[HN Gopher] 10% of Cubans left Cuba between 2022 and 2023
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10% of Cubans left Cuba between 2022 and 2023
Author : apsec112
Score : 473 points
Date : 2024-07-20 13:43 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.miamiherald.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.miamiherald.com)
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| Looks like the main reason is - Cuba's two main benefactors
| stopped supplying fuel on the cheap, as they have their hands
| full with their own crises.
| anovikov wrote:
| I see it as complete opposite. They did it because they could:
| for a long while, U.S. admitted virtually everyone as a refugee
| without even an attempt to cook up a plausible story. That
| happened only in 2022-2024.
|
| It's a no brainer to see no one ever wanted to live in Cuba.
| Trick is having a place to go. Until the politically
| opportunistic immigration loophole was closed this year, they
| had.
| paleotrope wrote:
| Cuba would be quite a desirable place to live if it wasn't a
| socialist authoritarian state
| inglor_cz wrote:
| As the old joke from behind the Iron Curtain said...
|
| Q: "What would happen in Saudi Arabia if Communism
| triumphed there?"
|
| A: "First, shortage of oil, later, shortage of sand."
|
| Edit: for all the downvoters, shortages were our daily
| lived experience when I was a kid. I still remember chasing
| such rare stuff as "kid's sneakers" or "toilet paper".
|
| And Czechoslovakia was still better off than neighbouring
| Poland, where you could walk into a shop and find literally
| nothing in the shelves.
|
| The black market was the only thing that reliably worked.
| logicchains wrote:
| It's funny because Saudi Arabia's neighbour Yemen is the
| only gulf state that had a (Soviet-sponsored) socialist
| government, and maybe not entirely coincidentally is an
| order of magnitude poorer than the other gulf states, and
| has done a terrible job of tapping its oil resources.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Now that you mention it, this really looks like more than
| just a coincidence.
| OJFord wrote:
| Wasn't that deliberate oppression though? Not that I'm
| pro-communism as an ideal or anything (I favour free-
| market conservatism) I'm just not sure it can be blamed
| for ineptitude/mismanagement there as the joke implies?
| inglor_cz wrote:
| It was mostly incompetence mixed with a lot of corruption
| and petty theft.
|
| Publicly owned businesses had no incentives to compete on
| quality, had to fulfill centralized plans designed by
| distant bureaucrats that weren't completely attached to
| reality. Western products were mostly unavailable or
| extremely costly, so no substitution possible. Lots of
| ossified monopolies. Factory leaders were often chosen on
| the base of being someone's nephew or protege rather than
| expert.
|
| If you applied for a phone line (plain old copper wire),
| you could wait up to 10 years before you actually got it,
| as there was a waiting list of 300 000 applicants in a
| country of 15 million ... ugh. The mess.
|
| It is hard to describe the omnipresent dysfunction of
| everyday life back then. Communism was a theoretical
| system dreamed out by intellectuals who never engaged in
| any commerce. All the violent oppression aside, economic
| side of Communism was just crazily inefficient.
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| every "open and capitalist" country also had 10yrs wait
| for a copper phone line. besides the top 3 countries
| economically at the time from were you hear your make
| believe stories, most other countries until the 80sv
| phone line contacts were used to buy cars and homes.
| sometimes the lines were not even installed.
| 0dayz wrote:
| To be fair karl Marx was very knowledgeable on economics
| and we still use part of his work in economics.
| goodluckchuck wrote:
| If you want to be a dictator, then you have to say you'll
| be a benevolent dictator and that people will have work
| and there will be food and they will have shelter and an
| education. Would-be dictators don't get very far telling
| people they'll be cold and hungry.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Reading comments such as yours is bone chilling.
|
| My country (Brazil) has been slowly becoming socialist
| over decades. Today we live under the rule of a socialist
| president, a communist supreme court. This is reality
| despite the fact Venezuela and Argentina are our
| neighbours. There are way too many people here who
| actually believe in this nonsense.
|
| I worry a lot about the future.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| Conditions have deteriorated drastically in recent years,
| food production down 70% from a few years ago.
| Quarrel wrote:
| > Trick is having a place to go. Until the politically
| opportunistic immigration loophole was closed this year, they
| had.
|
| What loophole changed?
