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What Refugees Bring When They Run for Their Lives

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Re: What Refugees Bring When They Run for Their Lives

#61

Post by cel1ne »

I'm from Austria. We have thousands of refugees crossing our border from Hungary daily right now, since they are being treated like animals there. [0]

Civil society responded quickly: here in Vienna there are thousands of volunteers providing food, shelter and medicine, even going into the camps in hungary and rescuing people out from there, bringing them (probably illegally, the situation isn't clear) across the border into our country. People who drive there to bring them medicine risk being beaten and arrested by hungarian police.

Or picking them up from the road. The kids have bloody feet from walking and many parents almost breaking down from carrying them and the exhaustion.

Libanon is currently receiving most of the refugees: about 2 Million in a country of 6 million. Imagine that. If a society is capable of this, surely it's possible to distribute another 2 million into 25 EU-states.

In Austria, we have a population of around 8 million. In 1992 we took about 90.000 refugees. Since WW2 we apparently had 2 million refugees, 700.000 stayed here. [1]

We are one of the richest countries in the world. It works.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoKpuXA9myw [1] http://www.unhcr.at/english/asylum-country-with-tradition.ht...

Re: What Refugees Bring When They Run for Their Lives

#62

Post by tormeh »

badlogic wrote: post #50
bordercases wrote: post #21

On a personal note, I'm more likely to investigate anti-refugee arguments because I feel like they're underrated. I agree with the sentiment that we should understand that we're dealing with humans here, not numbers; but just like statistics has its weakness in that it can cause us to over-generalize, picking out the stories of individuals can allow a narrative to be crafted that is overfitted away from the whole. Bi…

Rape town? Really?

It's an evolutionary response to lack of gene-furthering prospects. All men are potential rapists. The gender imbalance is a problem.

Re: What Refugees Bring When They Run for Their Lives

#63

Post by Yetanfou »

mverwijs wrote: post #41
jackvalentine wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And in the news reports I usually see people toying with iPhone 5/6 and wearing [designer] jeans/jackets. Do luxury products somehow protect you from bullets, bombs and murderous barbarians?

The point is, however, that a phone is not a luxury item. This article[1], in Dutch, explains that in order to get anywhere a phone is a necessity. Maps, GPS and communication. And not just texts (SMS), but photos and WhatsApp-groups to organize shelter, food. Translation-device. It is NOT a luxury device. [1] http://www.trouw.nl/tr/nl/4324/Nieuws/article/detail/4130918...

A smartphone, maybe. An iPhone? Never. That is - whether you like it or not - a luxury device, priced as such. If it is phone, GPS, maps and translation you want you can just get whatever Android is on sale - for a sixth to a tenth of the price of the luxury iPhone.

Re: What Refugees Bring When They Run for Their Lives

#64

Post by usaphp »

cel1ne wrote: post #61

I'm from Austria. We have thousands of refugees crossing our border from Hungary daily right now, since they are being treated like animals there. [0] Civil society responded quickly: here in Vienna there are thousands of volunteers providing food, shelter and medicine, even going into the camps in hungary and rescuing people out from there, bringing them (probably illegally, the situation isn't clear) across the bor…

Yeah and then this happens because they don't want to integrate into European counties because most of those immigrants still think west is evil and they laugh at our values: http://shoebat.com/2015/03/02/austria-makes-new-law-muslims-...

Re: What Refugees Bring When They Run for Their Lives

#65

Post by toyg »

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #37
NhanH wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me take on the easiest part of the argument first. Someone more knowledgeable can deal with the rest. > Politics in Europe will never be the same as the majority of the young do not carry any of the previous generation's values. First reaction: boo-hoo. More reasonable reaction: the Eurozone's population is about 330 millions right now, are they really expecting 100millions+ refugee? Yes, right now the refugees a…

it's not just EU's attitude: the immigrants choose the countries themselves, there is no way to keep them e.g. in Hungary if all they want is to go to Germany

You can try and likely ontain at least some erosion. Say you place 10,000 in Hungary and 6,000 end up in Germany anyway -- that's still some relief. These people have travelled for so long and gone through such a huge culture shock, if you try to integrate them quickly they will probably lose the appetite for relocating again.

Unfortunately, the unspoken truth is that Eastern European countries have a huge unaddressed problem of deep racism. They have not gone through the experience of being target for economic mass-migration from other continents yet, unlike most Western European countries have been for more than 50 years now (and still struggle with the issue occasionally, but with much softer undertones). Countries like Hungary will do the bare minimum required to keep their EU funding and will likely not even try to really help these people, which means the quota system might end up being an exercise in futility. We still have to try though, it's the only solution. We must hope our Eastern fellows will eventually find the compassion to change their ways.

