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PaperclipPerfector  10hr ago (text post)   1385 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 29, 2026

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Let's talk about the Örebro Party: (Swedish) lefty socialists except they support remigration.

Key quotes from Wikipedia (emphasis mine)

The party claims to stand for a "class-conscious populism" which according to party leader Markus Allard takes inspiration from marxist ideology and unites the "productive" classes of society against the "Transferiat", with the "Transferiat" being a term coined by Allard to describe the classes of society that lives off transfers that are a net negative for society such as those who, despite having an ability to work, live off social welfare benefits, as well as those who work "made-up services" that the party deems serve no societal function, such as bureaucrats, consultants, public sector communications specialists, strategists and HR-specialists.

In 2026 ÖP party leader Markus Allard sparked controversy on several occasions. In a debate hosted by Studio3 with Liberal member of parliament Martin Melin, Allard asked: "why won't the Liberals push for deporting 100 000 social welfare-Somalis?" and in the same debate said that "Sweden belongs to the Swedes. We have to make sure that we take care of our own damn people and we must deport these damn parasites who sit and live at our expense."

In a podcast segment about immigration and deportations Allard stated his opinion and said that "They will also be forced to leave, even if they are born in Sweden, because they have no natural connection to Sweden. They are not Swedish."

"OH YES!!! SWEDEN BELONGS TO THE SWEDES! If an immigrant refuses to adapt then they should not be here. In our national party program we will present measures for massive remigration. We need to start by getting rid of the criminals and people who have lived off of social welfare year after year. 0 arguments to keep them here. On a municipal level that which can be done, should be done to achieve remigration/deportation of these."

They've made headlines recently (and got on my radar) because Mullvad's CEO donated €452,000 to them.

My perspective on remigration:

People should live in their own communities. I remember reading an article about a tradcath community, and presumably the article wanted to criticise and mock them, but I thought they had decent values and the world is better with them. Or the furry community, even though they can be weird, sometimes produce amazing works like this. Or the unique cultures from other countries and ethnicities...hence the appeal of reversing immigration.

Immigration has ruined communities. A massive problem with today's culture is that it has become one monoculture: everything is becoming gentrified, secured, and impersonal. Translation tools, ethnic stores, etc. are accelarating this (despite otherwise being positive by granting me interesting new cultures and vice versa), by making every culture adapt every other culture's most viral aspects (which aren't necessarily good, like arguably convenience food and tipping). LLMs are accelarating this. But immigration is perhaps most accelarating this: some immigrants are even beneficial, but immigrants who don't know or respect the culture's customs, don't socialize with the rest of the community, take more than they contribute (without an apparent excuse), commit much more crime than the existing community, and don't even speak the language...break community members' unspoken understanding, friendship, altruism, trust, and communication with their neighbor.

But remigration isn't a solution. First, because I can't imagine how to do it remotely ethically. Comparing anything right-wing to Nazism is an overused cliche, but it fits here: AFAIK Nazis initially planned to just deport the Jews somewhere (Madagascar), but ended up brutally overworking and exterminating them, because their end goal was to get rid of them and that was easiest. How would you get rid of immigrants if Somalia etc. won't accept them? What if it's too expensive? What if it's dangerous for them? What about women and children?

These are difficult questions not only morally, but the infrastructure (military tactics) to effectively implement remigration is dangerous for your own sake. It risks broadening persecution, creating a fascist state, an ugly monoculture...the exact failure it seeks to prevent.

So what to do? I don't oppose moderate immigration reform, like:

  • Some restrictions on immigration
    • More thorough vetting
    • Rejecting anyone that can't demonstrate a good reason for immigrating or contribution to the target country
    • Rejecting anyone that fails a "basic human decency and tolerance" test that specifically includes tolerating other religions
  • Sending refugees to specific countries and regions in countries that accept them, maybe in exchange for tax relief; so they're safe and with the tolerant liberals who voted for them, not tight-knit communities who voted against them
  • Deporting anyone who commits a serious crime, even native-born if they have loose connections to their native country and an overseas family
  • Less welfare for immigrants than citizens (still enough to survive with small extra, but less than citizens)
    • Also, less welfare and rights than legal immigrants. Refugees can apply for legal immigration by learning the language and culture
  • Segregated communities (which do and will form naturally), then policing their border. "But isn't that just creating nations?" Yes, it's creating states, but see bullet point 2

Honestly, I don't think these are enough to reverse the decay of culture and public resources, and they may seem like a waste of resources for unwanted immigrants, but I think too much immigration/remigration would be worse (for culture and public resources). A real solution must be broader than immigration. Fixing the other issues: making LLMs more diverse, further improving translation tools and incentivizing ethnic stores to include more cultural nuance, and increasing nationalism as a side-effect of addressing the elephant in the room: convincing most of the population to like their government (maybe by having it do something notable for the public and advertising it, and electing new parties with less out-of-touch politicians, even Örebro if they tone down remigration).

Arguably the above essay is another milquetoast thought experiment with the same conclusions everyone already knows: obviously government should not be so corrupt, etc. So another point of discussion is why Örebro decided to focus on this as their stand-out policy. Is it just marketing and they plan to implement something much more moderate (I realize I'm bad at marketing, but I'm skeptical this would work for a generally leftist party). Is it a radical idea to appeal to the working class? Is it only the media that's focusing on this policy, and Örebro themselves consider it a less important part of the agenda compared to the socialist policies? (Probably all of the above, especially the third.)

I do think we need some radical solution to fix societal decay, although it may emerge outside policy, like a technological breakthrough, or just younger generations replacing older ones and having a drastically different culture. I don't think it's in immigration. Maybe the Örebro party will get elected by arguing for remigration, but if they actually want to improve Sweden, I believe the bulk of their implementation must be in their other policies.

Rejecting anyone that fails a "basic human decency and tolerance" test that specifically includes tolerating other religions

This would mean excluding all practicing muslims.

I don't know how the West came to assume that 'tolerating other religions' is to be expected, nor even that it should be considered a good thing.

It's something Christians (and Jews) developed to be able to live alongside one another, but it was never meant to be applied to Islam. Let alone something like the Nahua religion. Every time I see one of those 'all religions welcome here' signs I wonder how they'd feel about someone cutting out their heart on the top of a ziggurat.

And re: Islam specifically, despite seeing many debates about it, no one ever seems to ask the peace-professing muslim apologist what the penalty is for apostasy.

I support rejecting muslims who are too strict that they don't accept other religions. Other muslims may adapt their religion for modern times, like how many Christians and Jews have.

