61–70 of 100 posts
Even from an egoistic perspective, Western countries, especially those whose pension system is an unreformable Ponzi scheme (say Italy) and those with a limited welfare state (eg UK and USA), should stop pretending immigration is a problem.
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I think you still need to have a passport, it just won't be checked by anyone. Unless you get arrested, probably.
Or if you're not white, Muslim, Gypsy/Traveller, look poor, wear a hoodie with the hood up or a keffiyeh, or fall into any other checkbox no-one is supposed to use. When travelling in Europe I am well aware of my privilege of being white, middle class, looking healthy, dressed neatly casual or in hiking gear and being two metres tall to boot (I stick out, but I'm invisible to border guards, customs officers, and poli…
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The idea that you would be required to have ID in your own country is horrid. In the UK you are not required to have any identification on you.
It was quite controversial when it was introduced in Netherland too; it reminded a lot of people of the mandatory "Ausweis" from the war. I certainly do not have ID on me all the time. Though I do try to remember to bring my driver's license when using the car, and my passport when leaving the country.
And the same applies to travel in schengen : ID recommended but not mandatory.
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But you are surrounded by people whose parents contributed to your economy, who were more or less raised with at least a decent amount of shared values. People don't just come to a new country and just abandon their past. They bring their values, ideals, beliefs, problems and solutions. As the number of foreign people coming, cosmopolitanism increase. Then you quickly reach a point where you can eat a raclette anywhe…
> Then you quickly reach a point where you can eat a raclette anywhere, soccer is the most famous sports, Hollywood is the main entity broadcasting entertainment. There is no point in traveling, because every place more or less lost their spirit. Less traveling would probably be good for the world, but it's not true that places "lose their spirit" just because they've got football, Hollywood movies and raclette every…
I think the opposite.
No. Cultures exist. Races exist. Unique human modes of being exist. One of the most devastating effects of the European Union was the absolute desolation and loss of beautiful cultures in Eastern Europe, such as Croatia and Romania. Entire regions became ghost towns, and major cities became standardized, soulless, faceless blocks. Here's a before/after review from someone who travelled to Dubrovnik, Croatia before it…
The same can be said for Germany's reunification. So many people moved from the former GDR to the West where the jobs were and as it's been a few years now the population is aging and dying.
That is a fact. My opinion now is that I don't think that this would've been a good reason to not reunite Germany. And the same is true for your EU example.
Also wow, that link you quoted. I would not cite that as a useful reference, that was a little painful to read.
> Their biggest hope is to grow as equals within the European Union which is today just another word for NATO, meaning vassals of the United States. Croatia is thus willy-nilly aligned against Russia and surely soon to be aligned against China.
From someone who describes 80s Yugoslavia as:
> The Yugoslavia of my memory was to a great extent a fun-loving place where the business people with whom I associated had a well developed a sense of humor, cultivated witticisms, enjoyed immensely good food and good drink.
Weird, all I personally know from 80s Yugoslavia is from people who came to Germany to work on construction sites for not-exactly-great money, they didn't really look the fun-loving kind to me. Maybe the author was mingling mostly with upper-class people who seem to not have gotten the short end of the stick so much. (JFTR, the first time I went to Croatia at all was a couple years ago and I was not old enough in the 80s/90s to have formed a good political opinion, BUT my viewpoint is simply what I heard from only non-rich people who emigrated to Germany, and from their kids).
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"But you are surrounded by people whose parents contributed to your economy, who were more or less raised with at least a decent amount of shared values." People used to say that folks with different color of skin had a different culture, and therefore interracial relationships do not work. People move across the country (in the US) and get culture shock. In other words, people don't really consider others as having…
The "actual answer" here seems just aspirational. If it basically means "you have to spend enough money until everywhere else is so nice that no one wants to move to your country" then that is more money than there is. In the meantime, how do you create a system that doesn't require that amount of money?
None of it is a perfect answer, but striving for it is much better than simply reasoning, "I guess we'll just have to exploit these folks". Realistically, that's what we are doing with immigration: Keeping the folks we've exploited the most... out.
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No, but you need an identity card (which looks pretty much like a drivers license). Unlike passports, every citizen has one.
That's simply not true. The only identity card I have is a passport. I actually thought the big advantage of id cards over passports was that they would be much cheaper or free, but I just checked, and in Netherland they're only slightly cheaper. It's effectively just a form of limited passport. And clearly not everybody has an id card. It's just that everybody has to have a form of id, which is either a passport or…
Here in Germany, you'd also be allowed to use a passport instead. In practice, however, your home address is only on identity cards, not on passports. So not everybody will accept a passport for validation, or at least you then need an additional proof of residence.
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“Lovely little picket-fence green England”, assuming it’s even a thing, won’t be destroyed by foreigners, but it is destroying itself because it hasn’t been governed since the 2008 crisis. It’s probably the only place in Western Europe where salaries haven’t increased since 2008.
> even faster than it already is. No arguments here!
Should I expand on this? Do I really have to show that countries with a larger foreign born population (such as Sweden or Germany or Switzerland) are doing better than the UK?
You have made an exceptional claim, that is immigration will make England poorer. You should come up with some historical examples and maybe a description of how it would happen, because it would the first time it happened in the history of humanity.
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> even faster than it already is. No arguments here!
> won’t be destroyed by foreigners Should I expand on this? Do I really have to show that countries with a larger foreign born population (such as Sweden or Germany or Switzerland) are doing better than the UK? You have made an exceptional claim, that is immigration will make England poorer. You should come up with some historical examples and maybe a description of how it would happen, because it would the first tim…
I think that immigration is generally a good thing.
I think that unrestricted immigration would make any country worse off in a number of ways, not only the economic axis but social cohesion, physical space, etc.
None of those countries have unrestricted immigration.
It seems like you view my opinion as being in opposition to yours, but it's not, we feel the same way, I think. :)
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The idea that you would be required to have ID in your own country is horrid. In the UK you are not required to have any identification on you.
Why is it horrid? I am genuinely asking. As I understand it, you still need to identify yourself in countries without such an id, like the US or UK, for a lot of reasons, like when opening bank accounts, interacting with the state, etc. But without a national id card, this can become complicated, and these countries often use a lot of defacto ids "replacements" like birth certificates, driver's licenses and so on, wh…
If we assume that driving licences are a sane system for safety reasons, I'd prefer a system in which I can show that I am the person that took the driving test, but not that this is the same person that lives at 74 Fake Street or that has bank account number XYZ.
So basically, I'd rather it be rowed back. Why would I want to be required to carry identification when wandering about outside? What possible benefit could that afford me? From my perspective it's a pure negative, I generally try to avoid things that fall into that category.
Generally I'd say "less information if at all necessary".
There are obviously situations in which people need to be identified.
If I use my car to smash into someone and then do a runner, and so the police need to find me to punish me, I want that to be a process that's governed by controls e.g. they can run the licence plate and find out it's my car, but only when they have real reason to do so and not just because road tax receipts will increase by a marginal amount if we blanket all of the roads in automated cameras and send fines to everyone.