It's not xenophobia to point out that a nation's migration policy is failing, when it obviously is. It's a systemic issue, not some cultures or people being better or worse.
It is an issue of some cultures being objectively worse. Many immigrants come from places where the rights of women are not respected, and surprise surprise, the incidence of rape has gone up by 50% between 2008 and 2018, and first/second gen immigrants now comprise 60% of rapists in Sweden.
I fully agree. Globally highly multicultural countries tend to be less stable on average, and it makes perfect sense if we consider basic human biology. We are tribal animals, it's hard to get around that.
Places like Sweden will have it even worse than the US, because migrants need to learn a fully new language to fully integrate, while most migrants to the US have at least some English skills to begin with.
It's not a good idea to take in massive amounts of poor and uneducated refugees from distant cultures, give them free money and housing, and then just leave them be. That's not a real migration policy, it's just a recipe for creating a segregated society. The Swedish welfare state has certainly taken care of the basic needs of the migrants, but it hasn't really worked well at actual integration, and creating social mobility. Poorly integrated youths who see no future prospects through honest work are prime material for crime gangs to recruit.
I still haven't figured out whether Swedish politicians and voters didn't realize this, or simply didn't care. What's happening has seemed inevitable to me for well over a decade.
> It's not a good idea to take in massive amounts of poor and uneducated refugees from distant cultures, give them free money and housing, and then just leave them be.
Literally the founding story of European Australia .. the bulk of poor uneducated landed here had criminal records to boot.
Still, they were given work to pass the time and after a few decades 'free' land (well, other peoples land).
These days modern Australia population is ~ 25% born elsewhere with a fair number of refugees and poor migrants but these are matched with education, job opportunities and initial placement in communities they can establish themselves in.
That support is pretty crucial to minimising friction.
not everyone who went to the Oz was a criminal -- tho plenty were.
there was a gold rush and for a while Melbourne was the largest city in the British Empire. plenty of actual "try my luck in the new world" folks landed, both in the 1800s and later.
During the founding wave the bulk of the poor were convicts.
During the founding of non convict colonies (Adelaide, Perth, etc) there was the mega rich of the day - second sons shipping out with entire households to establish footholds and means of trade, and their servants (by the terms of the day these were people with a position and a wage albeit not great).
The trying their luck in a gold rush etc crowd came after the founding of the main colonies, some convict, a number not.
FWiW in my estimation "Had a criminal record" | "was a convict" is distinct from "was a criminal" - the first two are a matter of record, the third is more of a judgement call of character.
Many sent to Australia as convicts had character, ethics, a trade, and were victims of circumstance, poor economics, the wrong politics, the wrong class, etc. rather than being of some essential criminal character.
I fully agree. It's all about meeting enough potential partners with similar interests. Shared-activities with healthy gender balance (at least for heterosexual relationships) are the best bet for most people. Many such activities also don't require long-term commitment or hanging out with same people all the time, so rejection isn't as awkward as in workplace for example.
Of all things I tried shared activities worked the best, Tinder the worst.
Yeah, gender balance is often skewed. While I'm not on the market I've noticed this with the hiking community--overall, it appears approximately balanced but most actual hikes are not. The long hikes are highly male-dominated, the short ones are rather female-dominated. I've met some women that joined specifically to look for dates--and I've never seen any of them in a group that wasn't female dominant.
Coed team sports are a great way to avoid this, since there’s necessarily a rough gender balance. Join your local ultimate frisbee summer league or whatever.
The boomers are retiring, and the US economy is strong. Here in EU boomers are also retiring, but many countries still have high youth unemployment, and there is no real worker shortage even if businesses like to complain about one.
These devices do have their value, but most users would be better off cycling or walking. From public health point of view replacing cars with these is only a minor improvement.
Wow, I had zero idea Brazil is doing so good in that front. I agree with you completely. EU's biggest economy shuts down nuclear plants in favor of coal, I think that tells us all enough about how much those in charge really care about the environment. Votes from irrational, brainwashed German population seems to be more important.
> If that’s an example to follow, then we’re collectively fucked.
We got collectively fucked when all western countries destroyed their natural landscape to get industrialized. If you expect another country to keep 70% of their land intact to save the world you gotta pay for this. And taking by the importance everybody seems to be giving to it, the price is expensive.
Western countries never had the Amazon rainforest. And when they destroyed their forests they didn’t do so knowing they’re vital for the survival of humankind.
What you’re saying is literally blackmail. But Brazil is also blackmailing themselves, as they happen to be part of the same world as everyone else. “Pay us or else we burn this building with all of us inside” does not sound like a reasonable position, nor one that should be taken as an example.
Yes, people with decent education are almost never causing trouble, no matter the country of origin. They can find legal paths to improving their lives, while migrants with difficult background (and their children) have very difficult time doing that. Sweden isn't like the USA in the 1800's, you need education and decent language skills for any good jobs. Free education is no silver bullet that suddenly turns masses of illiterate people into doctors and economists, because even under such system there's competition for university spots.
Sweden quite simply took in way too many people who would have required a lot of help to integrate, stuffed them into bad neighbourhoods and gave them free money. I'm sure many companies have benefited from this supply of slave labour, but for the society as a whole it has been a disaster.
Integration is exponentially harder if you're a (potentially traumatized) and uneducated asylum seeker from a poor country, compared to someone who migrates for work and already holds some qualifications. So, in that sense Sweden's migration policies are to be blamed, since the country has received way more asylum seekers per capita than most other EU countries.
Apparently Sweden has the highest gap between employment rate of citizen and non-EU citizen in the whole European Union. I think it's mainly because so many migrants arrived to seek asylum rather than work. But yes, city planning and ineffective legal system do not exactly help either.
