Europe is facing a choice right now: drop the concept of a refugee or drop the concept of a state welfare system. Preserving both is an impossibility.
If it were up to me, I’d drop the concept of a refugee. It’s a remnant of the post-WWII guilt, and time has come to get over it. The victims of the Holocaust are not benefiting from the destruction of the most advanced social safety net on Earth. Europeans will do them no favors if they dismantle their welfare states.
Europe is rapidly aging and is in desperate need of immigrants. To meet this need I’d lose the suffering – based immigration in favor of merit-based immigration. Canada, by the way, has a very sophisticated system of merit-based immigration, and Canada dealt with the most recent global economic crisis better than anybody else on the planet. If you are still unconvinced, Canada’s merit-based immigration brought me to this continent, and I’m not exceptional in any way. Need I say more?
The defenders of suffering – based immigration refuse to take into account one simple fact: people who failed to be successful in their own country (where they know the language, the culture, the structure of the society and have networks of support) will obviously find it even harder to get by in a place where they know nothing and nobody. This means they will require a lot of assistance. That will overburden the welfare system. Hence – go back to the beginning of the post to see the only existing set of possibilities.
Immigration is a very psychologically draining enterprise. Immigrants who come without a store of psychological resilience either drain their own emotional resources very fast or, what’s even worse, drain their children’s. And people who were beaten down by life back home will only have shreds of mental resources to bring with them to a new country. Even for somebody who was doing very well in their own country, immigration is traumatic. And for those who were barely managing to survive, it will be shattering.
Human beings are not chess pieces that can be moved around effortlessly. Everybody carries a history, and that history is the best predictor of whether one is prepared to take on the harsh burden of being an immigrant.
Clarissa's Blog 
\ If it were up to me, I’d drop the concept of a refugee.
Me too. But that would mean sending back / not accepting people from war-torn regions like Syria and Gaza and many other places in Middle East and Africa.
Would you be ready to send people from the illegal ships back to war and hunger? Probably to ISIS or o/w risking their lives.
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It’s wars they started and the reality they created. And yes, that reality sucks. But it’s nobody’s duty to provide others with better realities instead of the ones they fucked up.
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What kind of reality did a 15 year old African refugee create for herself?
I liked your earlier posts where you expressed solidarity with all immigrants, regardless of their immigration status.
I agree that Europe should introduce the idea of merit-based immigration but why does that have to mean an end to refugees? I don’t see it as an either-or situation. US does both, why can’t they?
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Some of us are born into abusive families, miserable countries, tragic familial situations. And others are luckier. I can’t see a way towards convincing myself that those who are luckier by the accident of birth owe anything to those who are less lucky.
Europe’s welfare system is already on its last breath. It’s nothing to me personally if it collapses. But the reality is that there is no way that system can absorb millions of people without the language or any work skills. Spain has no place for over half of its own youngsters. The probability that it will be able to find resources to help the 15 – year-old immigrant you are talking about is nil.
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As for the US, the analogy is not valid because there is no welfare system here any longer. It’s dead. And the sad remnants are agonizing.
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\ I agree that Europe should introduce the idea of merit-based immigration but why does that have to mean an end to refugees? I don’t see it as an either-or situation. US does both, why can’t they?
Isn’t Europe accepting much much more immigrants and refugees than America in the latest years?
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Latest news about Israeli attempts to deal with refugee crisis:
Released asylum seekers blocked from Tel Aviv, Eilat
While some 1,200 African asylum seekers are due to be released from Holot this week, courts approved Sunday a plan drafted by Public Security Minister Silvan Shalom denying them entrance to Tel Aviv or Eilat.
Holot, an “open” detention facility where asylum seekers are held without trial, is due to be emptied according to a Supreme Court decision that limits the amount of time an individual can be detained.
The ruling angered residents of southern Tel Aviv where locals have felt the brunt of Israel’s African immigration crisis with tens of thousands of illegal residents remaining in the area.
Eilat has also been a central destination for those arriving from across the Egyptian border with 10 percent of its population currently made up of illegal immigrants and asylum seekers.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4693725,00.html
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Ma’am, you’re the first liberal I’ve heard say that. I agree, we already have too many refugees as is and we can’t take care of everyone. It must be some leftover Christian thing, this kind of harmful altruism where everyone else gets help but you don’t. One good thing about not being Christian anymore is that you don’t feel you have to bleed for everyone else.
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Saw this on Israeli news and then found in English:
‘Migrant cafe’ owners in Greece’s Kos broken by refugee crisis
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But with many tourists now avoiding the beach front — one of the front lines of Europe’s biggest migrant crisis since World War II — as they choose to dine and party in downtown Kos instead, well-meaning cafe owners have started to turn the refugees away.
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Last Tuesday, police used batons and fire extinguishers to beat and spray 2,000 migrants waiting for hours on end in and around the stadium as a stampede threatened to break out, amid a shortage of basic services like food, water and latrines.
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Owner Theodore Tzagas, 35, says his profits so far this August — the peak of the tourist season — are 70 to 75 percent lower than last year.
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Debt-ridden Athens and Kos authorities have consistently blamed each other — and the EU — for the failures, with Kos’s residents and the migrants paying the price for delays in assistance.
http://news.yahoo.com/migrant-cafe-owners-greeces-kos-broken-refugee-crisis-090133408.html
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Note how much the article appeals to “government” and ” authorities” as if these were some magical agencies that could wave a wand and solve the problem. Europeans haven’t even started waking up to the end of the nation-state.
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Paraphrasing a comment or two I’ve seen. Europe is run by technocrats who move slowly and reactively and think only in worn out slogans. They are helpless in any kind of new situation as they grope blindly for precedents that don’t exist.
The migrants are proactive, resourceful and quick and far more determined to get into Europe than European leaders are to keep them out.
If I thought there was half a chance that they would display the same kind of resourcefulness and drive once they arrive in their country of choice I would welcome them with open arms. But… large scale Sub-Saharan African and Muslim immigration are well known quantities in Europe and the results have mostly been….. not very good anywhere (at best).
I’m reminded of your post about Soviet propaganda and the Russian life of luxury fantasies. A large majority of the migrants have a dream of endless welfare and won’t let anything stop them from reaching the place they think that can happen. Once they do and realize their dream was a fantasy they react with rage toward the new country they’re in.
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I was reading an article yesterday that featured interviews with more than a dozen refugees. And as I was reading, I was shocked by how incredibly Soviet they sounded. There was the constant “Europe is not what we thought it was, it’s not like we were told it was going to be.”
The ire of the people who believe they are going to paradise but discover it doesn’t exist is not a pretty thing to observe.
So yes, absolutely, this is extremely recognizable to me. The next stage is a nostalgic idealization of the old country and a sullen retreat into ghetto communities of the like-minded. That’s my Russian – speaking immigrant community to a T.
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