Tolerating other religions is certainly important if you're immigrating to a country with them. If intolerant muslims want to stay in intolerant communities, that's fine with me (same with Christian and Jewish sects).

It's something Christians (and Jews) developed to be able to live alongside one another, but it was never meant to be applied to Islam.

Correction: idea of religious tolerance was something Protestants developed to be able to live alongside one another, but it was obviously never meant to be applied to papists. (Jewish question was at the time and place very little issue)

This is stupid.

It’s pretty dumb on the object level; I highly doubt that Orebro has a workable plan. Actually, I suspect they don’t even have a realistic model of their problem, but then, I don’t know the Swedish stats either.

It’s pointless on the political level, where repeating one party plank over and over again does not generally bring said plank about. The road to hell is paved with agitators certain their one weird trick would bring about the revolution clean energy a balanced budget ethnonationalism. Surely this time the people are crying out for someone to say the quiet part out loud!

And it’s embarrassing on a meta level, where boards like this will take any opportunity to root for a Great White Hope.

My own state of Texas has a recurring cast of separatists. In the 90s, it kind of centered around Civil War revanchism. More recently, they tried it in protest of the 2020 election. Running a fringe political movement is a way to feel important and connected. Maybe raise some funds while you’re at it. I’d be willing to bet Orebro is in this category: a vanity project picking some edgy positions to get attention. Whether or not it represents genuine believers, it is not a serious attempt to enact any policy.

Texas separatism is Not Thé Point of The Texas Independence Movement; thé point is being a central rallying point to keep different far right groups from openly opposing each other.

The road to hell is paved with agitators certain their one weird trick would bring about the revolution clean energy a balanced budget ethnonationalism.

Worked for El Salvador.

In the case of Sweden, it was literally regularly cited as an example of progressive utopia back in the 00's, until they became a meme after a different type of one weird trick.

I’m not sure it did. See section 3. If those stats are right, the murder rate peaked four years before Bukele got the presidency, and three more years before he started imprisoning everyone.

Also, I don’t get the impression his campaign was actually focused on one weird trick. Running a general law & order message isn’t that weird.

By the same token, there’s no one weird trick to Sweden’s policy. It’s not like someone ran on a single issue of opening the gates. Liberal policy plus world events equaled a ton of migrants. Integrate over a decade or two to get the current totals. Or is there some tipping point I missed?

I’m not sure it did. See section 3. If those stats are right, the murder rate peaked four years before Bukele got the presidency, and three more years before he started imprisoning everyone.

There are two problems with that:

  • The peak that the murder rate dropped from was absolute insanity. The "stable" level before it was still a deranged 3rd world level of murder.
  • The annual statistics obscure what actually happened. People look at the yearly rates, then check the year Bukele took office, and conclude that by the time he showed up El Salvador was already on a neat downward slope. What they don't check is the month he took office - it was June - so he had a full half of a year to implement his approach to law enforcement, and for it to bear fruit. The monthly statistics bear this out, there's a massive drop in homicides the very moment he's sworn in, and the whole reason it looks like 2019 is part of a download slope, is because of what happened during that year. Prior to Bukele, El Salvador was on track to stay at the ~50-ish / 100K homicide rate that was "natural" to it. There's another massive drop exactly when he did start imprisoning everyone.

Also, I don’t get the impression his campaign was actually focused on one weird trick. Running a general law & order message isn’t that weird.

I follow him on Twitter, dude literally reposts "fix everything easily switch" memes.

By the same token, there’s no one weird trick to Sweden’s policy. It’s not like someone ran on a single issue of opening the gates. Liberal policy plus world events equaled a ton of migrants.

"Liberal policy" is the "one weird trick". Look at a map. Tell me how Syrians end up in Sweden, but somehow skip Denmark or Poland without someone trying out a "one weird trick" (which was them literally inviting the Syrians over, along with Merkel and her "refugees welcome" bit).

I haven't followed the politics closely, but my impression is that Bukele was also a mayor of a major city and had pivoted to a hard anti-crime posture a few years before he got the presidency, so it's not like he or his policies were just showing in El Salvador completely fresh, either.

So there's a lack of granularity in that graph, it makes more sense with more detail.

Essentially a previous government had struck a deal with the big gangs to behave, and that caused the initial murder drop. The gangs decided to come back with more demands and the murder rate was going back up just before Bukele.

Bukele came in with a "fuck negotiations, lock them up" policy and the murder rate collapsed.

People should live in their own communities. I remember reading an article about a tradcath community, and presumably the article wanted to criticise and mock them, but I thought they had decent values and the world is better with them

Well yes, our impeccable aesthetics make it hard to be wholly condemnatory.

But remigration isn't a solution. First, because I can't imagine how to do it remotely ethically. Comparing anything right-wing to Nazism is an overused cliche, but it fits here: AFAIK Nazis initially planned to just deport the Jews somewhere (Madagascar), but ended up brutally overworking and exterminating them, because their end goal was to get rid of them and that was easiest. How would you get rid of immigrants if Somalia etc. won't accept them? What if it's too expensive? What if it's dangerous for them? What about women and children?

You not being able imagine deporting people without immediately genociding them like the Nazis is a very silly argument. First because it is credible to no one that you can't imagine it (did you try at all? try harder!), and second because all they would have to do is just not genocide people. Very easy, they're already doing that. And there is zero indication that they are going to stop doing that, they already deport people without murdering them. What evidence is there that they will start? None. Its ridiculous.

These are difficult questions not only morally, but the infrastructure (military tactics) to effectively implement remigration is dangerous for your own sake. It risks broadening persecution, creating a fascist state, an ugly monoculture...the exact failure it seeks to prevent.

You clearly just believe that remigration = fascism, by definition, that is the logic chain you have laid out. So just say that. Its honest.

Why would you assume this would involve military tactics? What evidence is there that remigrations are inherently dangerous, plenty of countries have done mass deportations without turning into genocidal states. Huge claims with zero evidence.

So another point of discussion is why Örebro decided to focus on this as their stand-out policy. Is it just marketing and they plan to implement something much more moderate (I realize I'm bad at marketing, but I'm skeptical this would work for a generally leftist party). Is it a radical idea to appeal to the working class? Is it only the media that's focusing on this policy, and Örebro themselves consider it a less important part of the agenda compared to the socialist policies? (Probably all of the above, especially the third.)

Is it really that hard to take them at their own word? Why do you not? Why should we not?

