve no doubt that Dicentra is more than capable of speaking for herself on this, but I’m pretty sure that’s not what she was saying was it?
I understood her main point to be that migration should be legal, not illegal.
That seems eminently sensible to me (though I must admit I’ve missed most of the exchange you’ve been having with her on this thread so maybe you were referring to something else).
I just can’t work out what you are trying to say with …
Don’t worry about it then, it’s not important (obviously!).
I’m afraid I need to return again to my earlier comments: I just cannot grasp why you seem to have such a cavalier attitude to what is a profoundly complex issue
This is not a profoundly complex issue except in terms of internal party politics. Ethically and practically it is very straightforward. We have seen in recent years a massive increase of immigration into the UK, one of many waves in history, with almost no negative social consequences, except in the consolidation of the racist vote.
it shouldn’t really come as a surprise to find that the right of a migrant to enter a country may be in conflict with the rights of the indigenous citizenry to property, to security, to participation in their own government and so on.
Where is the conflict? There is no evidence that immigrants as a group abuse the property rights of anyone and if they do there are the usual legal sanctions. Nor do they increase insecurity or make it more difficult to participate in democracy. These are all chimeras.
The right to freedom of movement cannot and should not be allowed to trump the rights of the people who live in the place you want the freedom to move to.
Why would it? How would that work? If I want to move from Manchester to Leeds, I do not infringe anyone else’s rights so long as I don’t act antisocially when I get there. If someone in Leeds doesn’t like people like me moving in, they should just lump it, right?.
Less abstractly, the resources any one country has are not finite
What is the limit?
You seem to be so convinced that the only obstacle is fear and xenophobia that you have quite lost sight of the fact that such a policy could wreak financial and social havoc – if left unmanaged.
There is absolutely no reason to think that there would be financial or social havoc. In fact there is a lot of evidence that immigrant communities make a positive economic contribution and improve the social conditions of the host country. Of course there is always someone who is outraged by the sight of a kebab shop or a Polish deli, but many more of us welcome them. I would say to those who object: mind your own business; if you don’t like these things, go elsewhere.
The population of the UK in 1945 was a bit around 35 million, today it’s about 63 million and current predictions reckon it to be about 70 million + by 2025. Given these figures, I hardly think it fair to characterize concerns over immigration policy as being ignorant, backward, xenophobic etc.
Why? What is the natural maximum population of the UK? Why should governments determine this rather than ordinary people? Why all of a sudden do we think central planning is the best way to arrange these complex outcomes rather than the ‘free market’?
Not necessarily – as I’ve said, as a principle I think immigration has a great deal of potential benefit, but those benefits won’t be realized unless the government is carefully monitoring and managing the process.
Your faith in the powers of central planners is surprising and, almost, touching.
I cannot see any reason why a Canadian or Australian style points system couldn’t work for the UK as it has worked in the latter two countries.
It will work if your aims are to do what Australia and Canada have done which is to exploit poor countries in order to take their best educated and wealthiest citizens. But if your aim is to improve human rights and reduce poverty, it won’t do anything at all. You must see that you are explicitly arguing for an immigration system that selects the wealthiest and is prejudicial towards the poor? How would your great grandparents have fared?
I understood Dicentra’s main point to be that migration should be legal, not illegal.
But we all agree it should be legal. What we are arguing about is what the definition of legality should be; how the law should work. Dicentra wants the law to be tougher and aggressively applied. I want the opposite
Dicentra wants the law to be tougher and aggressively applied. I want the opposite
In the United States, the existing laws aren’t applied at all. I’m not kidding: Things got so bad in Arizona with “unpleasantness” like kidnappings and murders and rapes and general lawlessness that AZ tried to assist the feds to do what they were mandated by law to do but WERE NOT DOING.
Not because of budget constraints, because of executive commands: stand down. Obama smacked Arizona down so hard the echoes are still audible in the Grand Canyon.
The law mandating that the fence be built was passed years ago and money allocated. It has not been built. Border Patrol agents are issued bean-bags instead of bullets. They’re prosecuted for shooting narcotraficantes in the butt at the behest of the Mexican government, which is owned by the drug cartels.
The only actual change to the immigration law I’d request is that the legal path be streamlined so that it doesn’t take so long to come in licitly.
Also, none of the people who advocate open borders spend any time in the areas where the actual consequences are going down. Minnow seems to think that the discomfort of large influxes boils down to linguistic barriers, cultural confusions, and eww I don’t like them furrners.
Until Minnow gets half a clue about what the open border with Mexico actually DOES.
Workers entering the USA add vale to the economy rather than subtracting [from it].
Not if they go on the dole. Which is what our government has explicitly encouraged through publications sent southward and other recruiting efforts.
Low-skilled workers, even when paid legally, don’t contribute near as much tax revenue as they consume in schools, infrastructure, law enforcement, WELFARE, and the like. If your government has set up a lavish welfare state but doesn’t generate the revenue to support it, then you’ve run out of FINITE RESOURCES. Further, when they send hefty remittances back home, our economy doesn’t benefit.
WELFARE STATE + OPEN BORDERS = DISASTER
You can have one or the other but not both. When my ancestors came across the pond, there was no welfare state: it was either work or starve, so they worked.
Our society can sustain SOME illegal immigration and SOME of them on welfare, but not in infinite amounts.
But I forgot I was addressing an intellectual: maths are for the little people, aren’t they? If you’re clever, you can figure out how to make it all work.
“We” can figure it out, that is. The BORG collective in action.
“Never argue with an idiot. They will only bring you down to their level and beat you with experience” – George Carlin (or Mark Twain. Or who knows?)