|
| The Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966 still applies. They get
| automatic Green Cards. Not sure it is fair to call
| legislation implicitly giving them work permits and a path to
| residency a loophole.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Cuba was hit extremely hard by the COVID crisis, is my
| understanding.
|
| Not just internal policies and procedures, but consider that
| tourism is Cuba's #1 industry. And not many of us Canadians,
| etc. were heading down there spring 2020, winter 2021 or even
| winter 2022...
| amunozo wrote:
| This is almost Ukraine's levels.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| I wonder what a sensible way forward for Cubans is, and their
| government. What would it take for the US to lift sanctions (I
| assume a radical shift within Cuba's government), and for Cuba
| itself (as a whole) to restructure their government in a way that
| would benefit them and everyone.
|
| Cuba would be a great travel destination.
|
| Their cigars aren't as on par anymore as far as I know, but
| there's potential there, Nicaragua and Dominican Republic
| basically make the best ones last I checked.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Why does the US still have sanctions on them anyway? The
| missile crisis was 50 years ago. It's time to forgive.
| stackskipton wrote:
| Politics. Florida used to be swing state in Presidential
| Elections. The Cuban community in Florida loses their shit if
| President talks about lifting the sanctions and will vote
| other way. If all Cubans had settled in California or
| Wyoming, we likely would have lifted sanctions a long time
| ago since they wouldn't have as much political power. It's
| why we lifted sanctions on Vietnam so long ago. Vietnamese
| who fled mostly immigrated to California and can't impact
| California voting Democrat.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| It almost seems the Cuban exiles want the people they left
| behind in Cuba to suffer as much as possible. What else
| have the sanctions achieved?
| stackskipton wrote:
| There seems to be a belief that if sanctions remain THIS
| YEAR, regime change will come to Cuba. It didn't work.
| Well, NEXT YEAR they will, they have to! Repeat for 50
| years.
|
| Most people fleeing Cuba blame current regime for their
| suffering with good reason. So they have a desire to see
| it overthrown.
| labrador wrote:
| I'm surprised at this take. It seems readily apparent
| that Cuban exiles want their countrymen and women to be
| free from state communist control and have the ability to
| speak their mind, practice economic freedom and their
| religion, which is I understand is very Catholic from
| Spanish influences. I don't know how you can say Cuban
| exiles want the people they left behind to suffer.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| I am saying that because the sanctions haven't achieved
| anything positive for the last decades. At some point
| people just have to admit that they don't work but cause
| a lot of suffering. I bet if the US traded with Cuba, the
| communist regime would quickly fall apart like the
| Eastern block did.
| kgwgk wrote:
| That's right. US trade with China has exploded in the
| last couple of decades and China's communist regime is
| falling apart quickly.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| I wouldn't call China a communist regime. They are highly
| capitalist. What's communist about China other than the
| name of the party?
| more_corn wrote:
| People who left want to put pressure on the government
| that they hate and they don't mind sanctioning the people
| to do it.
| vundercind wrote:
| A bunch of Floridians who are, or are descended from, folks
| who had their land and businesses seized during the
| revolution are holding grudges and won't let go of them until
| they're given their stuff back or a ton of money, which, this
| far on, isn't happening.
|
| Florida is important in Presidential elections.
|
| US elections are structured such that dumb stuff like a
| relatively small--but loud--and also hopeless interest in a
| single US state can influence policy and make a whole bunch
| more lives worse for no good reason.
|
| AFAIK that's basically the story.
| zdragnar wrote:
| I think that's really underselling the political
| persecution that many have suffered in Cuba. It's far and
| away from just wanting reparations for land grabs.
|
| We have sanctions on Cuba for the same reason we have
| sanctions on Russia and Venezuela now- we don't want to
| fund what their government is doing, and allying with them
| gives us little to nothing in return.
|
| That said, it's pretty obvious that economic sanctions
| aren't bringing about regime change. I don't think anyone
| has the stomach for putting boots on the ground, though.
| joshlemer wrote:
| It may not in the short or medium term cause regime
| change, but sufficiently large sanctions on a country do
| stop it from growing in influence, wealth and power.
| Eventually, after some number of generations, Cuba could
| be so poor in comparison to the rising tide of the rest
| of the world, that it's not even able to defend itself or
| maintain government control. At some point, the disparity
| in power becomes overwhelming and you have super high
| tech society surrounding stone age cave men.
| dullcrisp wrote:
| Can that really happen? Won't one of the visiting
| tourists bring news of the wheel or what have you
| eventually?