A real solution must be broader than immigration. Fixing the other issues: making LLMs more diverse,

This is genuinely the most retarded thing I have ever read on this website

plenty of countries have done mass deportations without turning into genocidal states

What's an example, meeting your criteria of (a) the target countries don't take the people in voluntary and (b) no military force is involved?

More specifically, how do you imagine this happening for Somalis in Sweden? Somalia doesn't even have a functioning government that deserves the name, let alone one that would willingly accept and provide the infrastructure to take in millions of highly reluctant coethnics that they often won't even have a language in common with. There's no obvious route that doesn't look like the Swedish military filling up a concentration camp, sending a fleet of prison ships to the Horn of Africa, conquering a beachhead and forced-marching boatloads of people onto it at gunpoint (probably also with a temporary holding camp/fortification at the target site, so the first 500k can't interfere with unloading the second 500k). Then you get all the problems with rounding up the people you want to send off at home, deciding what to do with the third-generation Somalis, half-Somalis and quarter-Somalis, Somalis being hidden by and protected by sympathetic Swedes, possible Somalis who swear they are Ethiopian, et cetera et cetera. You can't just slow-walk it either, because your flotilla that is parked off of Somalia is draining the budget more than the welfare payments did. Soon you find that between the ballooning military operation and the home front, you have to take a lot of inspiration from everyone's favourite continentals in the late 1930s.

I increasing believe personality traits differ amongst the races and it’s not just athleticism or IQ. You actually do kill a community by having diversity because every race finds the other ones annoying. White people are too loud for Asians. Blacks are too loud for whites. Everyone enjoys their neighborhood more when they just have their own people. The Tower of Babel was an underrated work of theology.

I’ve never had an actual bro that was East Asian. We have fundamentally different taste that makes that very hard. So even though many of them are the best immigrants they also tend to ruin the vibes. Nobody is going to a SEC school if they were 90% Asian. For all the hate Indians get a % of them can fully assimilate culturally. I’ve got plenty of Indian bro-friends.

Getting the political will for remigration is of course hard. Argentina found solutions to this a long time time ago and they a much less violent society than America. Sometimes you just need to do hard things.

Anti-migration is not a policy that is right or left wing. Bernie Sanders use to be anti-migration. It only became a partisan issue because everything has become a partisan issue in the US.

I’ve never had an actual bro that was East Asian.

My lived experience (heh) is that the East Asian bros somehow end up more-bro. Some kind of overfitting thing.

I’ve met plenty of Asians that were just kinda… normal. Granted they were all Vietnamese. But still. Likewise plenty of super white acting blacks, and liberals are basically white people acting like orientals.

orientals

What are you talking about? I can’t think of any interpretation of this word that remotely describes “liberals.” Is it just for negative associations?

The blue tribe adoption of typically asiatic fixations and quixosis.

Okay, there’s no way that’s a real word.

It is too a real word, I just invented it.

Dang. Doing your part to keep the English language alive and kicking.

It's not (except as a coinage by the eponymous douchebag music producer), but "quixotic" is, as is "quixotism"; the latter may be meant.

There's no all-encompassing definition of Confucianist Asians of which ardent nationalists will accept, so Oriental is a crude but acceptable exonym. At least, that's my guess. You try grouping Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and Vietnamese cultures with a single name.

I’ve come across the Vietnamese argument before. I don’t personally know any but they seem like in the Houston/Louisiana area extremely well assimilated. That’s also an environment with a lot of similarities to their homeland. Even sharing some French culture for centuries.

I’ve never had an actual bro that was East Asian

You have never meet an East Asian person that was basically just an Asian white guy? I find that almost hard to believe.

The problem with personal experiences is that a major part of what we get out of an interaction is what preconceived notions we went into the interaction with. If you have a contempt for East Asians and a personal belief that they are fundamentally alien from you and different, then you probably won't end up bros, no.

How would you get rid of immigrants if Somalia etc. won't accept them?

Send them anyways. Or depose the government of Australia and send them all there, as was traditional.

What if it's too expensive?

There's no way it's more expensive than keeping them.

What if it's dangerous for them?

As the saying goes, "remigration is the moderate solution."

not only morally

Why? What is the foundation of a secular morality that says Europe has infinite debts to the world?

If God is dead, then there is no morality in sacrificing yourself to save people that are only treating you as a paypig to be replaced.

making LLMs more diverse, further improving translation tools and incentivizing ethnic stores to include more cultural nuance

ah, starting to think someone's having a fun bit of trolling.

Honestly, sending immigrants to Australia (with its vast empty space and functioning government, so they can live safely but not interfere) and paying them seems like it could work. I’m not intentionally trolling, but there’s probably a serious caveat obvious to anyone who’s actually familiar with geopolitics (as opposed to tech); OTOH in the desert regions, I don’t see how they’d get food and shelter or what they’d do in exchange to not drain from the rest of society.

Australia's already got a pile of refugees from Sudan and Somalia that it's struggling badly to make anything productive of, and has turned off the refugee tap for them consequentially (though still allows family reunification visas so hasn't hit peak population). They'll get airdropped into shit suburbs of Australia's existing metropolises then enthusiastically take the government teat for as much as they can, like the already-present ones.

Australia doesn't want second-hand Somalians. In the event Somalia doesn't want second-hand Somalians either (and somehow can prevent it) Somaliland is right there angling for brownie points. Land flights of Somalians in Hargeisa while it still technically counts as repatriation, bribe Somaliland with an economic deal, and recognize the nation of Somaliland down the line. Pressure should build for Somalia to allow all the Somali refugees, cared for by the gracious and functional protection of Somaliland, to allow the repatriation of these individuals.

What is the reasoning for Somalia not wanting Somalians? I assume our Somalians are at a minimum somewhat filtered. They had to be smart enough to get the NGOs to fly them in. Is it just Somalia doing their own people a solid by refusing to let them come back?

My loose understanding of Somalia is there's a bunch of different ethnic/clan structures. A lot of the ones currently entrenched in the USA are from a ethnic subgroup that was dominant a couple decades ago but got overthrown, so the return issue gets complicated on both sides. Somalia doesn't want a bunch of relatively-rich, educated members of a clan that's not currently in vogue airdropped on the country. The US Somalians don't want to deal with the state of the country as-is.

This kinda thing complicates a lot of refugee population issues. My understanding of the Rohingya, for instance, is that they were essentially the Easternmost Bangladeshi population that expanded into the Westernmost part of Burma during the British control (since the British didn't meaningfully police immigration between the two). Once Burma became independent, they immediately did their best to kick the Rohingya out since they'd make up about 30% of the population and are distinctly good at breeding. Bangladesh refused to take them since they were a borderline failed state but the population is now kinda strung out between the two countries.

