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cebrail posted:95% of parties want some form of immigration control, that's not the issue. And even if they're both racist there's still a gigantic difference between "we should let less non-white people into our country than we do now" and "people who aren't like me should die". A lot of articles, not necissarily leftist ones, seem to ignore that distinction and I think it's less them pushing a poltical agenda and more painting a drastic picture for more clicks. Another distinction that I miss in a lot of articles on the topic is the one between ordinary immigrants and asylum seekers. There are significant differences in what motivates those groups and what is possible in response to them. (Not to mention that some people are apparently not even able to distinguish between intra-European migration of Union citizens and immigration from outside the European Union.)
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May 26, 2014 23:22
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Electronico6 posted:I think the rest of Europe should follow Portugal's example on how to fix immigration problems, without ever do anything directly to it. Note that this does not work when yours is a gateway country to the EU such as Greece.
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May 26, 2014 23:25
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YF-23 posted:Note that this does not work when yours is a gateway country to the EU such as Greece. So was Portugal. Morocco, Luso-African countries, South America, India, China, and during the early '00 Eastern Europeans, especially from the Ukraine. There was a boom at the turn of the century, and for a brief window Portugal(and Spain) had inverted the tendency of being a nation of emigrants, into a nation of immigrants. The crisis stopped that, with many of those immigrants returning home, and with Portugal going back to it's number one export: Portuguese.
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May 26, 2014 23:43
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A Pale Horse posted:In some circles any sort of desire for immigration control is automatically branded racist and people intentionally fail to make the distinction. YF-23 posted:Note that this does not work when yours is a gateway country to the EU such as Greece. Electronico6 posted:So was Portugal. Morocco, Luso-African countries, South America, India, China, and during the early '00 Eastern Europeans, especially from the Ukraine. There was a boom at the turn of the century, and for a brief window Portugal(and Spain) had inverted the tendency of being a nation of emigrants, into a nation of immigrants. The crisis stopped that, with many of those immigrants returning home, and with Portugal going back to it's number one export: Portuguese. e: 90% sounds like a lot, so it's probably only illegal immigrants, come to think of it. A Buttery Pastry fucked around with this message at 00:06 on May 27, 2014 |
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May 26, 2014 23:57
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A Buttery Pastry posted:Not anything like Greece I don't think? Like 90% of immigrants to the EU pass through (or end up in) Greece don't they? I seriously doubt it's 90%, or any close to that number. The main problem Greece has, that Portugal, Spain, and Italy don't have, is sharing a border with non-EU countries which makes illegal immigration easier. But here again, I will wager that most of these immigrants probably don't want to stay in Greece, they want to make their way into Germany/France/UK/Scandinavia. So really when all of Europe is misery from west to east, Greece will be like the exit door of the EU. But Portugal(and Spain) was a gateway to Europe, especially for the Lusophone world, and we had a decent pull in India and China. Now all those Brazilians are going back to Brazil, which frankly says a lot about the conditions in Portugal. Also bonus picture:  (Tourist spot from 1907)
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May 27, 2014 00:23
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 Looking forward to seeing a bunch more of this in the coming years! Good job, Europe.
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May 27, 2014 01:10
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How cute, a bunch of people arguing about how the only moral immigration controls are their immigration controls  There's more than enough land and wealth to accommodate people used to living in absolute squalor in war-thorn shitholes, as long as you don't gut their social support they won't turn into Front National strawmans. Also, we looted, enslaved, raped and bombed god knows how many Africans and Middle Eastern people for centuries. I think we can call it even by giving some of them a social project home and free education.
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May 27, 2014 01:13
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Mans posted:Also, we looted, enslaved, raped and bombed god knows how many Africans and Middle Eastern people for centuries. I think we can call it even by giving some of them a social project home and free education. Please tell me what part of Africa or Middle Earth the Estonians, Latvians and Swedes were busy bombing and pillaging tia edit: Yes, Middle Earth, I stand by my words El Perkele fucked around with this message at 06:42 on May 27, 2014 |
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May 27, 2014 05:35
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El Perkele posted:Please tell me where in Africa and Middle Earth the Estonians, Latvians and Swedes were busy bombing and raping people tia You bombed Helm's Deep in your guise as an Orc, dont deny it! The idea that we are forever in a moral debt because at some point our forefathers did some really lovely things is absurd to me. By that idea you could argue that the citizens of Rome are in debt to all of europe because they subjugated them (well western europe and a small part of Germany), that Greece is in debt to Egypt and the middle east and so on.
