Seven out of 10 Europeans believe their country takes in too many immigrants • Hacker News Board

Re: Seven out of 10 Europeans believe their country takes in too many immigrants

#71

Post by spacebanana7 » Fri, May 10, 2024, 4:01 PM UTC

mcntsh wrote: post #70

spacebanana7 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extended maternity/paternity leave (especially in Sweden), child benefits (especially Poland), tax exemptions (e.g Hungarian income tax), subsidised or free childcare and more.

Parental leave in Sweden is 80% of your salary and maxes out at 2500 a month for both partners... In Germany it maxes out at 1800. These aren't incentives since you'd be LOSING money by taking parental leave... > child benefits 120-180 EUR a month per child doesn't even cover half the costs of a child.

The base case is to have no parental leave, not 100% of your current salary.

Historically that was the default when people had very positive fertility. In Israel & the US where fertility is higher there's even less generous setups than Sweden & Germany.

I suspect if you give people enough money they'll probably start having kids, but it's a very high number. Hungary is currently spending 5% of its GDP on fertility policies with little success [1]. Last year Poland's increase in its child benefit program alone cost 0.7-0.8% of GDP [2].

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/04/baby-bonuses-f... [2] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/poland-approves-child-b...

Re: Seven out of 10 Europeans believe their country takes in too many immigrants

#72

Post by mcntsh » Fri, May 10, 2024, 4:22 PM UTC

spacebanana7 wrote: post #71

mcntsh wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parental leave in Sweden is 80% of your salary and maxes out at 2500 a month for both partners... In Germany it maxes out at 1800. These aren't incentives since you'd be LOSING money by taking parental leave... > child benefits 120-180 EUR a month per child doesn't even cover half the costs of a child.

The base case is to have no parental leave, not 100% of your current salary. Historically that was the default when people had very positive fertility. In Israel & the US where fertility is higher there's even less generous setups than Sweden & Germany. I suspect if you give people enough money they'll probably start having kids, but it's a very high number. Hungary is currently spending 5% of its GDP on fertility po…

Well most people are struggling as it is, so obviously the prospect of increasing your responsibilities and also reducing your income doesn't seem worth it...

If governments were serious about falling birth rates they would invest in their people and give them reasons to have kids rather than saying "f- you" and just importing the workforce from poor countries instead.

Re: Seven out of 10 Europeans believe their country takes in too many immigrants

#73

Post by bitcharmer » Fri, May 10, 2024, 4:46 PM UTC

pdimitar wrote: post #36

yurishimo wrote: post #13

I certainly understand the sentiment, but my question to someone on the "anti" immigration side would be this: what do you see as a possible alternative solution? Populations are shrinking and to keep the economy in a healthy place, money needs to come from somewhere. The easiest solution is to add bodies via immigration. Otherwise taxes need to go up or governments need to spend money incentivizing people to start f…

[flagged]

Sad but realistical take, I'm very surprised you haven't been flagged yet. Many people on social media, even HN tend to outright deny statistical data, call their opponents racists and shut down the whole discourse.

Re: Seven out of 10 Europeans believe their country takes in too many immigrants

#74

Post by bitcharmer » Fri, May 10, 2024, 5:02 PM UTC

srg0 wrote: post #51

nubinetwork wrote: post #4

Funny, if you were to ask that in North America, you'd be called xenophobic.

Visit reddit, and you'll see that many of these Europeans who are against immigration are specifically against male immigrants with Black African and North African heritage. I think that there's a lot of racism in these sentiments. More than just a generic xenophobia.

I don't think calling genuine fear racist or xenophobic is very fair. For someone who's lived long enough to compare life 30 years ago and now (for example in Germany or Sweden) there are some obvious changes visible with equally observable consequences. You just know by paying attention and staying informed.

I think name calling and gaslighting is the biggest problem here because it poisons the whole discourse.