Also further complicated since my loose understanding is that the part of Myanmar that the Rohingya lived in historically swapped hands rather frequently between Muslim Bengali entities and Burmese entities. The Burmese were the last to hold it prior to the British annexation, but that was arguably due to the British breaking the Bengali entity first and the Burmese sweeping in on essentially undefended territory. Consequentially it's quite hard to allocate who actually has responsibility for the Rohingya population since there's distinct arguments that can be made for them being Bangladeshi, them being Burmese or even Rohingyastan

I don't know if Somalia does not want Somalians, but remigration generally agitates family who benefit from remittances sent to the homeland, the diaspora getting sent back, and nationalist or tribal offense to 'We don't want your kind.' All the same reasons Mexico's government has and will condemn mass deportation of its nationals working illegally in the US.

Also people forget that bailing to an affluent Western country is an expensive privilege that's generally only available to the upper echelons of society in the countries of origin. Cases like Ilhan Omar where she was daughter of a very important cog in the deposed military are extreme, but hardly unusual. Somalia doesn't want the deposed intelligentsia randomly dropped back on them, especially in a way that'd likely put them under an international microscope.

Having sufficient willpower, finances and clout to get through the various layers of bureaucracy, bribery and fleeing to get moving isn't easy. These people have sufficient clout in the homeland to get the narratives they want pushed.

For Mexico that changed sometime post 1980. I think it was post WW2 Mexico wanted remigration because they wanted the labor to industrialize.

But yes I can agree remittance etc is a strong argument for a country to refuse remigration.

Australia

Point of order - Australia is less habitable than it appears, the population heat map looks the way it does for a reason, same with Canada.

Now ingenuity can make it work but the empty space is unused for a reason.

Now ingenuity can make it work but the empty space is unused for a reason.

"Make this place liveable, and you can stay" doesn't sound like bad criterion for a residence permit.

That’s a terrible criterion.

It works if there are spots you want occupied but they’re hard to find or reach. When travel involved a wagon train that described a lot of land. Today, it’s roughly none. The arable land is owned and farmed. The adequate pasture is owned and ranched. The mineral deposits are owned and mined.

Neoliberals would hate this criterion because it doesn’t get them cheap labor. Social conservatives because you’re actively encouraging foreign enclaves. Ethnonationalists because you’re benefiting a foreigner and not a native. Bleeding-heart liberals because you’ll generate lots of corpses. Libertarians…they might be up for it, actually, but I’m not sure they actually exist in the wild.

Airdropping migrants into the outback, Fortnite style, buys you nothing.

Airdropping migrants into the outback, Fortnite style, buys you nothing.

Anakin_glaring_back_at_Padme.png

The whole point is it gets you fewer immigrants at worst, and people who cracked terraforming at best.

The Dutch cracked terraforming centuries ago, and if there was a market to support it, it would not be a lost art.

But remigration isn't a solution. First, because I can't imagine how to do it remotely ethically. Comparing anything right-wing to Nazism is an overused cliche, but it fits here: AFAIK Nazis initially planned to just deport the Jews somewhere (Madagascar), but ended up brutally overworking and exterminating them, because their end goal was to get rid of them and that was easiest. How would you get rid of immigrants if Somalia etc. won't accept them? What if it's too expensive? What if it's dangerous for them? What about women and children?

Fairly easy. You do naval blockade on Somalia until they accept them. Their welfare is none of our concern. You arrest Somali politicians. If needed military strikes. You change the constitution that only Swedes have human rights in Sweden. You go with the least amount of cruelty to achieve your goal, but you shouldn't let the cruelty itself distract you.

Even putting aside that not everyone is the US with a ton of materiel sitting around*, why would you do this? This risks destroying already fragile states, and then there's nobody to negotiate with. There are ways to pressure nations like Somalia - no aid, cutting off remittances - that don't rise to this level.

And, of course, if you are cutting out human rights law (the real problem) there's nothing stopping you from dumping them in whatever third country will have them (e.g. Rwanda) and then turning a blind eye to how they handle them (most likely drive them back home with "incentives").

* Remember Libya? And those were countries that maintained some military capacity.

I would change how deportations works then. It is not a country's job to care where people go or aid them. You order them out. If they stay after the deadline you remove protection of the law from them. Compliance is their problem, not yours.

Fairly easy. You do naval blockade on Somalia until they accept them. Their welfare is none of our concern. You arrest Somali politicians. If needed military strikes. You change the constitution that only Swedes have human rights in Sweden. You go with the least amount of cruelty to achieve your goal, but you shouldn't let the cruelty itself distract you.

Sweden is going to have to rather decidedly alter its armed forces if this is the plan. Time to start building nuclear-powered supercarriers.

  • Step 1: conscript Somalians
  • Step 2: invade Somalia with your conscripts

Problem solved.

So they get drone industry too. Everyone wins. With modern warfare humans are optional.

and increasing nationalism as a side-effect of addressing the elephant in the room: convincing most of the population to like their government (maybe by having it do something notable for the public and advertising it, and electing new parties with less out-of-touch politicians, even Örebro if they tone down remigration).

This runs into problems, because one of the things the public wants from its government is to be against immigration, which many governments can't be.

It also has deeper challenges because the government of European countries seem to have people who believe - with some justice - that nationalism is a reactionary force that can organize people against immigration and the new multicultural state. This is on top of their general tendency to see it as a bit low class and cringe.

This is why Starmer's attempts to seize patriotism rang a bit hollow; his supporters would be the ones to write worried op-eds about the spread of English flags in public. Before him, I don't think Sunak cared at all either way, that's why it didn't occur to him that missing the anniversary of D-Day would be an issue.

I do think we need some radical solution to fix societal decay, although it may emerge outside policy, like a technological breakthrough, or just younger generations replacing older ones and having a drastically different culture

Why would younger generations replacing new ones not accelerate the cultural decay? Older people can maintain a good status quo as well as a bad one.

Nationalism and immigration don’t need to conflict: nationalism and large-scale immigration can’t work except with a large suppressed underclass, but a small ratio of immigrants can be patriotic (towards their host) and the host culture’s identity and cohesion can remain.