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May 27, 2014 05:53
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El Perkele posted:Please tell me where in Africa and Middle Earth the Estonians, Latvians and Swedes were busy bombing and raping people tia Trick question; neither Latvia or Estonia is in Africa or the Middle Earth! (Sweden is Mordor though)
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May 27, 2014 06:37
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Pimpmust posted:Trick question; neither Latvia or Estonia is in Africa or the Middle Earth! I refuse to correct that one
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May 27, 2014 06:41
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GaussianCopula posted:You bombed Helm's Deep in your guise as an Orc, dont deny it! Except in this case particularly for Africa if you're old enough it may be your literal father since right into the 1950's most of the continent was still under colonialism
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May 27, 2014 08:16
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GaussianCopula posted:The idea that we are forever in a moral debt because at some point our forefathers did some really lovely things is absurd to me. By that idea you could argue that the citizens of Rome are in debt to all of europe because they subjugated them (well western europe and a small part of Germany), that Greece is in debt to Egypt and the middle east and so on. There's some reasonable bounds, and even if you are, like all cool people around, a '90s kid, you're still benefiting from colonialism as the third world is still largely under the thumb of western economic interests. You'd make a bigger point if, for example, the cocoa for Belgian chocolates, Swiss chocolates, Toblerone etc. was not largely gathered through the use of child labour in west Africa.
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May 27, 2014 08:33
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Mans posted:How cute, a bunch of people arguing about how the only moral immigration controls are their immigration controls Mans posted:There's more than enough land and wealth to accommodate people used to living in absolute squalor in war-thorn shitholes, as long as you don't gut their social support they won't turn into Front National strawmans.
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May 27, 2014 08:48
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YF-23 posted:There's some reasonable bounds, and even if you are, like all cool people around, a '90s kid, you're still benefiting from colonialism as the third world is still largely under the thumb of western economic interests. You'd make a bigger point if, for example, the cocoa for Belgian chocolates, Swiss chocolates, Toblerone etc. was not largely gathered through the use of child labour in west Africa. So paying people for goods and services they want to sell is the same as "raping and bombing"? Thats quite interesting. Just to cover all my bases, I'm against any and all forms of agrarian subsidies, so please dont argue that the EU is ruining the agrarian industry in 3rd world countries by artificially lowering the world price but at the same time the evil banks are speculating with food, thereby rising the prices and causing world hunger.
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May 27, 2014 09:00
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GaussianCopula posted:So paying people for goods and services they want to sell is the same as "raping and bombing"? Thats quite interesting. Just to cover all my bases, I'm against any and all forms of agrarian subsidies, so please dont argue that the EU is ruining the agrarian industry in 3rd world countries by artificially lowering the world price but at the same time the evil banks are speculating with food, thereby rising the prices and causing world hunger. That's not what he's implying. That example he gave you wasn't hyperbolic, that's literally how the vast majority of the worlds chocolate is produced. Cocoa trees take 5 years to grow 1 harvest. They're incredibly expensive to grow and only grow in a few select countries in the entire world. Companies like Nestle (among others) made this process a lot cheaper by replacing vast amounts of the workers with children working under slave-like conditions. That was the only way to cut the costs to what it is today. As conditions in the few countries where cocoa trees can be grown are getting better the global supply to chocolate is estimated to start to dwindle. It just can't be sold at a reasonable price without undue human suffering. Chocolate is just one example out of to many to count. Almost everything around you that isn't locally produced has in some way contributed to human suffering.
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May 27, 2014 09:14
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GaussianCopula posted:You bombed Helm's Deep in your guise as an Orc, dont deny it! If there is a moral debt to begin with, it certainly didn't disappear by 50 years of profiting from it while ignoring most of its problems. The ongoing relations between countries that still exist are not the same idea as the effects of an empire that ceased to exist in 476.