|
| Seems more likely sanctions would cause a steady state
| where the sanctioned country is some n months/years
| behind where it would otherwise be, speaking as a
| complete geopolitical layman anyway.
| mrbombastic wrote:
| Not OP but the problem is not awareness of modern
| solutions that prevents sanctioned societies from
| modernizing, the isolation from trade prevents local
| industry from growing which keeps society living at
| subsistence levels and when everyone is poor you don't
| have a class of people with spare time or the resources
| necessary to build up local industry that brings about
| capital that brings about infrastructure modernization
| etc.
| zdragnar wrote:
| The problem is that not enough nations are participating
| in the sanctions. Multiple generations should have been
| plenty of time, especially given the harms done to the
| population in the interim.
| tuxoko wrote:
| > That said, it's pretty obvious that economic sanctions
| aren't bringing about regime change.
|
| On the flip side, you have China, where US pretty much
| helped build up their economy and hoped for a peaceful
| and democratic outcome. How well did that go?
| ImJamal wrote:
| The USSR and China and prime examples of sanctioning vs
| opening up. One is still around and persucting its people
| and the other is on the dust bin of history. The problem
| with the Cuba sanctions is that a large chunk of
| countries aren't sanctioning Cuba. If everybody got
| behind the sanctions regime change would happen. Half
| assing it won't cut it.
| sumedh wrote:
| > the other is on the dust bin of history.
|
| and yet US is spending taxpayer money to defend Ukraine.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Why wouldn't we spend a small fraction of our military
| budget on bleeding an adversary dry?
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| same reason you don't corner a rabid animal
| stale2002 wrote:
| They aren't corned though. All they have to do is leave.
| Then they stop losing so many troops and they have their
| sanctions lifted.
| hunchback_ wrote:
| What you wrote here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41025321
|
| "So?
|
| I'd rather live in the modern day, "unequally" with the
| rich, than starve or die of disease equally with the rich
| of the middle ages.
|
| Just because the rich have 100Xed in quality of life over
| the last century, doesn't negate the fact that the poor
| have 10Xed in quality of life.
|
| Making everyone equal is easy. Just make them all equally
| dead, starving, or miserable, just like they were in past
| centuries."
|
| Shows a lack of historical knowledge. If all were so
| miserable, how did they built the greatest civilization,
| Christendom? Did Newton or Leibniz starve to death? The
| picture you are drawing here of past centuries is
| ahistorical and completely disregards the unbelievable
| quality of art and architecture that was possible during
| times where people were, according to you, "dead,
| starving, or miserable". (As if they aren't today.)
|
| I don't want to live at all. I would kill myself
| immediately did I not fear God, Christ, and eternal
| damnation.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Shows a lack of historical knowledge. All that wealth of
| Imperial Europe was built off the backs of serfs and
| slaves.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| The MLRS weapon systems shouldn't be creating corners if
| deployed effectively.
| thehappypm wrote:
| Define "small fraction" please.
| randallsquared wrote:
| The US (and Russia...) made a commitment to protect
| Ukraine in exchange for Ukraine giving up its newly-owned
| nuclear weapons after the USSR broke up.
| thinkcontext wrote:
| > allying with them gives us little to nothing in return.
|
| Recent events have shown that to be very much not the
| case. Over the past few weeks we've had news of the
| Russian Navy paying port calls and the Chinese building
| major signals intelligence capabilities. Wouldn't it be
| better to have them as an ally?
|
| It's always interesting to contrast our relationships
| with Cuba vs Vietnam. We fought a long hot war with
| Vietnam yet today we have good relations with them.
| Obviously we can't say we would have a good relationship
| with Cuba if we had been nicer to them but it certainly
| makes me think.
| slantedview wrote:
| > We have sanctions on Cuba for the same reason we have
| sanctions on Russia and Venezuela
|
| Many senior government officials over the years,
| including then Vice President Cheney, have plainly said
| that our interest in Venezuela is their oil. The
| sanctions, as in any country, are about wanting control
| over their resources.
| refurb wrote:
| I find it odd when the left criticizes the US for
| supporting dictatorships in places like Iraq, South
| America, etc.
|
| Then when it comes to Cuba, another dictatorship, the
| left complains the US is applying sanctions.
|
| It seems inconsistent.