A large ratio of the population supports at least some immigration (the Swiss referendum to cap the population failed). My understanding is that most people are unhappy because their economy is failing, institutions are overwhelmed, culture is broken…all problems worsened and maybe primarily caused by immigration, but I doubt extreme remigration will solve them. Reducing corruption, improving police enforcement, and moderate immigration reform would at least improve them.

On the other side, politicians who believe nationalism is intrinsically bad (or anti-immigrant) are wrong and should be voted out. Starmer’s image is ruined; unfortunately for him, the best way for a leftist party to get nationalist support is to publicly disavow him and other Labor politicians, or at least publicly disavow his failed policies.

National identity and imports must be balanced for culture: too much national identity creates a waning culture of nostalgia, too much imports creates an incoherent diluted culture, only a good amount of both creates a culture that improves over time.

Why would younger generations replacing new ones not accelerate the cultural decay? Older people can maintain a good status quo as well as a bad one.

Because the decay may be caused by most people having the opinions of zoomers and millennials, but living under gen X and boomer status quo, thus feeling oppressed.

A large ratio of the population supports at least some immigration (the Swiss referendum to cap the population failed).

To clarify, that referendum failed because it was stupid. Capping the population directly requires dissolving all ~20 bilateral agreements with the EU in the near future, which has been voted on several times before and which is (for prudent economic reasons) extremely unpopular with the constituency. It would be more catastrophic than Brexit, economically.

And the EU has repeatedly been very clear on the matter: if Switzerland wants to keep its current level of economic integration into the EU, freedom of movement is not optional. All bilateral agreements will be dissolved if freedom of movement goes.

So, the referendum was a pointless populist gesture. The votes it got (45%) was from people who want to cancel all the ties to the EU anyway, and people who didn't care enough to understand this simple point.

Is this why the French hated it, despite the Germans voting for it?

No, that's the normal pattern. The German speaking region always votes a few points more right wing than the rest of the country, pretty much no matter the question.

And the EU has repeatedly been very clear on the matter: if Switzerland wants to keep its current level of economic integration into the EU, freedom of movement is not optional. All bilateral agreements will be dissolved if freedom of movement goes.

I'm not following. Why couldn't they leave the borders open for EU citizens, and close them for anyone else? Or even if absolute freedom of movement is non-negotiable, there's all sorts of stuff you can control, like work permits, residence permits, and welfare.

Because that's not what they voted about. They voted about putting a hard limit on their population. And realistically, limiting immigration from non-EU countries wouldn't have bought them much time - that's consistently less than a quarter of new immigrants. But again, they didn't vote about that. They could have, but decided to vote on something else.

So is it freedom of movement that's demanded, or deeper labour market integration? IIRC, even between EU countries, freedom of movement does not imply you get to stay anywhere you want long term, unconditionally.

So is it freedom of movement that's demanded, or deeper labour market integration?

It's the latter, and more. Automatic work permit, full access to the education system at every level, full access to the health care system, ect.

No limits on where you move, live, study, work, retire.

Nationalism and immigration don’t need to conflict: nationalism and large-scale immigration can’t work except with a large suppressed underclass, but a small ratio of immigrants can be patriotic (towards their host) and the host culture’s identity and cohesion can remain.

I agree, but it's unlikely to be much relevant. Large scale immigration is going to be the policy, because industrialized populations stopped having kids. This is one reason the ruling class feel they cannot stop. There is not going to be any sort of post-Ellis Island pause-and-assimilate because the demographic conditions are just going to get worse and worse.

Similarly, the demands of the asylum system make large scale immigration the most likely outcome, and immigration from adversely selected migrants at that.

A large ratio of the population supports at least some immigration

I'll grant it. But A strong plurality want significantly less immigration and you should also factor in the fact that most people aren't political junkies and don't actually know how many migrants are being let in. IIRC, in Harper's time Canadians consistently underestimated it and being informed, dropped their support for immigration. When Trudeau made it undeniable it nearly destroyed the Liberals.

Britain has consistently voted for right wing parties and causes, people simply haven't gotten what they wanted.

I'm sure plenty of people would like some moderate solution that resolved the issue without maximal unpleasantness, but that's not what happens. Now they're trending more and more to the extremes to resolve it.

My understanding is that most people are unhappy because their economy is failing, institutions are overwhelmed, culture is broken…all problems worsened and maybe primarily caused by immigration, but I doubt extreme remigration will solve them. Reducing corruption, improving police enforcement, and moderate immigration reform would at least improve them.

You're just asserting this though. It's not always about something else, sometimes people just don't want migrants. Now, Westerners know that it's taboo to say this but it's not actually odd. Outside of the West nations like Japan take far fewer migrants than the Bryan Caplans of the world insist would be good for them. South Africans complain about Nigerian migrants. Britons complained about Polish migrants who I bet they'd now take gladly. People also just don't like migration and the sense that their culture is slipping away. That's a part of the equation that can't be written off to talk about other things. The left-wing view that all problems that come from tribes interacting are just atavistic interpretations of an underlying material issue is an ideological precept, not a fact.

This is precisely why the pro-migrant establishment is not trusted by nationalists: a nationalist cannot say "I just want my country to stay similar to its past and to continue to primarily represent my group", they will be told what other, more legitimate reasons they can have to complain.

But even on the purely material plane there are issues that would be solved by just strangling the importation or removing certain groups. It is a matter of fact that many immigrant groups never pay for themselves due to disproportionate welfare usage.. Removing them would solve this fiscal problem, preventing more of them would ameliorate it. Many immigrant groups have a higher rate of crime. Removing them would resolve this problem.

It's also a bit strange to act as if You Can Just Do Things, when immigration changes the very nature of the government. Is it possible that the reason one cannot fix these issues is that immigrant voting blocs can veto things they don't like? Is it possible the UK police behaves in what seems like absurd ways because the existence of ethnic blocs (and the risk of being considered racist towards them - which would be of lower salience in a more homogeneous country) make the "two-tier" behavior the path of least resistance?

If immigrants are changing the level of resistance you would face doing a thing it doesn't make sense to say that you can just improve things anyway while getting more immigration. They've manifestly failed to do that, and the more migration you have the harder it is.

On the other side, politicians who believe nationalism is intrinsically bad (or anti-immigrant) are wrong and should be voted out.

I mean, this is just a case-in-point of the problem: immigrants vote too, and people are able to understand that white guilt politicians are better for their interests. Obviously, for now, you can vote the Starmers out. Surely at some point that stops being viable? If so, how does that factor into your proposed solution of migration-but-more-moderate?