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May 27, 2014 09:24
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I don't think I understand how this factors into the immigration debate though. The number of people adversely affected by western Imperialism within the last century or so probably goes into the hundreds of millions, if not billions, so it is impossible to offer immigration to any significant fraction. "We'll help you out, but only if you abandon your current home and completely turn your life around" also seems somewhat arrogant to me. Wouldn't improving local conditions, e.g. by no longer messing with foreign economies as much, paying fair prices and so on, be a better use of resources? Speaking of resources, integrating migrants requires them. Just from what I've seen, Europe doesn't seem to do too well in matters of integration anyways, but how should these resources be allocated? As others mentioned, there seems to be a tendency to disregard the large variety in immigrants. Pretending that some fraction of immigrants is representative of the whole appears to be popular for political reasons, ranging from "All immigrants are refugees running from unspeakable horrors" to "All immigrants are cross-border criminals out to steal our welfare" at the extreme ends. A more detailed look at how to allocate resources in immigration would be useful, since there's a big difference between a war refugee or a migrant worker from an industrialized nation, for example. I don't have answers to these questions, but I feel that "Foreigners out" and "No borders anywhere" get much attention but aren't very useful, and the topic of immigration deserves a closer look.
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May 27, 2014 09:58
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Your mistake is assuming the argument goes beyond "dirty immigrants are taking our jobs, furthermore I hate brown people".
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May 27, 2014 10:13
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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What happens when you institute these immigration restriction policies then after a few years the problems attributed to excessive immigration (High unemployment, lack of housing, strain on health care services, etc) still exist. What is the next plan of action? Do we start rounding up the second/third generation immigrants and shipping them off to a land they have never been to? Maybe we stop looking at the foreigners and go after the sick and destitute. They add nothing to the glorious nation anyway! Or do we begin to realise that the erosion of our quality of life over the last 30 years is just a result of neo-liberal orthodoxy that is alienating people through anxiety, fear and hate.
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May 27, 2014 10:19
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Here's a hel[ful chart for how many Eurosceptic party seats there now are across Parliament. Courtesy of the Economist.
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May 27, 2014 10:20
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Sassbot Alpha posted:Or do we begin to realise that the erosion of our quality of life over the last 30 years is just a result of neo-liberal orthodoxy that is alienating people through anxiety, fear and hate. By what measure has the quality of life over the last 30 years eroded for people living in the European Union?
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May 27, 2014 10:26
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Have you been living somewhere else? The whole economic collapse in greece, rioting in the streets, huge sweeping austerity measures meaning that people are increasingly desperate for basic human needs like food, shelter and medical care. Have you been walking around with your eyes closed or something?
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May 27, 2014 10:27
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Ddraig posted:Have you been living somewhere else? The whole economic collapse in greece, rioting in the streets, huge sweeping austerity measures meaning that people are increasingly desperate for basic human needs like food, shelter and medical care. I don't think that even remotely close to answers his point?
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May 27, 2014 10:29
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dilbertschalter posted:I don't think that even remotely close to answers his point? I'm not entirely sure what I'm supposed to say to this other than in what world do you live in where people not having reliable access to food, shelter, medical care doesn't constitute a very basic, if not fundamental adversely negative effect in the quality of people's lives? I mean, ignoring the fact that austerity has hosed over several countries and is well on the way to loving over several more, there are huge problems that can't really be blamed on them dirty foreigners.
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May 27, 2014 10:33
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food-rf posted:I don't think I understand how this factors into the immigration debate though. The number of people adversely affected by western Imperialism within the last century or so probably goes into the hundreds of millions, if not billions, so it is impossible to offer immigration to any significant fraction. "We'll help you out, but only if you abandon your current home and completely turn your life around" also seems somewhat arrogant to me. Wouldn't improving local conditions, e.g. by no longer messing with foreign economies as much, paying fair prices and so on, be a better use of resources? "Close All the Borders" and "No Borders" are both equally catastrophic ideas that would bring ruin to any western country that adopted it. "No Borders" only works if you gut all social security spending (kinda like the US and it's illegal immigrant situation) and "Close All the Borders" would bring a shitheap of hiring, export and cultural problems. In Sweden the big problem with immigration is that it takes an average of 7 years for the typical asylum seeker to get integrated. During these years the brunt of the cost doesn't fall upon the state budget as it should, it falls upon whichever municipality they decide to move to. Since they get to pick freely once asylum has been granted they tend to move wherever they've got relatives or countrymen (like everyone would in their situation) which means that a few select cities carry almost all the financial burden in caring for and educating them. This also isolates them from the rest of the population by stranding them in cheap apartment complexes for years which greatly increases the time it takes for them to learn Swedish and get the contacts necessary to land a job. In short, the problem isn't that we can't afford the asylum immigration (we absolutely can) but the current system pushes all the costs on a small percentage of the municipal budgets. The cities who say no to the initial wave of immigrants from any disaster zone end up not having to pay a dime as all who follow move wherever the first went.