Re: Seven out of 10 Europeans believe their country takes in too many immigrants

#75

Post by rawgabbit » Fri, May 10, 2024, 5:17 PM UTC

yurishimo wrote: post #13

I certainly understand the sentiment, but my question to someone on the "anti" immigration side would be this: what do you see as a possible alternative solution? Populations are shrinking and to keep the economy in a healthy place, money needs to come from somewhere. The easiest solution is to add bodies via immigration. Otherwise taxes need to go up or governments need to spend money incentivizing people to start f…

You are describing a doomed government fiscal scheme. It is more like a ponzi scheme that requires new entrants into perpetuity. This is doomed to fail. It is simply bad policy.

For any system, absorbing shocks and massive social change will take decades to resolve. "The natural end" I would argue will occur with or without government intervention. In the ideal case, government intervention should lessen the upheaval by preparing for eventual population decline. At worst, government intervention will champion false hare-brained schemes like Brexit or massive immigration. This will only make things worse, not better.

This situation remind of when France's Louis XVI was deeply in debt. Instead of reforming society and their unfair taxation scheme (only the poor paid taxes), France put their trust in Necker a "financial genius". Necker published a completely fake set of accounting books in order to get even more loans. Of course, he argued the loans were only step1 of his plan to get "breathing room". Step2 was to actually reform France. I believe he is disingenuous. As an experienced financier, he should known that loaning money to France is like giving money to a gambling addict. Who is the greater the fool? The gambling addict or the person loaning money to the addict? Meanwhile Louis XVI and his family got their heads chopped off by the French Revolution. With hindsight, he would have better off confiscating all the church property (which the Revolutionaries did) and refused to pay the old debts.

Re: Seven out of 10 Europeans believe their country takes in too many immigrants

#76

Post by racional » Fri, May 10, 2024, 5:41 PM UTC

snowpid wrote: post #22

yurishimo wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Personally, as someone who chose to come here from the US, I'm perfectly content to learn Dutch. Just as when Mexican immigrants come to the US, there is an expectation that you learn English (and it's quite explicit I might add!). Do you think it would be helpful for governments to enforce more strict "integration" policies to satisfy the worries of the local population? If I'm not mistaken, Denmark has a m…

" If I'm not mistaken, Denmark has a much more robust integration process and I tend to see less pushback from Danes about immigrants. " Denmark wasn't a big goal for migration anyway. I like to see the results before I opt it in such harsh measures (like forcing people to move out). But again, this was more about illegal migration. In Germany antisemitic character traits are reason not to get the citizen ship (which…

Should applicants for citizenship to Germany be required to sign a written statement "acknowledging the right of Russia to exist"? Or the People's Republic of China, say?

That's what at least one version of the test (in Saxony-Anhalt) requires -- except that it happens to apply to a certain other random country (Israel). But hey, if you're a fan of McCarthyist loyalty oaths of this sort, then I suppose this is the kind of thing you like.

It would also make you complicit in a form of antisemitism -- in that it denies the right of Orthodox Jews (some of whom are fundamentally opposed to the current State of Israel because it preempts the coming of the Messiah) to be true to their own views and identity in regard to this matter. BTW this is an opinion based on deeply held religious views, not on any political standpoint per se.

Apparently the yahoos who came up with this law don't feel these people have a right to express their deeply held views in accordance with what they see as Jewish Law. And they certainly don't think such people -- the "wrong kind" of Jews, I guess -- should be welcome in Germany.

You may now thank the "woke crowd" for saving you from this particular form of authoritarian (and antisemitic) nonsense.

Re: Seven out of 10 Europeans believe their country takes in too many immigrants

#77

Post by arp242 » Fri, May 10, 2024, 6:17 PM UTC

mytailorisrich wrote: post #67

arp242 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are degrees of things; "too much immigration" does not mean "no immigration". And of course populations don't need to keep growing indefinitely for a "healthy economy"; that's just not mathematically possible. So we need to be able to deal with non-growing or even shrinking populations anyway. And I do think "how much migration is too much migration?" is a serious question worth asking; there's a big difference…

The topic has not been " hijacked by right-wing firebrands ". It's just that they are the only ones still raising the issue openly. Somehow the mainstream parties and especially the left have shifted from anti-racism to a blanket and absolute " immigration is good " and " all refugees welcome " consensus (and not only that but in some cases a stance that more diveristy should actually be encouraged) and anyone raisin…

So let's stick with Netherlands: if you want to literally ban a religion (Wilders) then you're a right-wing firebrand. If you subscribe to all sort of outlandish conspiracy theories (Baudet) then you're a right-wing firebrand (and also completely insane). These people are not helpful for any constructive debate.