National identity and imports must be balanced for culture: too much national identity creates a waning culture of nostalgia, too much imports creates an incoherent diluted culture, only a good amount of both creates a culture that improves over time.

You're going to have to give me some example of the dangers of this supposed nostalgia, and maybe show why those dangers are worse than losing any sense of shared destiny/creating mutual ethnic strife and so on that we already see.

People who intrinsically dislike immigrants: I don’t appeal to, but I’m sure they’re the minority, even prominent anti-immigrant politicians have immigrant friends/family (e.g. the AfD leader’s Sri Lankan wife).

People who don’t want a majority of immigrants in their community: I think that’s fair, and I’d support an immigration policy that caps number of immigrants at some ratio of the population (even refugees, because too many will overwhelm the system and there are other safe countries).

Although as you mention, small-scale immigration may not happen, in that case I doubt remigration would either.

You're going to have to give me some example of the dangers of this supposed nostalgia, and maybe show why those dangers are worse than losing any sense of shared destiny/creating mutual ethnic strife and so on that we already see

A culture can survive without foreign imports, as this is what the “culture” of the entire planet does.

But:

  • It can’t compete with cultures that take the best advancements from others

  • It can’t focus too much on nostalgia. Some is OK, but it must experiment and evolve new characteristics. Otherwise it’s the nation equivalent of “peaked in high school”, guaranteed to become incompatible with the rest of the changing world

People who intrinsically dislike immigrants

They don't have to intrinsically dislike immigrants. They can just dislike mass migration. Or mass migration from certain groups. "Immigrants" flattens things too much. Many nations took Ukrainian refugees with much less noise than would come from taking Somali refugees. I assume there're reasons for this.

even prominent anti-immigrant politicians have immigrant friends/family (e.g. the AfD leader’s Sri Lankan wife).

I mean, case in point.

Although as you mention, small-scale immigration may not happen, in that case I doubt remigration would either.

Fair. I don't think so either. But it's not that I don't think, if the government was magically replaced by Stephen Millers, it wouldn't work.

But:

  • It can’t compete with cultures that take the best advancements from others
  • It can’t focus too much on nostalgia. Some is OK, but it must experiment and evolve new characteristics. Otherwise it’s the nation equivalent of “peaked in high school”, guaranteed to become incompatible with the rest of the changing world

How would you rate the East Asian countries like Japan on these criteria?

Japan took inspiration from other cultures: manga and anime are directly inspired by Western comics and cartoons.

Yes, I know. That's the point: you don't actually need immigration to compete economically or have a vibrant culture. So I'm not sure the relevance. Seems like a false dilemma. You can learn how to make a croissant without importing Paris.

you don't actually need immigration to compete economically or have a vibrant culture

That's true.

There's still some relevance: if you import from other cultures, it's less likely you oppose immigration from them (at least the experts of whatever you imported). But I admit it's possible.

Is it possible the UK police behaves in what seems like absurd ways because the existence of ethnic blocs (and the risk of being considered racist towards them - which would be of lower salience in a more homogeneous country) make the "two-tier" behavior the path of least resistance?

More the latter than the first. Muslims can't be more than about 10% of the UK's population, so they don't have the numbers to politically veto or violently resist a serious attempt by the UK authorities to enforce order on them. That this hasn't happened is because the native Brits in charge of the country are to a large degree ideologically committed to appeasing them.

But remigration isn't a solution. First, because I can't imagine how to do it remotely ethically.

Consider that perhaps your ethics need to adapt, or die. A growing part of the population doesn't share them to begin with, and your society is failing at curbing the influx, and failing at assimilating the newcomers into your system of ethics. You know the line - If the rule has brought you to this, then what good was the rule? Dogged adherence to ethics that are proving less practicable and cost-efficient by the day, even while hostile actors have figured out how to exploit them, is to nobody's benefit. The natives will lose their country, the newcomers will no longer have a highly ethical society to exploit, and future people looking back will shrug and say "must have been a nice place, for a while, but then they lost the will to take charge of their fate and just let the whole thing careen into a wall". Paralysis by ethics is not some triumph of doing the right thing; it's proving that there can be entirely too much of a thing that was good in moderation, and then it will all go into history's dustbin and be forgotten as anything other than a negative example to steer clear of.

The conclusion drawn from it will not be "you have to be nice, even when it's difficult, and if it proves too difficult, then dammit, you just have to figure something out to make it work anyways". It will be "if you're a nice loser, then you're just a loser, and nothing in this world will be truly yours".

I ramble. I rant. I despair at this fixation on ethics as an overriding necessity. Is Western Civilization really so despicable that we must destroy it rather than adjust our ethics? Are our ethics really so supremely perfect, so outright sacred, that they brook no improvement? Remigration is only one topic of several where this phenomenon comes to the fore, but it is arguably the most salient.

In wanting to be the polar opposite of the nazis, we are repeating their chiefest mistake - starting from an incorrect conclusion, we do with great determination what is wrong, to our detriment and doom.

'Despicable' might be too strong a word. 'Fatally infected by slave morality and pathological altruism' maybe?

I'm fairly sure that this is not how the humanitarian-ethics crowd sees it.

Ethics need to be changed but I’m arguing for moderation. I won’t really argue where the line is drawn, except that it shouldn’t be drawn at “remigration” or deporting immigrants who clearly seem to be contributing and assimilating.

You’re right that the polar opposite of Nazis are also bad, which is why “Nazis also did X” is a fallacy: Nazis made the trains run on time, and imprisoned dangerous criminals, both ethical. But when they imprisoned innocent Jews and were unnecessarily cruel it was unethical.

If you are nice to everyone you will be taken advantage of, but if you are mean to everyone you will be shunned. In an apocalypse, if you spare someone, they may hunt you later or have some skill that becomes vital later. There’s no simple answer.

Remigration isn't a solution. First, because I can't imagine how to do it remotely ethically.

Something sooner or later will snap, and whatever happens will not be "ethical." Either the parasites will successfully consume the host, at which point there will be no more host to feast on so they'll die, or the host immune response will trigger and maybe the host can burn them off before it dies (much of the time when the body dies "from disease", it's actually dying from being unable to endure the force of its own immune response!)

Regardless, I'd say the prognosis is not good.

as well as those who work "made-up services" that the party deems serve no societal function, such as bureaucrats, consultants, public sector communications specialists, strategists and HR-specialists.

Will these also be deported?

First, actual bullshit jobs must be consolidated and eliminated.

Then, they’ll either get useful jobs or (if immigrants) low welfare. They may voluntarily deport.