Re: What Refugees Bring When They Run for Their Lives

#66

Post by Steko »

badlogic wrote: post #50
bordercases wrote: post #21

On a personal note, I'm more likely to investigate anti-refugee arguments because I feel like they're underrated. I agree with the sentiment that we should understand that we're dealing with humans here, not numbers; but just like statistics has its weakness in that it can cause us to over-generalize, picking out the stories of individuals can allow a narrative to be crafted that is overfitted away from the whole. Bi…

Rape town? Really?

Every time it seems like HN is making a little bit of progress you click on a link and find out they've upvoted something like 'Rape Town!' to the top of a thread.

Re: What Refugees Bring When They Run for Their Lives

#67

Post by Steko »

Yetanfou wrote: post #58
_euvw wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> rape town! The amount of assumptions and fear in reactions like these worry me way more than those refugees themselves.

May I suggest looking up statistics on rape in Norway and Sweden before you formulate your next answer? It has been rather well documented - even though both Norway and Sweden tend to try to hide ethnicity (especially when a non-native is involved, leading to the suspicion that absence of information on ethnicity implies foreign origin of the perpetrator) - that the large majority of rape cases (Sweden: 85%, 2006 [1]…

Shouting 'rape town!' helps though, gotcha!

Re: What Refugees Bring When They Run for Their Lives

#68

Post by NietTim »

junto wrote: post #24

The bit that disturbs me is how the police in many of these "first landing" countries have no qualms about knifing a rubber boat filled with people including small children that can't swim. That's murder. This kind of thing is going on all over the world. Refugees from Burma for example are also getting the same treatment but the Thai's. We in the west are niaeve. We think we can incite revolutions and civil wars to…

What? I've never heard before of police deliberately sinking boats. Do you have any source at all?

Re: What Refugees Bring When They Run for Their Lives

#69

Post by Yetanfou »

tobr wrote: post #59
dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

unfortunately the documented behaviour of the last waves of immigrants on their way to Germany does little to appease these fears

Please stop the FUD. It's true that immigrants are over-represented in crime statistics, but that is both as victims and perpetrators, and it must be understood in the light of their socioeconomic status. Regardless, >99% of the people who are coming to Europe right now are not future rapists.

Denying a problem does not solve it. Please read up on those statistics before you start wielding terms like 'FUD'. The 'U' in this case in not justified as it is known that non-western immigrants are heavily overrepresented in crime statistics. Neither is the 'D', for the same reasons. The mere fact that a large part of the immigrants will not commit crimes does not mean you should ignore or talk down the crimes perpetrated by those who do. Which leaves the 'F' for fear. That fear is fed for a large part by the fact that discussing these issues immediately leads to outcries of 'FUD', 'Racism', 'Discrimination' and 'Xenophobia'. Not being allowed to discuss something does not make it go away. It makes it grow in the minds of those subjected to the censure. It also does not help in solving these problems since they have to be visible and understood before they can be solved.

Re: What Refugees Bring When They Run for Their Lives

#70

Post by cel1ne »

usaphp wrote: post #64
cel1ne wrote: post #61

I'm from Austria. We have thousands of refugees crossing our border from Hungary daily right now, since they are being treated like animals there. [0] Civil society responded quickly: here in Vienna there are thousands of volunteers providing food, shelter and medicine, even going into the camps in hungary and rescuing people out from there, bringing them (probably illegally, the situation isn't clear) across the bor…

Yeah and then this happens because they don't want to integrate into European counties because most of those immigrants still think west is evil and they laugh at our values: http://shoebat.com/2015/03/02/austria-makes-new-law-muslims-...

That law basically states that muslim preachers in hospitals or who are teaching at schools or universities have to BE ABLE to speak german, so that the german-only speaking muslims, who exist as well, can understand them. The concept is called "official language of a country".

Right-Wing parties in Turkey are criticizing the law. The muslim organisations inside Austria are supporting it.

The law has nothing to do with the refugee-crisis.

EDITED: the muslim youth-organization in Austria oppose the law. The official organisation isn't happy with some points, for example that the law forbids financing their religious organisations with foreign money, but they state that "It's a compromise, which seems to come close to both sides."

The law definitely isn't perfect, but it's a different topic.

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