And by and large it's not like centre- or even left-wing parties are in favour of "all refugees welcome" or "[all] immigration is good". Actually Netherlands has had a broadly right-wing government for about 20 years now, which has generally been against immigration.

And if we look at France, Germany, UK, then the situation is roughly similar (with differences in details and nuance, of course).

Re: Seven out of 10 Europeans believe their country takes in too many immigrants

#78

Post by pandaman » Fri, May 10, 2024, 7:03 PM UTC

yurishimo wrote: post #13

I certainly understand the sentiment, but my question to someone on the "anti" immigration side would be this: what do you see as a possible alternative solution? Populations are shrinking and to keep the economy in a healthy place, money needs to come from somewhere. The easiest solution is to add bodies via immigration. Otherwise taxes need to go up or governments need to spend money incentivizing people to start f…

The easiest solution is to stop the population decline. I have a suspicion that taking people's money in order to give some of the money back to 'incentivize' families is not the most effective or straightforward way to do it. Population had been growing for thousands years without such a process.

Re: Seven out of 10 Europeans believe their country takes in too many immigrants

#79

Post by snowpid » Fri, May 10, 2024, 7:16 PM UTC

racional wrote: post #76

snowpid wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" If I'm not mistaken, Denmark has a much more robust integration process and I tend to see less pushback from Danes about immigrants. " Denmark wasn't a big goal for migration anyway. I like to see the results before I opt it in such harsh measures (like forcing people to move out). But again, this was more about illegal migration. In Germany antisemitic character traits are reason not to get the citizen ship (which…

Should applicants for citizenship to Germany be required to sign a written statement "acknowledging the right of Russia to exist"? Or the People's Republic of China, say? That's what at least one version of the test (in Saxony-Anhalt) requires -- except that it happens to apply to a certain other random country (Israel). But hey, if you're a fan of McCarthyist loyalty oaths of this sort, then I suppose this is the ki…

" Should applicants for citizenship to Germany be required to sign a written statement "acknowledging the right of Russia to exist"? Or the People's Republic of China, say? " There are not many people denying Russia or Chinese to make a state? And definitely there was no genocide to them.

"in that it denies the right of Orthodox Jews" a small group of Orthodox Jews, seeing as weirdos among other Jews.

" You may now thank the "woke crowd" for saving you from this particular form of authoritarian (and antisemitic) nonsense. " that does not make any sense.

Re: Seven out of 10 Europeans believe their country takes in too many immigrants

#80

Post by racional » Fri, May 10, 2024, 7:34 PM UTC

snowpid wrote: post #79

racional wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should applicants for citizenship to Germany be required to sign a written statement "acknowledging the right of Russia to exist"? Or the People's Republic of China, say? That's what at least one version of the test (in Saxony-Anhalt) requires -- except that it happens to apply to a certain other random country (Israel). But hey, if you're a fan of McCarthyist loyalty oaths of this sort, then I suppose this is the ki…

" Should applicants for citizenship to Germany be required to sign a written statement "acknowledging the right of Russia to exist"? Or the People's Republic of China, say? " There are not many people denying Russia or Chinese to make a state? And definitely there was no genocide to them. "in that it denies the right of Orthodox Jews" a small group of Orthodox Jews, seeing as weirdos among other Jews. " You may now t…

So it's okay to silence this segment of the Jewish population, and deny them citizenship rights in Germany (of all places) if they are "seen as weirdos among other Jews"?

That's what you're advocating, apparently.