Refugees Welcome • Hacker News Board

Re: Refugees Welcome

#211

Post by Kluny » Wed, Sep 02, 2015, 5:21 PM UTC

mcmalloc wrote: post #70

sschueller wrote: post #6

I would like to see the US step up its process to accept refugees. Currently it takes 18 to 24 months for refuges to be able to get on a plane the US. The US has agreed to accept up to 70k refugees yet at this rate it will take for ever while Germany has hundreds of new refuges per day. [1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/11/us-accept-thous...

We have our own continent to deal with. We already have hundreds of thousands of refugees coming to the US from central/south America every year. How many refugees are we supposed to accept anyway?

How about every single one that asks?

Re: Refugees Welcome

#212

Post by Kalium » Wed, Sep 02, 2015, 5:25 PM UTC

ashleyp wrote: post #82

ryanlol wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would I be responsible for people I don't even know? If I help somebody it's out of kindness, not responsibility.

Thankyou. That's my point. Who cares? We can still help them out of kindness and unconditionally, not expecting anything back.

There are limits, practical as well as rhetorical. Not everyone wants to be lectured about how unconditional kindness is their duty and responsibility. Not everyone wants to be told that this kindness needs to come at significant expense at a time when (insert fiscal problems here, such as Greece or the UK) are already occurring.

Re: Refugees Welcome

#213

Post by Kalium » Wed, Sep 02, 2015, 5:27 PM UTC

roymurdock wrote: post #110

I think this is a great idea. It's easy to hate the concept of immigration and, by extension, the thought of millions of immigrants pouring into your home country. In fact, we're hardwired to have an aversion to this idea. Humans have always formed small units such as families or tribes in order to compete with other humans for limited resources. Immigrants are easily lumped together into a menacing tribe of competit…

One thing to remember: there is a significant difference between feeling empathy for a person and being willing to devote resources to them

I felt empathy for a beggar on the streets of San Francisco this morning. Yet my money stayed in my pocket. I have other uses for it.

Re: Refugees Welcome

#214

Post by expertentipp » Wed, Sep 02, 2015, 5:28 PM UTC

rmxt wrote: post #195

ciupicri wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you meant some Western European countries. Because I don't see Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Serbia, Romania, Poland, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and probably others on that list. And I definitely don't see Switzerland. Europe doesn't mean the European Union (founders).

It would help your comparison if half of those countries existed as independent entities before World War I. The Baltic States and Ukraine were part of Russia when it went through its imperialistic/colonization phase, reaching into Alaska and Mongolia, and Fort Ross as noted on the linked page. The German Empire is conveniently listed as Germany on that page, which leaves out the fact that the German Empire consisted…

Let me help you. Baltic States, Czech, Poland were the colonies.

Re: Refugees Welcome

#215

Post by venomsnake » Wed, Sep 02, 2015, 5:30 PM UTC

DasIch wrote: post #21

estefan wrote: post #4

Bloody good luck getting them out again.

Why would anyone want to? Germany desperately needs immigration to keep up the economy and welfare system and overall immigrants pay more to Germany than they get out of it.

Then lets open to immigration from Latin America where people are culturally closer to Europe. And Ukraine and Georgia.

Re: Refugees Welcome

#216

Post by jahnu » Wed, Sep 02, 2015, 5:31 PM UTC

jbssm wrote: post #130

Sincerely. I'm European, I'm from Euro zone. I walk in the streets in my country's capital at night and a see dozens of homeless hungry people just by walking a couple of Km. I just can't put my head around on why we should help the refugees before we help our own people. It just doesn't make any sense to me. We are giving millions to find houses for these refugees/migrants but we let our own live and die on the stre…

There were hungry and homeless people when Jews and other minorities tried to flee the Nazis. Yet it is still shameful that more was not done to let those people into safer countries. The situation is not so dissimilar now.

How about the homeless are helped AND we take in the millions of refugees that won't even bump the population of Europe by even 1%.