| defrost wrote:
| I find it odd when people cast "the left" as some kind of
| homogeneous singular mass.
|
| It seems divorced from reality.
| refurb wrote:
| My statement doesn't assume a homogenous singular mass.
|
| There are opinions that come from different groups on the
| political spectrum, that pop up again and again and can
| be regarded as "common beliefs".
|
| My comment is based on that.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| There is a huge gap between overthrowing regimes to put
| your own dictator in place, and not putting sanctions
| toward a neighboring country.
|
| Most people are pushing for the latter, to get a more
| neutral approach to foreign relations.
| keybored wrote:
| - Supporting regimes
|
| - Working against them with sanctions
|
| Don't you see any other options here?
| ossobuco wrote:
| > we don't want to fund what their government is doing
|
| What is their government doing that is so terrible?
|
| Anyway let's suppose Cuba is a brutal dictatorship, even
| though it really isn't by any metric. Why are there no
| sanctions on Saudi Arabia? Why no sanctions on Taiwan
| during the white terror? Why no sanctions on Chile when
| they threw alive protesters from flying helicopters? I
| could go on for a while.
| hollandheese wrote:
| >What is their government doing that is so terrible?
|
| Surviving while Communist.
| phyzix5761 wrote:
| My whole family was murdered by the government of Cuba
| because they verbally disagreed with Fidel and communism.
| No crimes other than speaking out were committed. That's
| what they're doing that is so terrible.
| brigadier132 wrote:
| Do you own anything of value? What about your family?
|
| Now let's try practicing some empathy: How would you feel
| if I just took that from you?
| vundercind wrote:
| Oh, I get it. It's just not gonna get them anything. That
| ship sailed decades ago. On a policy level, all this is
| doing is causing harm.
| LtWorf wrote:
| Ah. So uk should sanction the whole USA, on account of
| that revolution that costed some people something?
| brigadier132 wrote:
| They did and it took a war and a long time for relations
| to be reestablished
| rgbrenner wrote:
| Not true. After the Treaty of Paris (1783) was signed,
| trade between the US and UK resumed almost immediately;
| and diplomatic relations were reestablished in 1785.
| Shortly after the war (1793), when France and Britain
| went to war, rather than back up the French, the US
| signed the Jay Treaty to maintain trade and positive
| relations with the UK... angering France who helped us
| gain independence.
|
| Other than the revolutionary war from 1776 to 1785, the
| other break we had was from 1812-1815 during the War of
| 1812.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom%E2%80%93Unit
| ed_...
| brigadier132 wrote:
| Ah ok so other than the war and the tarrifs and the
| blockade it isnt true
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| the point is it took less than a decade and half...
| valicord wrote:
| In this scenario, should everyone born in the same city
| as you be punished for your crimes?
| beaglesss wrote:
| This is foundational to American legal system in many
| cases. If your local cops for instance unjustly beat say
| Cubans and get sued for it the inhabitants will pay and
| possibly even their children through debt.
| dantondwa wrote:
| Sorry, but I don't think families who escaped in those
| times were exactly just innocent property owners.
| tpm wrote:
| Sorry, but that does not matter. If they did anything
| illegal, they should be prosecuted by and in the country
| it happened, but you are presuming collective guilt here.
| That is always, universally, the wrong thing to do.
| coooolbear wrote:
| We are talking about the descendants of the wealthy or
| dissident people who were escaping the Cuban revolution,
| where Cuba at the time was largely owned by foreign sugar
| plantations which was perpetuated by the the brutal
| military dictatorship of Batista, which was supported by
| the US government as well as organized crime (and where
| one ends and the other begins is sometimes unclear...)
|
| It's a tale as old as time!
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| The legacy of colonialism still casts a dark shadow. You
| can replace who rules much easier than changing how they
| rule. Batista a dictator replaced by Castro another
| dictator.
| tpm wrote:
| Yes and collective guilt is still wrong. Being a
| descendant is not a punishable deed, nor should it be.
| Also many professionals had to leave too.
| brigadier132 wrote:
| Many were. My grandfather was just a doctor that owned a
| townhouse. My mom had her toy bear's head ripped off by
| customs as she was leaving to check she wasn't smuggling
| gold out of the country. My grandfather was completely
| uninvolved in the war, like the vast majority of Cubans.
