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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 8, 2026

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You're also vastly overstating how bad life is in the countries of origin especially for those with sufficient resources to make a multi-year refugee odyssey viable. There's a reason they frequently go back to visit on holiday

They go back because they maintain family links.

I was just talking to my dad and he said it was actually dead during Eid because everyone went back to the provinces. Those are poorer places than even what counts as a metropole in a tiny, sub-$1000 GDP per capita country. But they want to see their people.

Make no mistake though, they'll be back for work on Monday. And if they were told they couldn't come back after they left, they're having Eid right where they work.

And there's some obvious benefits that come with having foreign currency in these countries. But they're gonna have to come back and earn more. My mother is in this cycle of bouncing between Saudi Arabia (for the Hajj/Umrah) and then back home to see people and relax and then back to America for work, depending on what her bank balance looks like.

There's no genteel way out of this. This idea that you're going to cut off a spigot here or there and it'll stop is the sort of bloodless wonkery that people like Starmer are driven by. If there was some solution like that it'd already be found. It's not going to happen.

'If we cut off the spigot it'll be super difficult and the countries of origin are literally Mordor' is the sort of logic that drives a Starmer. Vast majority of recent immigrants are gibs motivated economic migrants who aren't starving and raped in their countries of origin.

We don’t need to kick out everyone; we need to stop new people coming and get 30%-50% to self deport.

Cut off gibs but offer exit gibs.