Re: Refugees Welcome

#217

Post by sp332 » Wed, Sep 02, 2015, 5:33 PM UTC

hoopd wrote: post #196

hoopd wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

define "can"

As usual, a challenge to the drive-by downvoters: answer the question. At what point have we done all we can? We "can" give ourselves as slaves to refugees to make their lives easier but I don't think that's what was meant. So A) where's the line and B) how close are we to that line?

I don't think we're really straining ourselves to handle the amount of refugees we are currently taking. That means, wherever the line is, we're not that close to it.

Re: Refugees Welcome

#218

Post by turar » Wed, Sep 02, 2015, 5:33 PM UTC

michaelbuddy wrote: post #210

theworstshill wrote: post #182

80% of these refugees should be accepted by the US, after all, if you give weaponry to various "free" syrian armies to cause havoc in the region, you should take responsibility to take care of the humanitarian disaster that results. The other 20% - UK, France and Germany, whoever dumped weapons on that region. Unpopular as it is - the middle east was doing much better under strong dictators. They had civilization goi…

Interesting idea. But the "U.S." isn't giving these countries weapons. Various people from the U.S. may be doing that, I know that U.S. citizens (those of which any refugees would suddenly be living next to) didn't vote to give weapons to Syrian armies. But if you have proof of it (and I'm not saying you don't) you've then got to find out how the deal was made. Also you want to blame the gun sellers and not the gun s…

It's not even about the weapons. The root cause of this situation is the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Re: Refugees Welcome

#219

Post by arrrg » Wed, Sep 02, 2015, 5:35 PM UTC

powertower wrote: post #206

arrrg wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Racism and xenophobia together with paranoid isolationism all the way to straight up facism have been on the rise recently, together with actual violence against refugees, that much is certainly true, but you forget that there are many different people with many different views living in Europe. The outpouring of support (donations, volunteer work) has also been rising a lot. In Germany I have also seen a marked shif…

You're conveniently ignoring the other's side of the argument: such as importing poverty, low wage or unskilled workers, crime, racism, xenophobia, radical ideologies and religions, incompatible views and behavior, things such as "no-go" zones, and all the other things that European countries and seeing with non-European immigration, is not a net benefit to society. The rise of the native push-back against immigratio…

So refugees are to blame for xenophobia, racism and violent attacks on themselves? Stop hitting yourself, eh? That’s absurd, completely and utterly.

Basic human rights and human dignity should be on all our minds. Compared to that the problems you name are trivial matters. Oh my god, the obscenely rich Europeans might lose a tiny bit of their living standard, how horrific!

That’s arrogance on the ivory tower. (It’s so absurd to me that giving up a bit of your living standard in exchange for preserving more human dignity overall is always treated as self-evidently unacceptable. I’m not sure why that is. Yes, sometimes to insure that human rights are upheld and human dignity is persevered it is necessary to sacrifice. So what. Trivial matters to the super-rich like ourselves.)

All of this obviously doesn’t mean that pain, suffering and poverty don’t exist in Europe and those problems don’t get less important, sure, but comparatively speaking, I mean, come on … this attitude is just absurd.

Re: Refugees Welcome

#220

Post by jbssm » Wed, Sep 02, 2015, 5:37 PM UTC

rmxt wrote: post #209

jbssm wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But what's the fear about letting refugees into the country? Why are people so scared of this? (genuine question =)) It's the fear of letting people with very, very, different social standards in our countries. And it's warranted. More than 50% of these refugees believe that whoever leaves the faith of Islam should suffer the death penalty and that adultery should be dealt with stoning to death . We are not talking…

Perhaps you're being downvoted because your source does not once refer to immigrants, refugees or migrants. You've presented no evidence which suggests that migrants (a particularly self-selecting group) are a uniform sampling of the population of the countries that they hail from. You've made quite an assumption there. If your polls showed the opinions of Muslims already in Western European countries, then maybe we…

So, migrants are not a good sample of the population of the country they originate from. They are special in some way and by taking a 3000 Km journey trough Africa they are already Westernised even before setting foot in Europe.

Makes perfect sense... I mean, makes perfect sense to try and deny reality in such an obvious way.