| Castro promised everyone that Cuba would become a
| democracy. Stopped buying the leftist propaganda you've
| been fed. You have 10% of a country fleeing in 3 years
| and you people still can't admit you were wrong, it's
| worse than a cult.
|
| The bright side is, despite the suffering involved,
| moving to America is the greatest thing that could have
| happened to my family.
| underlipton wrote:
| "My grandfather was merely part of the middle class that
| supported and legitimized the brutal regime in question,"
| isn't the absolution you seem to think it is. To the
| sizeable population of the have-nots, "I'm just providing
| the best for my family," amidst such persecution sounds a
| lot like, "F*ck you, got mine." My (futile) _hope_ is
| that people who are aware of this dynamic would put less
| energy into seeking vengeance and more into looking at
| analogous circumstances in the US and joining with their
| fellow educated professionals to not repeat the mistakes
| of such gross inequality and bougie apathy.
|
| And while, "They were mean to my mom's stuffed animal,"
| is comically evil, in a way, the maids throwing out my
| teddy bear in the name of our hotel's efficient running
| when I left it in the room upon checking out doesn't damn
| Capitalism wholesale. Sometimes people do stupid, mean,
| but ultimately innocuous things in the interests of
| keeping it moving, no matter the overarching system. It
| sucks, I want my teddy back, but my take-away is not
| advocating to punish the state of North Carolina
| socioeconomically until Republicans are purged from the
| government. That would be unhinged.
| kgwgk wrote:
| I guess that the million people who have escaped in the
| last couple of years are also guilty of something.
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| Depends; were I or my family aligned or complicit with a
| military dictatorship?
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| thanks for letting us know you never read a book and take
| lessons from the tv.
| wordsinaline wrote:
| I would still hold a grudge. I hold historical grudges
| going back centuries.
| bdjsiqoocwk wrote:
| Right. I still want back Constantinople.
| bdjsiqoocwk wrote:
| Native Americans called, they want their land back.
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| see, that's Castro mistake. he didn't buy scalps from
| land owner exploiters. imagine if all natives were in
| Florida today instead of dead.
|
| Russians were more aligned with usa tho...
| zappb wrote:
| Still mad about Amalek.
| Yawrehto wrote:
| Sometimes I want to but it's hard when every European
| country has tried to kill you. (Maybe there's one that
| was good to Jews, but I'm pretty sure there wasn't, for
| the simple reason that all the Jews would go there then,
| and the countries all the Jews went to, Spain and then
| Poland, then tried to kill us.) I don't want to have a
| grudge against a continent.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Florida was relevant in US elections. When was the last
| time it was up for grabs?
|
| It is actually interesting, a state converting to single-
| party rule significantly reduces the electoral leverage it
| has.
| Quarrel wrote:
| > When was the last time it was up for grabs?
|
| Obama won it in 2012.
|
| That isn't that long ago in electoral cycles.
| vundercind wrote:
| Obama did start warming relations, probably due to that
| shift. Trump reversed it. I expect it'll continue to, at
| best, see-saw until Republicans are comfortable enough
| with their advantage in Florida to ignore the Cuban vote.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| It was reversed since it was a campaign promise. The idea
| was that all that money from tourism was only helping the
| Castro regime. A sentiment I'm sure most Cubans are not
| happy about.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| DeSantis won by 0.5% in 2018...
| chmod775 wrote:
| > A bunch of Floridians who are, or are descended from,
| folks who had their land and businesses seized during the
| revolution are holding grudges
|
| They should've learned from the French making sure there's
| nobody left to hold a grudge.
| ImJamal wrote:
| Killing people who did nothing wrong always puts you on
| the right side.
| Yawrehto wrote:
| ...are you seriously arguing for genocide?
| chmod775 wrote:
| Whenever you have to ask that question, it is often a
| better idea to sit down with a nice cup of tea, and take
| some time to reconsider what the person you are replying
| to was intending to do with their comment.
|
| The comment pokes fun at people holding grudges for that
| long, on behalf of their ancestors, and at the whole
| situation in general. Ultimately is is meant to make
| people think whether demanding reparations from a less
| well-off people is really a better idea than just moving
| on. If everyone held grudges like that, no two people on
| earth would have good relations and we'd all sit in our
| little caves brooding over some slight our neighbor's
| ancestors inflicted on our family ten generations ago.
|
| No, I'm not arguing for genocide. But thanks for the
| laugh.