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May 27, 2014 10:35
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Electronico6 posted:I seriously doubt it's 90%, or any close to that number. The main problem Greece has, that Portugal, Spain, and Italy don't have, is sharing a border with non-EU countries which makes illegal immigration easier. But here again, I will wager that most of these immigrants probably don't want to stay in Greece, they want to make their way into Germany/France/UK/Scandinavia. So really when all of Europe is misery from west to east, Greece will be like the exit door of the EU. The rear end of Europe alright.
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May 27, 2014 10:38
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Ddraig posted:I'm not entirely sure what I'm supposed to say to this other than in what world do you live in where people not having reliable access to food, shelter, medical care doesn't constitute a very basic, if not fundamental adversely negative effect in the quality of people's lives? I did not contend the claim that life sucks for a lot of people. I take issue with Sassbot Alpha's claim that the quality of life in Europe has degraded for the last thirty years. Indices relevant to the question like the Human Developement Index do not back that assertion at all (e.g. graph below). Furthermore, the claim is extremely counter-intuitive considering that 30 years back (1984) numerous countries either came out from under dictatorships recently (e.g. Portugal, Greece) or were still under a dictatorship (e.g. Germany, Romania).  (Green is European states.)
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May 27, 2014 10:44
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Randler posted:I did not contend the claim that life sucks for a lot of people. I take issue with Sassbot Alpha's claim that the quality of life in Europe has degraded for the last thirty years. Indices relevant to the question like the Human Developement Index do not back that assertion at all (e.g. graph below). Furthermore, the claim is extremely counter-intuitive considering that 30 years back (1984) numerous countries either came out from under dictatorships recently (e.g. Portugal, Greece) or were still under a dictatorship (e.g. Germany, Romania). Not that I'm disagreeing with your point but I think you're going to have to find a graph that goes just little bit longer to convince him seeing as the European crisis didn't really blossom until 2011. 
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May 27, 2014 10:47
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Randler posted:By what measure has the quality of life over the last 30 years eroded for people living in the European Union? I'm not yet thirty, but overall my quality of life improved markedly, because I no longer live under a one-party dictatorship in East Germany.
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May 27, 2014 10:49
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Xoidanor posted:Not that I'm disagreeing with your point but I think you're going to have to find a graph that goes just little bit longer to convince him seeing as the European crisis didn't really blossom until 2011. HDI trends by country (among other things), I have yet to figure out how to work with UNDP's open data structure, so no unified graph of all European trends. What those trend graphs show is that over the last thirty years the quality of life as measured by the HDI has improved in the European countries with the EU crisis not being the enourmous dent one might expect.
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May 27, 2014 10:58
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Calico Heart posted:Here's a hel[ful chart for how many Eurosceptic party seats there now are across Parliament. Courtesy of the Economist. That includes all colours of Eurosceptic parties, which I don't think is entirely helpful. It's putting for instance Greece's Independent Greeks, which is in favour of national sovereignty (but is not even in favour of an exit from Eurozone) in the same bag as UKIP which wants to exit the EU altogether. Randler posted:
It is very convenient to end the graph on 2011. 30 years is perhaps a bit too much, but it also depends on what sort of index you're using and how it represents different segments of society. Many country-wide indices are useless for this purpose; "good" stats are often fuelled by the rich getting richer and ignore the collapse of the middle class and deteriorating conditions for the poor. And that's not even getting on the economic division of the EU into north and south.
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May 27, 2014 11:02
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dorkasaurus_rex posted:
Have you guys been in a coma for the past two decades? Maybe it's because the far right just suffered an electoral defeat in my country, but I was born in 1990 and i'm seeing less of that stuff than ever before.
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May 27, 2014 11:49
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That voter turnout in full Good work Slovak Republic!
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May 27, 2014 11:54
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Compulsory voting seems to work out really well for Greece and Cyprus.
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May 27, 2014 11:58
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System Metternich posted:Compulsory voting seems to work out really well for Greece and Cyprus. It worked for Belgium and Luxembourg.
