Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

US-Canada border library gets new Quebec-only entrance

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 160 posts

Re: US-Canada border library gets new Quebec-only entrance

#151

Post by mothballed »

GJim wrote: post #140
throwaway27448 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Get off your arse and take lessons on protesting from the French. Sir, I'm fleeing this country. The time to protest was 30 years ago. Or 70 years ago. Either way, it is well in the past. This country will need to crash and detox from its addiction to money before it can become a real democracy.

> Sir, I'm fleeing this country. Where to? Because unless you become a citizen of the country you are fleeing to (a process that, *IF* it is open to you, will take years), you will have even less rights to vote and protest than you do now.

You can get citizenship in like 90 days in Vanuatu or something. Nominally it's less democratic / more oppressive than the USA but in reality they barely know what's happening on many of the islands...

Re: US-Canada border library gets new Quebec-only entrance

#152

Post by mothballed »

throwaway27448 wrote: post #143
GJim wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sir, I'm fleeing this country. Where to? Because unless you become a citizen of the country you are fleeing to (a process that, *IF* it is open to you, will take years), you will have even less rights to vote and protest than you do now.

> you will have even less rights to vote and protest than you do now. That may be true. But there won't be the pretense that I'm living in the most free, democratic place on earth when I'm obviously not. Anyway, voting and protesting seem to have zero impact, so it's hard to figure out what value to assign...

IIRC Some parts of argentina allow residents to vote. And you can file a citizenship case on day one of arrival and have it stalled for years until you actually meet the criteria (which due to their constitution which won't change easily, is basically "survive 2 years"). In the meanwhile you can't be deported with an open citizenship case.

Re: US-Canada border library gets new Quebec-only entrance

#154

Post by engineer_22 »

GJim wrote: post #141
engineer_22 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social unrest is not usually a hallmark of a functioning society.

Social unrest is how equality and functional societies were obtained.

Touché

But your argument implies society was dysfunctional, and unrest made it functional.

I don't think we are actually disagreeing here

Re: US-Canada border library gets new Quebec-only entrance

#155

Post by lmm »

greggoB wrote: post #149
lmm wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I live here, I think I'd notice if events like the current Belfast riots happened on a more regular basis. The island of Ireland has had pretty low immigration (not to mention not even having open borders in the sense usually meant by "Europe has open borders", other than between a pair of neighbouring countries with very strong cultural ties), if that's where you mean by "here" you may have been insulated from it.…

> The island of Ireland has had pretty low immigration Seems like you just validated my point - a place without open borders is where a major outbreak of xenophobic violence is occurring, as opposed to mainland Europe. > if that's where you mean by "here" It's not, I live in Switzerland, which has one of the highest rates of migration in the EU > there was a palpable uptick in xenophobia when Romania and Bulgaria wer…

> Seems like you just validated my point - a place without open borders is where a major outbreak of xenophobic violence is occurring, as opposed to mainland Europe.

We know exactly what caused this outbreak of xenophobic violence, it's in direct response to a dramatically brutal attempted murder by an immigrant caught on video (one who had been granted a refugee visa, on legitimate grounds or otherwise). That's hardly an argument for open borders - if anything it's an argument for stricter screening of asylum seekers.

> I'd be curious to know what this looked like at the time.

A shift in sentiment, certain kinds of comments being heard more and more, ultimately Brexit.

> even if we accept it as an example, that doesn't set the rule or show a general causation between open borders and xenophobia

At a certain point you experience enough correlations that you have to trust the evidence of your own eyes.

Re: US-Canada border library gets new Quebec-only entrance

#156

Post by moltar »

Beannation wrote: post #27
nemomarx wrote: post #5

It's not an unfair reaction to the main entrance being closed, but it is a little sad. The northern border used to be so much more flexible and I don't see any real benefits from doing all this.

I really hope we get back to times where we were really best friends. It was good for both countries and was a model for international relationships/partnerships.

Countries can’t be best friends. Each country will always act in self interest.

Re: US-Canada border library gets new Quebec-only entrance

#157

Post by greggoB »

lmm wrote: post #155
greggoB wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The island of Ireland has had pretty low immigration Seems like you just validated my point - a place without open borders is where a major outbreak of xenophobic violence is occurring, as opposed to mainland Europe. > if that's where you mean by "here" It's not, I live in Switzerland, which has one of the highest rates of migration in the EU > there was a palpable uptick in xenophobia when Romania and Bulgaria wer…

> Seems like you just validated my point - a place without open borders is where a major outbreak of xenophobic violence is occurring, as opposed to mainland Europe. We know exactly what caused this outbreak of xenophobic violence, it's in direct response to a dramatically brutal attempted murder by an immigrant caught on video (one who had been granted a refugee visa, on legitimate grounds or otherwise). That's hard…

> That's hardly an argument for open borders - if anything it's an argument for stricter screening of asylum seekers.

If you follow this thread from the top, you'll see I didn't make the claim that open borders make things better; rather, the burden is for the opposing side to show that they make things worse. I would argue this hasn't been accomplished.

> A shift in sentiment, certain kinds of comments being heard more and more, ultimately Brexit.

Ah, you meant specifically in the UK (I thought across Europe in general, upon their entry). In that case, whether British people were already somewhat racist towards Eastern Europeans or became so as a result of freedom of movement sort of depends on who you ask. I suspect it was the former. And ofc now the UK is mourning the loss of said (white) Eastern Europeans as it's having to bring in an increased number of people from (non-white) Africa and India as a result of Brexit, especially in the care industry. For sure nothing will go wrong from here.

> At a certain point you experience enough correlations that you have to trust the evidence of your own eyes.

From my observation, the real underlying problems are economics and integration - when you have a ridiculously high unemployment rate (think 30%+) like in South Africa, the black South Africans direct that towards the the other Africans. When people from other cultures aren't integrated properly (think the UK, France, as opposed to Switzerland, Denmark maybe), you can get the same (i.e. what's happening in Belfast now).

Re: US-Canada border library gets new Quebec-only entrance

#158

Post by greggoB »

mothballed wrote: post #136
greggoB wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So taking your premise on face value, how has open borders specifically augmented/facilitated this racism exactly?

Not sure about them, but having lived or spent time in a many other cultures and countries, I found that I'd often start off with a cheery or neutral view of them but then when I get to know them and actually live with them there were points of cultural contention that were a lot less tolerable up close than at an easy distance where they were not my concern and that can often show up as projected as "racism." This d…

> johnny keeping you up all night

People from any and all cultures do this, I have personally experienced it from black and white

> might be unhappy if you treat them all the exact same could

Depending on how you're going about this, you might find you'd be too, in their shoes?

> I don't think there's much stronger way of bringing about racism than actually getting to know and see other cultures

Then I think you need to go and have a real think about things. Also this sentiment is just not backed up by the data - if anything, more insular societies tend to be more racist/xenophobic than open ones. Ofc not everyone in either society shares the same sentiment, and for the open ones it depends on the cultures in question and how the integration is being handled. But in general it just sounds like you've opted for a more bigoted approach, which is your choice I guess.

Re: US-Canada border library gets new Quebec-only entrance

#160

Post by _verandaguy »

icase wrote: post #159
_verandaguy wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it usually "souverainiste?"

beats me. i’m an anglophonic quebec separatist who asked an LLM how to say it in a shitposty way ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Thank you for this meaningful contribution to the discussion.
Post reply on HN