| epolanski wrote:
| Fun fact, I'm a grandchildren of poles who lived in what
| was polish land but given to Ukraine after WW2 when Stalin
| moved Ukraine westwards (and compensated Poland with former
| German land).
|
| I received a compensation 60 years after WW2, but it was
| few thousand euros (many generations have passed). And by
| the way it was the polish, not Ukrainian government that
| compensated us.
| jorvi wrote:
| > US elections are structured such that dumb stuff like a
| relatively small--but loud--and also hopeless interest
|
| I can tell you, not just the US.
|
| See: farmers having an absolute chokehold on the EU despite
| virtually everyone hating them, and them only being a tiny
| percentage of population, votes or GDP.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| Off topic but, I am curious, why would people hate the
| people that produce their food? Seems like a footgun
| position to take.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| Usually problems vis-a-vis farmers come from farmers
| being exalted just like you're doing, so politically
| they've been given a lot of leeway for government
| subsidies and entitlements. There are many farmers who
| struggle making a living on limited land, even with
| subsidies. But in other professions, there wouldn't be
| those subsidies and that specific job wouldn't be
| economically viable. But there are also many other
| farmers with $10m+ properties and paying meager farmhand
| wages to those doing the actual work, while the farmer
| landowner gets the million dollar subsidies paying them
| to dump milk or grow wasteful corn fuel.
|
| Essentially, it's because producing food doesn't give you
| the right to be pampered by everyone else and make
| economically bad decisions.
|
| In Europe specifically, it would be in part because of
| the "tractor protests" where tractors were mass driven
| into city centers in protest, especially the Netherlands
| because they didn't like being restricted on nitrogen
| pollution. It would be especially irksome when you can
| get most peoples' votes for bad policy just by saying
| "support farmers, they grow your food." Except that all
| that nitrogen in the Netherlands goes to actually growing
| exported food ($$)...
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/16/nitro
| gen...
| sensanaty wrote:
| Where does this plantation-owner story come from? How many
| plantation owners do you think existed?
|
| And that still doesn't explain the continual drain
| happening, to this day, as is evidenced by this very
| article we're commenting on. What, are these 10% also
| filthy capitalists somehow?
|
| As a Serb whose parents fled an eerily similar situation to
| Cuba's way back when for greener pastures to the literal
| other side of the planet, this thing where people blame the
| citizens rather than the worthless piece of shit government
| for fleeing these socialist hellholes is always an amusing
| one for me.
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| you should really read on Cuba before comparing it to
| Serbia. completely different situation and the people
| fleeting it in the last decade is exclusively about the
| the embargo.
| idontwantthis wrote:
| Obama began easing them and opened up travel and then Trump
| put them all back to win Florida.
|
| Democrats took an L for freedom, prosperity and common sense
| and Republicans capitalized to win back the presidency.
| joshlemer wrote:
| 62 years ago.
| ks2048 wrote:
| The message is: if you refuse to be our puppet state and play
| by our rules, we will destroy you for as long as it takes.
|
| Anyone who believes the US acts to punish evil authoritarians
| in defense of freedom and democracy is delusional. Look at
| our allies in the middle east.
| riffic wrote:
| more than 60 years ago actually.
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| https://thehill.com/opinion/4723678-cuba-russian-
| relations-c...
| sremani wrote:
| A hostile regime 90 miles from US mainland will be treated
| differently. Cuba is not some vanilla leftist regime that has
| no love for America. Cuban intelligence and elite for the
| past 50 years have been active subverting US interests. A
| unilateral withdrawal of sanctions would mean rewarding bad
| behavior. Do not let the small size of Cuba underestimate
| them, they are behind all major anti-American activity in
| Latin America. They were are major force supporting Maduro in
| Venezuela.
|
| Why does not the Communist regime in Cuba "open up"? Because
| they know the day Cuba becomes a multiparty state with
| elections -- they have to run out of the country. Both Cuban
| and Venezuelan elite along with many Caribbean states are
| active in Drug Dealings and Money Laundering.
|
| Yes, the hawks in US have a role but they are not only active
| players, there are hawks in Cuba too.
| rubytubido wrote:
| > A unilateral withdrawal of sanctions would mean rewarding
| bad behavior.
|
| Do something horrible to your neighbour - be surprised that
| he doesn't keep good behaviour torwards you.