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May 27, 2014 12:02
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Jesus, so much self-pity and upper middle-class angst in this thread. So a large and significant amount of voters actually bothered to pitch at the polls and vote for a party whose principals you don't agree with, and now everyone who did so sucks and deserves to be shot in a fast food store because they are far-right. What a bunch of pussies.
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May 27, 2014 12:06
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Calico Heart posted:Here's a hel[ful chart for how many Eurosceptic party seats there now are across Parliament. Courtesy of the Economist. YF-23 posted:That includes all colours of Eurosceptic parties, which I don't think is entirely helpful. It's putting for instance Greece's Independent Greeks, which is in favour of national sovereignty (but is not even in favour of an exit from Eurozone) in the same bag as UKIP which wants to exit the EU altogether.
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May 27, 2014 12:07
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Randler posted:HDI trends by country (among other things), I have yet to figure out how to work with UNDP's open data structure, so no unified graph of all European trends. What those trend graphs show is that over the last thirty years the quality of life as measured by the HDI has improved in the European countries with the EU crisis not being the enourmous dent one might expect. (links in Portuguese, most of them come from the National Institute of Statistics) Despite what the IMF said, inequality has continued to rise even with austerity. Though medium wages have approached equality, the gap between rich and poor has continued to increase. Material deprivation has also increased. Our poverty risk levels have been going in reverse. With poverty risk being at it's highest level since 2005. Our minimum wage is also worth less today than it was 40 years ago. (Early data from the Inquiry of Life Conditions and Income and other from the National Institute of Statistics) One in five Portuguese are at risk of poverty, with children being the biggest group at risk. In 2009 the population at the risk of poverty was 17,9, in 2012 was 24,7%, with the rate of poverty for those younger than 18 going up from 26,1 in 2011 to 30,9%. Our economic recovery is also a massive sham. An oil refinery in Sines closed down for maintenance for a month and our GDP for that trimester shrunk 0.7 immediately. In fact the entire reason our exports went up, the silver lining of prime minister Pedro Passos Coelho, is that oil refinery, which was built during the last government, and only came up two years ago. Not to mention our interest rates for 5 and 10 years are entirely dependant on the ECB doing something in the future. Considering the ever increasing threat of an eurozone wide deflation, Draghi might actually do something so there's that. And of course, all that population leaking and active population shrinking.(link in English!) There's still more. Most people no longer believe they are going to get pensions. Our national health service is at breaking point with lack of staff and equipment, with a lot of the doctors and nurses trained in Portugal being poached by England.(Not even doctor is assured work here) Many teachers are dropping out of their professions due to the lack of conditions and decent salaries. Courts, posts offices, and health care centres are all closing down in the interior of the country, EU funds for road maintenance and extensions are over leaving a lot of infrastructure of the interior in disrepair. Though it will take a few years to get a complete picture, it's not crazy to say that 3 years after TROIKA, Portugal is in a worse state than it was before, and it's not going to get any better soon. There exists several signs, like increase in life expectancy, that distort reality and serve to say "it's not that bad!", not to mention most cost and quality of life are measured through cities, hiding the ugly interior that nobody wants to talk about.(In some places of the country people didn't go voting cause the closest vote booth was 12km away.) That East Germany is no longer a shithole like Torranor says is pretty good, but we have run up again into Schultz "struggling with 1000 euro" issue to what's true in a part of Europe is not true in others. That quality of life increased in Portugal is undeniable, but even that graph, that has almost half of the measures n/a and stops in 2010, shows that Portugal hit a roof around 2005. I'm going to say once the last years start to be accounted you going to find a decrease. Portugal is going through a serious risk of having the last 40 yeas being slowly and quietly rolled back, and we can forget about catching up with the average in the European Union in many sectors for the foreseeable future.
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May 27, 2014 12:25
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kissekatt posted:Conversely, it only includes a certain brand of Eurosceptics, the rightwing racist/nationalist Eurosceptics. To make an example there's the swedish left party (V) seat that's not getting counted as "Eurosceptic" despite them being heavily against the EU. There's also several of the primary candidates of the social democrats like Marita Ulvskog who have been outspoken critics of the EU-project for over a decade. I'm sure there's more in other countries if you start looking. They're obviously not getting mentioned since they don't fit the narrative the image wants to tell.
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May 27, 2014 12:36
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