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How quickly your culture can absorb new people. If you've got a hundred people who are in culture a, and you integrate 100 people from culture b. Now culture a is 50/50. And it's hard for culture a to maintain its traditional positioning.
If you want to maintain a culture, a people, a language, you need to gate how many people enter the population at any time. So that it can be absorbed.
You similar problems with militaries, how quickly they can ramp up new recruits will still maintaining their previous cadre culture.
America is a nation of immigrants so I don't really understand this argument. Cultures don't really integrate that way, plus assimilation is a generational thing.
The US really is a special case even within just America and really cannot be compared to today's refugee hotspots like Europe at all. For starters, US culture is very young and mostly made up of invaders and migrants. There is very little native culture still there as it has been assimilated for hundreds of years, mostly by Europeans. On top of that, there have been heavy crackdowns on migrant cultures as well, making it anything but the organically grown culture it often claims to be. And as such I think it is a bad example of how unchecked mass migration can work because it didn't work for the natives and it didn't happen for the modern US. It does show that strong migration can lead to great success, though it's still far less densely populated than Europe even now so a direct comparison is still difficult.
The economic benefits of immigration also applies to European countries, despite the racist sentiments many Europeans have towards immigrants. Additionally, the West's destabilization of the Global South, from war and climate change, has caused the increase in people seeking asylum and immigration.
The crackdowns on migrants and the deliberate two-tier immigration system is certainly a problem, and is deliberate in order to coerce illegal immigrants into very low paying jobs with no workers rights under the threat of deportation.
Immigration was not the cause of the genocide of the Native Americans, that was due to Settler Colonialism and Dehumanization. That is not like today. Immigrants are not settler colonialist like the early Americans. Additionally, it is the US citizens who are dehumanizing Immigrants, not the other way around. Immigrants are a positive, the only negative is the reactionary violence by racist far-right domestic terrorists.
You gloss over the part where even with the best intentions imaginable European immigration would have killed 90 % of American Natives with their new pathogens. No matter which way you slice it that is a scenario where European culture becomes the dominant culture, though it would certainly be nice not to have overt genocide and oppression sprinkled on top.
(Of course that's not the case right now and the great replacement theory is a fascist invention, if that needs saying)
Also be careful not to infantilise immigrants. There is a marginal but highly visible issue happening for example where Saudi Arabia is funding Wahhabit (i.e. highly orthodox) mosques and imams in Europe that when combined with depressed socioeconomic opportunities fuels religious antagonism/radicalism particularly amongst particularly vulnerable teenage second generation immigrants. Is it an existential threat to European hegemony or something Europe is incapable of absorbing? Certainly not. Doesn't mean it's an issue we have to refuse to acknowledge in the name of our own leftist orthodoxy.
The pathogens created by hundreds of years of isolation between the new and old world, due to the disproportionate access to animal husbandry, is both completely unrelated to modern immigration, and does not at all change the fact that Dehumanization and Settler Colonialism nearly eradicated native American people and erased their culture. So why bring it up? How can you consider genocide and settler Colonialism a 'sprinkle'
Erasing Indigenous History, Then and Now
The Native American Boarding School System
What part of treating everyone as equals, including people immigrating, is 'infantilizing' to you? Immigrants, across the board, are responsible for less crime per capita. That is a fact.
If you're worried about jihadist terrorism in Europe, you should look at the EUs findings. The cause is from online radicalization, not immigration.
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The causes and prevention of radicalization is important to consider, such as material conditions and marginalization. But attributing the actions of those individuals who do jihadist terrorism to all Muslims or Immigrants or their culture makes no sense. They are the vast minority and in no way represent Muslims or Immigrants as a whole. Limiting or restricting immigration would not prevent that kind of radicalization. Education, preventing marginalization, and promoting awareness are the ways to address that root cause of radicalization.
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Yeah as I expected you're projecting right wing talking points on what I said and answering those instead of anything I -at the very least- meant.
I just do not think that, in a frictionless vacuum, one can completely dismiss the idea that there can be some, however microscopic and inconsequential downsides to immigration (through no individual fault in the vast majority of the population).
Do consider that at the very least if Europe hypothetically did away with border checks entirely and strived for massive immigration, the ensuing brain drain would wreak havoc on the Global South (even worse than right now, kinda like happened within the EU with the former eastern block). Regardless of the exact mechanism, mass migration has long-lasting sociocultural impacts and to say these are only positive is pure globalist ideology.
If you have data that shows negative effects of immigration I will genuinely look into it. But yeah, I find it important to debunk right wing talking points of immigration, they are based on hysteria not fact. I don't know what exactly you're talking about when you say mass migration. I'm advocating to completely legalize migration and give everyone an avenue for citizenship.
Globalist? Ok, that's some conspiracy theory nonsense.
Do you mean internationalism? Because that's completely different
There's something to be said for culture and tradition, which have been for a long time the cornerstones of our civilization.
