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A new law in Sweden lets police seize unexplained luxury goods

economist.com

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Re: A new law in Sweden lets police seize unexplained luxury goods

#121

Post by seanmcdirmid »

monkeycantype wrote: post #62

In Australia, and I expect most western countries, it’s pointless discussing immigration without acknowledging it is being used as a lever by business to suppress wages and working conditions in the destination country, and that to do so immigrants are arriving under legal conditions that limit their ability to negotiate fair treatment and mean they live without political representation. The deteriorating social cond…

A lot of immigrants come as refugees from war torn countries, they already have problems, and their new country might not provide resources to help them deal with those problems well, especially the kids. They’ll be fine in one or two generations, but right now is trying for them and their new countries, and there is definitely blow back from that.

I’m not sure the economic lever really exists, but then again it might just be where I live since those immigrants are usually making lots of money as techies while the refugees aren’t really seen as sources of cheap labor (although the adults invariably get entry-level jobs while teenagers need help to integrate, work not being an option by the standards of the areas they settle in).

Re: A new law in Sweden lets police seize unexplained luxury goods

#122

Post by inglor_cz »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #77
inglor_cz wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Integration of randomly arrived (as opposed to selectively chosen and well-educated) Muslims has proved nigh impossible everywhere in the world of "unbelievers". As far as the UK goes, Hindus and Sikhs, who look every bit as exotic and dark-skinned as Pakistanis, are on average richer than white Britons and also societally very successful. If there is some kind of "pure skin colour"-based racism at work, it somehow d…

Canada does a relatively good job integrating Muslims.

That is not a refutation, though. Canada is fairly selective when it comes to immigrants. Europe receives whomever the people smugglers can get across the water, and the demographic difference in parameters such as literacy or sympathy to radical versions of Islam is absolutely vast.

Re: A new law in Sweden lets police seize unexplained luxury goods

#123

Post by eesmith »

Dig1t wrote: post #34
redeux wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that the violence is caused by the immigrants directly or indirectly? I can’t say for Sweden but in the Texas immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than citizens[1]. There doesn’t seem to be a good source of data for the US as a whole. 1. https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/undocumented-immigrant-o...

Saying that all immigrants behave the same across the world is like saying all groups of people are the same. The failure of Syrian, Afghan, and Iraqi immigrants to integrate into Swedish culture is well documented. They exist almost as a separate society within Sweden now, unlike immigrants in Texas. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/28/sweden-records... >In a national address on Thursday night, the prime m…

> unlike immigrants in Texas.

Would successful integration be like in Texas where most Anglos have little knowledge of Tejano culture?

Or perhaps you mean the Anglo immigrants who moved to Mexican Texas and promised to follow Mexican law and become Catholic but after they gained power they declared independence as a pro-slavery country, then after economic failure decided to join a neighboring country?

The Amish are successfully integrated into Pennsylvania, right? Even though they exist almost as a separate society?

Re: A new law in Sweden lets police seize unexplained luxury goods

#124

Post by eesmith »

Yeul wrote: post #79
foxglacier wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, the opposite effect of being afraid to acknowledge crime by immigrants is also present. It looks like the government is unwilling to publish data that would resolve that question but here are some clues from Wikipedia [1]: "58% of men convicted of rape and attempted rape over the past five years were immigrants born outside of the European Union" "of 100 suspects of murder and attempted murder using fi…

If you take men from the dark ages and drop them into a deeply secular and free society you are asking for problems. It took Europe a century to leave Christianity behind.

I think we have different ideas of what it means to leave Christianity behind.

The Church of Sweden was the state church until 2000. I think the monarch is still required to be Lutheran.

The Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Denmark is the state church of Denmark.

The King of Norway was the head of the Church of Norway until 2012, and "separation ... remains incomplete" quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norway .

Spain didn't separate church and state until the 1970s.

Ireland gave special status to the Catholic Church until the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution Act 1972, and Church influence over schooling remains an issue.

Charles III is the titular head of the Church of England.

"In 1984, following a revised accord with the Vatican, Catholicism lost its status as the official religion of the Italian state[3] and Italy became a secular state." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_religion_in_Italy

Monaco de-secularized in 2020 and now Catholic Christianity is the state church.