With AI and robotics, there’s a chance most people will be unemployable. Then presumably the nation has much more resources, so I’d propose taking in more refugees, though not too many that it would destroy culture or overwhelm public services, and prioritizing those that assimilate (or can still contribute).

Segregated communities (which do and will form naturally), then policing their border.

Has the formation of ghettos ever turned out well? Usually, you'd want to do the opposite. Force integration, encourage assimilation. Teach the language, the culture, make attending mandatory. Even if they re-migrate (voluntary or not) later, you almost certainly will get better social outcomes for the host population that way - and outcomes for people not caged in ghettos is certainly better. Most famously, Singapore was rather successful in integrating their (poorer, less educated, majority Muslim) Malay minority into society by doing just that - they went as far as requiring single appartment buildings to mirror the ethical make-up of Singapore itself. No ghettos, by any means necessary.

In the end, it sounds like you want to minimize welfare spending, so you can't keep up ghetto containment very well anyway since everybody needs to get to work.

My impression is that most able-bodied refugees will voluntarily take low-paying jobs.

That's not very leftist of you. Doing that will depress working class power, making your native low-skilled population poorer, which is exactly the reason most right-wing governments absolutely suck at limiting immigration effectively.

Has the formation of ghettos ever turned out well?

Yes, often. The US is full of former ghettos where integration eventually happened; the ghetto provided a place those who could not integrate could survive (but at a disadvantage) while their children and grandchildren integrated.

I mean, you can't really force it. You would have to break up their communities by force and reeducate them, in a "kill the Indian and save the man" kind of way. Perhaps it is not physically impossible, but it would certainly require the kind of cruelty you are trying to avoid here. Probably more cruelty than remigration (even deporting them all) would entail. Arabs are not Malays. They need to, fundamentally, stop being Arabs if they are to be individual members of Western societies.

The Middle East is the area of the world that has been multicultural for the longest time, it being the crossroads of continents. And what kind of culture survives such churn while keeping itself intact? One that is extremely clannish, inward-looking, and outwardly hostile to the point that individual members can't defect because everyone else hates them and will reject them. There are multiple cultures in the Middle East but they're all like that and even the Israelis, who used to be relatively European in their outlook, are in the process of becoming exactly this.

The other alternative, besides this and remigration, is to accept that multiculturalism is here to stay and make it official by organizing something like the Ottoman millet system, which seems to be what Brainwavez was getting at. Keep everyone apart and make interethnic interactions into explicitly ethnic interactions, so that the entire community can be held accountable for the actions of the members, so that in turn communities will police their own rather than risk collective retaliation. In other words, prison rules. And this would mean for Europeans to adopt this Middle-Eastern "multicultural" mindset.

But the fiction that we're all individuals before the law, part of the same society, cannot keep standing forever when it is so clearly not the case anymore.

But the Middle East is awful! The whole point of remigration is that you don't have adopt the Middle-Eastern mindset and can readopt the wholesome, high productivity Lockean one.

The other alternative, besides this and remigration, is to accept that multiculturalism is here to stay and make it official by organizing something like the Ottoman millet system, which seems to be what Brainwavez was getting at. Keep everyone apart and make interethnic interactions into explicitly ethnic interactions, so that the entire community can be held accountable for the actions of the members, so that in turn communities will police their own rather than risk collective retaliation. In other words, prison rules. And this would mean for Europeans to adopt this Middle-Eastern "multicultural" mindset.

Retvrn to Rum

I mean, you can't really force it. You would have to break up their communities by force and reeducate them, in a "kill the Indian and save the man" kind of way. Perhaps it is not physically impossible, but it would certainly require the kind of cruelty you are trying to avoid here.

I think it could be done way less cruel. Start with the ghettos - most immigrants live in rentals, and you can require apartment buildings and/or street blocks to be inhabited (in the case of Sweden) by exactly 80% natives, 7% Arabs, 2% Finns, 1% Poles, ect - by law. A bit draconian for the land lord, who now needs to choose from a far smaller pool of applicants, but not exactly horrible. And if you remove the ghettos, being "clannish, inward-looking, and outwardly hostile" becomes a lot harder.

The education could be a requirement for the work permit or welfare payments. Target women and children specifically. In the end I'm an optimist, I think the western value system itself is so superior, it will propagate itself eventually when/if enough friction towards active resistance is introduced. Get woman and children out of the house early and consistently, enforce language.

Singapore is a small city-state where everyone is living in each other's laps already, and to add to that most of its housing is government-built. ~80% of people live in public housing, which gives the government a lot of control over housing allocation without having to force any private landlord to do anything. Someone who moves from one end of Singapore to the other can still easily see his friends, go to his job, etc. This is also already an officially racialized society with everyone's ethnicity being written on their ID cards.

European countries are much bigger and lack all of these things. There's no official ethnic registration, at best there's the "migration background" thing that only goes back one generation. It would have to be established. Is it time to riot yet?

In the Netherlands, only about a quarter of people live in public housing. Over two thirds own their house. The remainder live in private rentals. You would have to nationalize the housing stock, or regulate housing sales to the point of de facto nationalizing the housing stock. Is it time to riot yet?

Also in the Netherlands, the big cities are majority-minority already whereas much of the countryside has few immigrants, and when they do, it's Poles. Equalizing the population would mean making people move far away from their jobs and families. They're not going to like that. Is it time to riot yet? Etc.

This solution has been tried and failed in the US. We did school bussing. And affirmative action. And it failed to solve Americans original sin. We still have a large not fully assimilated ADOS class.

ADOS is a special case and probably not assimilable for the reasons Jefferson pointed out, bolstered by HBD reasons. They will never forgive the original sin as long as they are visibly less successful than whites, and they will always be visible less successful than whites if they aren't receiving continuous bolstering to an extent greater than ever practiced -- and any such bolstering depends on the acceptance by both groups of the relevance of the sin.

You may be right that assimilation is better. I think it is whenever possible. So the ghettos are only for those who refuse or can’t do the bare minimum assimilation (which doesn’t require abandoning their culture, just adherence to laws and manners), and (probably would naturally end up) in worse conditions. Anyone who can learn to do the bare minimum should be encouraged to leave, and their children should be exposed to both inside and outside education and experience, then can choose for themselves when they reach adulthood.