Everybody has their own opinion on this of course. For me, I feel that culture and tradition are in the way of progress. At some point our current traditions, cultures and values will change, they will evolve. I'm all in for a true multicultural society if there is a clear segregation between state and religion.
Local culture always changes in time. Take Europe, it's culture steeped and deeply influenced by Christianity in many countries. And yet Christianity is a religion with Middle East origins. People just don't look at the bigger picture - or don't want to. The change in the past was not happening to them, but it is now and that's what matters.
The issue is though that "segregation between state and religion" is a cultural trait. It's not something that every culture values, nor is it something that inevitably happens.
In fact, it's almost certainly a minority opinion on a global level. Particularly in (although not exclusive to) poorer non-western countries which tend to be much more conservative and religious.
A small number of conservative immigrants won't hugely impact views in the host country, but a sizable number (particularly if they are concentrated in certain areas) absolutely can.
Problems start when the people coming in don't share those sentiments and instead want their authoritarian culture to replace and dominate.
Edit: also, in the West democracy and equality have become part of our culture and tradition, for the most part, and those values just are not shared by lots of migrants. And you can't tolerate those values being replaced. It's the paradox of tolerance.
People downvoting you don't realize how good we have it compared to majority of the world's population.
Like Christianity did you mean?
That said, I don't disagree with the sentiment - the respect should come both ways and the imigrants should respect the native culture, but that also doesn't mean they havento give up their own.
I agree! (Also about Christianity, fuck anyone whose dogmatism causes them to disrespect any marginalized group.)
But I don't think anyone should tolerate intolerance. If it's part of your culture to subjugate women and hate LGBTQ people or other religions, you will have to change that part of your culture or fuck all the way off.
That's a fair thing to be concerned about, but are we really anywhere near that level of immigration in the US? I can't speak for European countries.
Both the US and Europe would be much nearer to that level if any migration was allowed unchecked. It is becoming a problem in Europe and it is growing. It's just a sad reality that democracy can't consist of people who don't believe in democracy.
In some ways perhaps culture and tradition do stand in the way of progress, but it's not that clear cut.
In Australia the majority of migrants are from South East Asia, which are much more conservative politically than Australia.
For example, more migration is not going to further transgender rights.
I have a feeling that this might be true of a lot of places, just because of the nature of migration.
Poorer places tend to be more conservative, and immigrants tend to leave poorer places to go to richer places.
That was my implication, yes. Well done.
Is culture really that big of a problem? Especially for the US, which prides itself on being a melting pot of different cultures
Edit:
I'm out.
...no shit? Weird passive aggressive comment out of nowhere
What country is this?
Strange you think "newcomers = crackpots". All the immigrants I've met have been normal, sane people. Most crackpots are born citizens. It could be that letting in immigrants will dilute the ratio of crackpots.
I don't really foresee ISIS allying with the KKK. Obviously it's not ideal to have either, but they're working against each other as much as against society.
That's a good question. I'd be interested in any data. I could see a religious sect taking over a government (democratically) and then using their power to enforce religion. But also, again I don't foresee different religions working together on this, and it may be that the more different religions we throw together the more they cancel themselves out - it's harder to believe your god is the real god when you're surrounded by other people with different gods who also believe THEIR god is the real god.
That's just me spitballing though, like I said I don't really have any information one way or the other.
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Well good thing we're not taking in 330 million immigrants all at once then, so this will never be a problem.
You know there are other countries tries right?
A lot of european countries are only a few million people...
are European countries regularly taking in migrant populations equal to their countries population?
Why does it need to be equal to population?
I'm not saying that all immigration is bad, but rather that above a certain level it gets difficult to integrate people. For european countries this is a much lower number than the US, since populations are much lower. At the same time, there are many more refugees than in the US.
It's a genuine challenge here in Vienna, for instance, at the moment because recent immigrants make up a large percentage of school kids, who often have few language skills, tend to be very religious, and have extremely conservative views on things like feminism and gay rights. Unfortunately, their views tend to self-reinforce rather than become milder over time due to being the majority view among their peers/in their school/community.
You can't really blame the kids, obviously they are just a product of the culture they grew up in, however you also can't just ignore the issue. There isn't any mechanism for preventing immigrants groups from clustering in specific areas (and I don't think most people would be in favor of anything that draconian)
In an ideal world, maybe there is a perfect solution, but the reality is that the current system is facing a huge challenge. Like it or not, this is directly tied to immigration rates.
Because I was responding to the previous commenter that cited specifically those numbers.
I get what you're saying, that other cultures are not as tolerant, and when said culture pops up in a previously tolerant area, it can cause tensions. To that I'd say that we have a system of government enforcing laws in a uniform manner across a region precisely because not everyone agrees uniformly. You can't strip away the freedom to be wrong, you can only enforce rules that support equity, safety, and inclusion, and do so especially within local populations that seem to eschew it.
But also, not all migrants are intolerant. So assuming that they 1. are, and 2. will stay that way, is a xenophobic dog whistle.