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Notes -
How about some culture war? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/30/how-gang-violence-took-hold-of-sweden-in-five-charts
While I imagine the Guardian is persona non grata around here, this seems to me to be pretty stunning. Sweden, long the darling of the left, is now “… in the grip of a rise in gang violence and shootings that has taken citizens and leaders by surprise. In the words of the prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, this year: “Sweden has never before seen anything like this. No other country in Europe is seeing anything like this.””
I’m leery of rephrasing the article excessively, but it does note that gun crime and narcotics have been rising since 2013, and that the gun murder rate in the capital of Stockholm is now 30 times that of London.
The fairly standard claim (this is the Guardian, after all) is that this has to do with poverty, not migration.
So… Is the solution, now that mass migration has been accomplished, to make sure that they have just as much money as the original Swedes? Given the Swedish welfare state was already extremely generous, which drove all the immigration, is that feasible?
Americans really don’t appreciate how good we have it in terms of our pool of immigrants. Immigrants in America are awesome. Low crime, hard workers, values that mesh well with the native population. Even our “bad” immigrants commit crimes at the same rate as native whites and are much better behaved after adjusting for income.
https://siepr.stanford.edu/news/mythical-tie-between-immigration-and-crime
Some thoughts:
There are probably many factors specific to the US (and probably Canada too) that make this true, but the big ones are probably (a) geography and (b) extremely positive selection caused by various policies and reputation.
It’s hard to understand how badly informed most Americans are about our immigrants. Besides the data linked above my anecdotal interactions with blue collar Hispanic immigrants is unbelievably positive. My experience with white collar immigrants is that they’re just like me but with an accent. The most anti immigrant people seem to have had no interactions with immigrants as far as I can tell.
Besides the obvious “they’re taking our jobs” economic fallacy (immigration creates more demand for labor too), the whole “elites don’t mind immigration because immigrants don’t compete with them economically” is prima facie absurd. Have you seen the composition of google’s workforce? Other elite institutions?
US immigration is freaking awesome but Europeans should be careful about generalizing because everything in Europe seems set up to attract a much much worse pool of immigrants, from an ultra generous welfare state (real or imagined) to geographical proximity to regions with lot of emigrating bad hombres.
I am anti-immigrant and have had ample interactions with them. They are not just like you and me. If they were, why do they insist on speaking their native language in public? Why do I have to press 1 for English? Why do they wear their old culture's clothing? Why do they congregate in communities with their own instead of assimilating?
I can't imagine immigrating to another country and refusing to speak their language and wear their clothing. I'd be overcome with embarrassment and shame at such a flagrant display of disrespect and hostility to the country that was gracious enough to accept me in.
There are certainly many immigrants that assimilate, but it doesn't take many defectors to change the character of a community.
I could not care less about what languages somebody else chooses to speak, their sense of fashion, and the geographic origin of who they like hanging out with. That's their personal business. Why be so offended and take it as a personal insult when others are not a mirror of your manner of speaking, fashion sense, and social life? Why is it an act of hostility? Attempting to force somebody else to speak, dress, etc the same as you sounds like much more of hostile action than just coexistence with you doing you and them doing them.
Because they're coming to a new country and signaling that they don't intend to integrate. They intend to change the culture to conform to their way of doing things. How do you not see that as profoundly disrespectful and hostile? It'd be like if I invited you into my home and you recognized that I do things certain ways - no shoes indoors, toilet seats stay lowered, lights stay off when not in use - and you disregard it and do what the fuck you want. Except, unlike in the analogy, I can't kick you out once you got here.
No wonder you're confused about why some people are anti-immigrant.
If America had a high-standards culture like Japan I would see it as utterly degenerate for immigrants to do anything but try to uphold it, but we're talking about the West, here, which has always held to barbaric if practical customs.
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