Re: A new law in Sweden lets police seize unexplained luxury goods

#125

Post by dalke »

permo-w wrote: post #109
dalke wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm not mistaken, the decades of economic liberalism and dismantling of social support systems has made a lot of people very worried about their future, and as usual the rich and powerful blame immigrants (or some other weak minority group) as a slight-of-hand to distract from the actual issues.

the two things are both true. mass immigration is causing problems and elites are using as a distraction to push through right-wing economic reforms

Just because two things cause problems, that doesn't mean they are equally problematic.

Like, it took over a year to build the new storm sewer system in town. It caused problems, like having blocked off roads and sidewalks and construction noise.

Yet I wouldn't equate that to the systemic problems in the rail system caused by privatization while also over-funding the road network.

Re: A new law in Sweden lets police seize unexplained luxury goods

#126

Post by Jensson »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #112
stackskipton wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canada is cracking down on immigration but they tend to attract higher education immigrants which even if they have a religion, they are more likely to be more secular in their day-to-day. Also, Canada publishes numbers on this and I fed it into Excel: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=981003... Muslims make up 10% of 2016 and later arrivals followed by 14.04% of their Non-permanent residents. Chr…

I wasn't trying to compare Sweden to Canada, just refute the argument it's impossible to integrate large numbers of Muslim immigrants into a Western population. But since you brought it up, 14% of 1 million immigrants into a country with a 40M population is somewhat comparable to 80% of 100,000 immigrants to a 10M population country. And it's not 80%, the majority of Swedish immigrants are repatriating Swedes. Maybe…

Canada doesn't accept refugees, they accept highly educated immigrants. That is very different. A very large fraction of immigrants to Sweden can't even read in any language, it is very hard to employ such people or educate them as you have to start with the basics for adults, but it is hard to learn such fundamental things that late in life.

Re: A new law in Sweden lets police seize unexplained luxury goods

#127

Post by Jensson »

knallfrosch wrote: post #47
AlexandrB wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Germany the opposite is true[1]. I don't think it's wise to lump "immigrants" together as a group. The composition of immigrant populations varies a lot between countries (or even cities) and as with any individual criminality depends on factors like socioeconomic background. The specifics of immigration matter. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45419466

The article is outdated (2018.)

2018 is extremely recent in terms of demographics data.

Re: A new law in Sweden lets police seize unexplained luxury goods

#128

Post by LynchDems »

ipaddr wrote: post #118
rosmax_1337 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think the average Swede wanted mass immigration?

No I think the ruling class did. It was a bad decision to try to copy the US without the culture to support it.

[dead]

Re: A new law in Sweden lets police seize unexplained luxury goods

#129

Post by attendant3446 »

danielfoster wrote: post #95
knallfrosch wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the police stopped you on the street and asked how you were able to afford a MacBook or XYZ, would you be able to “prove” it? Yes, because I have a legal occupation.

Do you carry your payment slips with you? What if the item in question is deemed too expensive for your role? Yes, you could probably pull up your work email or show the bank deposits, but my point is that this is an arbitrary standard that cannot be consistently enforced.

In Sweden you have a personnummer and tax data is available to practically everyone. And that's the main measure they use for everything. So I'm pretty sure that the police use this data to get an idea of what you can and can't afford.

Re: A new law in Sweden lets police seize unexplained luxury goods

#130

Post by bryanlarsen »

Jensson wrote: post #126
bryanlarsen wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't trying to compare Sweden to Canada, just refute the argument it's impossible to integrate large numbers of Muslim immigrants into a Western population. But since you brought it up, 14% of 1 million immigrants into a country with a 40M population is somewhat comparable to 80% of 100,000 immigrants to a 10M population country. And it's not 80%, the majority of Swedish immigrants are repatriating Swedes. Maybe…

Canada doesn't accept refugees, they accept highly educated immigrants. That is very different. A very large fraction of immigrants to Sweden can't even read in any language, it is very hard to employ such people or educate them as you have to start with the basics for adults, but it is hard to learn such fundamental things that late in life.

Canada takes in 150,000 refugees per year. That's one of the highest per capita rates.
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