There were some comments not so long ago here regarding genderless pronouns… well:
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2014/06/post-binary-gender-in-sf-excitotech-and-non-binary-pronouns
Minnow,
Why all of a sudden do we think central planning is the best way […] Your faith in the powers of central planners is surprising and, almost, touching.
Well, yes I can well see why you imagine this to be a devastatingly witty riposte. However, if I can just interrupt the sense self-congratulation for a moment or three, you may find that it’s more passé than palpable hit.
Firstly, the same apparent irony could apply equally to your own position, except in reverse – i.e. Why are you taking an essentially laisse-faire approach to immigration in which government influence is almost entirely absent when we already know from other comments on other threads that you have made that you are rather in support of governments instituting some form of political and economic distributive justice? Touché
But in fact my main reason for disagreeing with you is that what you perceive to be a contradiction is no such thing at all.
It’s true that I do on the whole support freer markets* but I am also aware that free markets cannot function effectively without an equitable system of justice and the rule of law; in their turn, justice and the rule of law depend on a nation’s sovereignty and, finally, sovereignty depends to some extent on the integrity (in both senses of the word) of the nation.
Something I have learned from living in Russia (where I spent 5 years) and Mexico (where I spent 2 years), is that the rule of law is not something that can simply be imposed top-down but must be something that develops over time from the ground up. It takes time to establish and needs to be maintained. The rule of law can only function successfully when there is a more or less general consensus about behaviours that are acceptable and lawful and those that are unacceptable and unlawful in public life.
It stands to reason, therefore, that an uncontrolled and unmanaged approach to immigration has a potentially disruptive effect on the integrity of a sovereign nation.
I imagine you’ll think I am being alarmist in this and you may also think that I am suggesting that immigration brings criminality with it – but I assure you that is not at all what I mean now and it was not what I meant earlier when I said: “the right of a migrant to enter a country may be in conflict with the rights of the indigenous citizenry to property, to security, to participation in their own government”.
What I am saying is that regardless of what people do in their private and family lives, what they do in shared, public life has to have some degree of harmony and agreement to it.
All other things being equal, someone from Madrid, Munich or Malmo will have pretty much the same understanding and a different but not fundamentally dissimilar background and upbringing to someone from Manchester: they are all from developed first world countries; they are highly likely literate and have completed at least 12 years of compulsory education; by and large, they have a general understanding that taxes need to be paid, laws have to be obeyed, contracts signed etc. By the same token, I cannot with any real confidence make the same claims for someone from, say, Mogadishu, Monrovia or Ma’rib.
Again, please note that I am not suggesting that people from these countries should not enter the country (and certainly not in the case of the first two, which are or have recently been warzones) but that the process if properly planned for, funded and managed for the benefit of the migrants themselves as much as the whole community.
It is not racist or xenophobic to suggest that a semi-literate or even completely illiterate boy from, say, Afghanistan will have a hard time adjusting to life in the UK in ways that will simply be of no relevance to someone from Poland or Singapore.
A few years ago I was a volunteer teacher to Afghan refugee teenagers and although I didn’t get to know them particularly well I got to know them well enough. And one thing I can tell you is that they have a hard time making the adjustment to the world as it appears in the UK and, yes, they f*** up a lot, but usually only because they have literally almost no frame of reference whatever for the experiences they have in a modern country.
Expecting migrants from such countries and with such life experiences to simply be able to get on with it would be utterly irresponsible.
The facile comparison you made to immigration as having a variety of cuisines to choose from simply does not apply here.
OK, I meant to respond to some of your other points but I’ve written waaaaaayyy too much as usual so I’ll stop here.
(PS Except this one – when I said “the resources any one country has are not finite” that was my error – it should obviously have said “the resources any one country has are not infinite” / “the resources any one country has are finite”)
ftumch,
“Never argue with an idiot. They will only bring you down to their level and beat you with experience” – George Carlin (or Mark Twain. Or who knows?)
Or, “Arguing with an idiot is like playing chess with a pigeon. It doesn’t matter how good you are, because he’ll just knock over all the pieces, crap on the board, and strut about like he’s victorious.”
Nikw211,
You expected intellectual consistency from the resident pigeon?
Such was excellent advice in the days before idiocy was subsidized. Nowadays, they’re becoming quite difficult to avoid. Agree about the pigeon, though.
they are highly likely literate and have completed at least 12 years of compulsory education; by and large, they have a general understanding that taxes need to be paid, laws have to be obeyed, contracts signed etc.
Whereas in Mexico, gaming the system IS the system. And yeah, there are pockets of Full-On Mexico in the U.S. (California’s central valley, for example), and that those areas every bit the dysfunctional hell-holes that Mexico is.
Some cultural differences are superficial (cuisine, language, holidays); others are profound (caste systems, misogyny, rule of law vs rule of the strong).
But dealing with that kind of head-scratching complexity utterly precludes smugness, and so that’s why Minnow won’t acknowledge it.
Not in front of us, anyway. That’s not what he’s here for.
Firstly, the same apparent irony could apply equally to your own position, except in reverse – i.e. Why are you taking an essentially laisse-faire approach to immigration
Because I think government meddling in the lives of the citizenry should be minimised in every situation where it is avoidable. This is an obvious case where it is avoidable. Organising an army (for example) is one where it is not.
It is not racist or xenophobic to suggest that a semi-literate or even completely illiterate boy from, say, Afghanistan will have a hard time adjusting to life in the UK in ways that will simply be of no relevance to someone from Poland or Singapore.
No, but it is irrelevant from that boy’s perspective. Let him choose. He may make mistakes but he is much more likely to be able to judge his own needs than you or your representatives in Parliament are.
I actually don’t think there is much more to be said about this and was just dropping in for the snacks.