I don’t support keeping jobs scarce to empower the working class, like I support self-checkout and robotics. Because I believe increased efficiency (if not automation) is inevitable in the long run. More importantly, in my original comment I explained that the alternative to at least some refugees is fascist infrastructure (unless there’s another effective way to prevent desperate immigrants supported by a sizable fraction of the population; I’d like to hear any proposals), which would probably be worse for the working class than whatever we have now.

I want the working class to have better conditions, but my proposal is for them to leave owners who’d exploit them: building and promoting cooperatives, voting for antitrust and pro-small-business regulations, building connections (with immigrants and upper classes), in the meantime living off welfare or getting better jobs themselves. I support the extra inefficiency of small businesses because it has advantages (familiarity, variety, less enshittification), and I think preventing monopolies is more feasible (even if not generally feasible) than preventing efficiency gains; alternatively, near-monopolies are fine if they avoid enshittification, citizens aren’t being overworked or starving (maybe there’s UBI), and there are emergency alternatives (hence near-monopolies).

Whoa. Nice to see leftists divest themselves of their ideological cruft and try for new direction. I'm curious to see where this goes, and hope you will give us updates in the future.

Nice to see leftists divest themselves of their ideological cruft and try for new direction

Is it?

The Chomsky line is that the point of propaganda is not to tell you what to think, it's to determine the contours of the debate.

"You can't do remigration but we can do other various policy wonk things like 'better vetting'" is more or less the left-wing position already. I don't think remigration is going to happen, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't actually solve it.

"You can't do X Direct Thing, you must solve the Deeper Issue" is already the default left-wing response to anything. It's the response to the European heatwave: "Far from attacking the root causes of global-warming, activists said, recourse to la clim was merely attenuating the effects of global-warming."

It's the response to crime: you can't just arrest people, we have to look at the root causes etc.

It's the go-to.

Yeah, I also was quite surprised when I found out that one of my most stridently left-wing friend, a palestine supporter no less, is in favor of work camps for asylum seekers. His logic is simple: War is horrible. ANYTHING is better than war. However, we can't even afford our current asylum scheme due to excessive burden from welfare. Turning away asylum seekers is in his opinion horribly unethical no matter what, and any kind of basic sanity check has an intolerably high false positive rate (for example, anything that requires an ID punishes people who may have lost them while fleeing, while ironically being easier to produce for pure economic immigrants who can organize their move as they want). So the conclusion is straightforward, better to let them live in shitty conditions and force them to work than abandoning them.

It's pretty internally consistent, and not entirely unreasonable imo. As the economy and the social situation in Europe gets worse, I think we will see an increase in this style of tough-minded leftist thought. I don't really trust them to not devolve fully into communist-style totalitarianism, though, so it's not something I'm looking forward to.

What productive work can be given to a camp in a Western country at this point, though? Most of the menial stuff left is either customer service or care work for the elderly/children, neither of which scale particularly well in that format.

Imagine the public reaction to a bunch of Muslim maybe-terrorist maybe-pedophile 19 year old boys running a daycare as the condition of asylum.

I think cruel "work camps" will also not be most efficient: refugees will do the bare minimum, and learn to hate your country, which may haunt it later even if they're deported once their home country becomes stable (which may never happen anyways).

My impression is that most able-bodied refugees will voluntarily take low-paying jobs. So I'd propose something more modest: ensure welfare is below unskilled labor, allow refugees to accept unskilled labor (AFAIK some countries don't do this and give the refugees welfare), reduce under-the-table jobs by reducing taxes and regulations for over-the-table ones. And most importantly (which may seem out-there, but I think should be obviously part of any program imposed on any group), ask refugees what they want and think would be a good system; obviously if they say "pay us for doing nothing" don't do that, but even that is useful as an indication they're not assimilating.

ask refugees what they want and think would be a good system

lol. The sheep asked the wolf what he wanted for dinner.

I think cruel "work camps" will also not be most efficient: refugees will do the bare minimum, and learn to hate your country, which may haunt it later even if they're deported once their home country becomes stable (which may never happen anyways).

Does it actually matter? What vengeance will a stable Syria take?

This reminds of all of the "soft power" talk: there's never really a concrete explanation of the downside. It's one thing if we're talking about people from Hong Kong or China but most refugees don't come from countries whose opinion matters that much, quite frankly.

The Arabs use a bunch of us Third Worlders as human machinery and nothing has ever come of it (speaking from direct experience: their long history as slavers counts for fucking nothing amongst Africans who watch American slavery movies*). China is fucking over the Uighurs and they were defended by Saudi Arabia. Japan takes few migrants and yet everyone loves Akira Toriyama.

The reason the West has to care what people think is because of immigration in the first place. It doesn't matter if Haitians hate the US for deporting their coethnics back home; it is precisely because a bunch of immigrants - and their allies - can vote that it's even a problem in the first place.

If it were true that it would haunt nations, America's flirtation with racist and anti-immigrant leaders like Trump would make a bunch of people go home. It's a sort of guilt round robin where the sort of people prone to guilt (left-wingers) coach the people who will guilt them into folding and then hold that up to their fellow citizens as a justification to do what they wanted to do anyway. The important thing is not the refugees, it's the citizens.

* If I hear about Bilal one more time...

What vengeance will a stable Syria take?

You may be right. But look at Palestine: the nation itself seems to barely affect Israel, but it has garnered support which may shift politics in larger nations.

Well, the worst drop in Israel's approval happened following an attack that was serious so I wouldn't say "barely". But, in any case, that's because Israel has the misfortune of being plopped right amongst the very nations Palestinians can inflame the most and depends on foreign support to survive there. And the foreign support it depends upon is now suspect because of ,in part, Muslim migration into many of those European countries.

The situation is different for America and even for a hypothetical low-migration Europe. There would still be important levers - like the oil embargoes of the past - but we can question if we'd see the same impact.

I don't perfectly remember the discussion since it was just some talking while simultaneously looking after our respective kids, but I think his intention was something like this: Asylum seekers get direct access to the job market from day one and some modest welfare. As time passes and they don't find work by themselves, they get reduced welfare and increasingly pushed into shitty jobs with shitty pay. Some % will still not start working and at some point they get shuffled into obligatory state organized work with minimal welfare. I told him this is basically work camps, he bit the bullet and said yes, he would support work camps if he gets unlimited asylum rights in return. And then elaborated roughly as I explained, that work camps are better than turning away asylum seekers at the border etc.

The main problem with letting asylum seekers immigrate is that the system is being gamed and most of them are not really asylum seekers. I'm not sure there would even be enough of them to be an issue if it was limited to genuine asylum seekers, so figuring out how to handle asylum seekers misses the point.

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