| dakiol wrote:
| Why did the US drop 2 nuclear bombs on Japan? Why the US is
| keeping Israel as their toy? Why the US entered the Vietnam
| war (hint: no, not to avoid the spread of communism). US is
| the bad boy of this planet, just because they can.
| rubytubido wrote:
| But they did it to protect the planet. We need to enforce
| "democracy" and spread capitalism.
| incahoots wrote:
| and agent orange, and destroy literally everything before
| we tail it back to our own country, not before we tell
| our vets to "suck it up" and bootstrap their PTSD due to
| exposure of aforementioned war crimes.
| goatlover wrote:
| HN is fast becoming reddit with comments like these,
| sadly.
| slater wrote:
| "Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning
| into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the
| hills."
|
| bottom of the hn guidelines:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| incahoots wrote:
| Just to be clear, are you insinuating that my comment is
| somehow misleading or untrue?
| goatlover wrote:
| Not strictly untrue, but it's a trite dismissal of US
| foreign policy in general.
| nextweek2 wrote:
| It's an authoritarian government without free elections right
| on the US doorstep. Cubans are oppressed.
| toast0 wrote:
| > Cuba would be a great travel destination.
|
| It's been a while since I visited places outside the US, but
| one of the shocking things was travel ads for Cuba everywhere.
|
| From what I can tell, US-Cuban relations seem to be at the whim
| of the US President. Most of the US population doesn't care;
| most of the rest of the world has fine relations with Cuba, but
| isn't going to pressure the US. Nobody is sending missiles to
| Cuba anymore.
| duskwuff wrote:
| > Nobody is sending missiles to Cuba anymore.
|
| Or are they?
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/12/americas/russian-navy-cuba-
| in...
| astromaniak wrote:
| Still no. Just a visit, doesn't look like Cuba has any wish
| to become Russia's military fortress. From Russia side all
| decisions are made by a single person who is not thinking
| big. Cuba would be quite expensive. Ukraine is more then
| enough for Putin, unlikely he wants a new 'adventure'.
| rubytubido wrote:
| > Ukraine is more then enough for Putin
|
| What about propaganda where he will capture the whole EU
| after Ukraine?
| throwawayq3423 wrote:
| > propaganda
|
| You mean his own words?
| https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-ally-warns-
| enemy-...
| input_sh wrote:
| Medvedev's not Putin, he's Putin's useful idiot, a
| provocateur, west's bogeyman.
|
| The only time he makes the news in the west is when he
| mentions nuking some random European country, which for
| the record happens quite frequently.
|
| You should never take anything he says seriously.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| How is it useful to provoke your much stronger opponent
| when your own country has the GDP of Greece?
| input_sh wrote:
| Because he's not targeting the west, he's targeting semi-
| literate part of Russian population. He isn't giving
| statements like that on CNN, he's giving statements like
| that on TV programs that no educated person watches.
|
| He's there to blow things out of proportion _locally_ ,
| he just happens to be translated from time to time for
| clicks. There's no significance to his words. He doesn't
| speak on behalf of Putin, he's not there to leak some
| super-secret internal plans for the future, he's just
| there to yap about how Russia can totally take over the
| entire Europe.
| seniorivn wrote:
| education has nothing to do with this, an average
| university professor in Russia(or for a matter of fact in
| the west too) is a radical supporter of the mainstream
| media
| seniorivn wrote:
| there is no point in comparing gdps here, what's
| important is what is the capability of war industry and
| armies are, and at the moment we can see that industries
| are not that far off, add nuclear weapons to the picture,
| and its draw, just as it was in the cold war.
| throwawayq3423 wrote:
| Medvedev being a puppet/idiot etc solidifies the fact
| that everything he says comes directly from his boss. He
| wouldn't say it otherwise.
| kgwgk wrote:
| China is Cuba's main commercial partner but their
| relationship is purely commercial. A military cooperation
| has surely not even crossed their minds.
| alwa wrote:
| E.g. https://features.csis.org/hiddenreach/china-cuba-
| spy-sigint/
| nradov wrote:
| It's not just the President. Some aspects of US-Cuban
| relations are written into federal law and would take an Act
| of Congress to change.
|
| As a practical matter, Americans can travel to Cuba without
| much trouble. Several of my friends have gone.
| mahkeiro wrote:
| American yes but not if you are from another country and
| need to go the US...
| BurningFrog wrote:
| The people who _really_ care are Cuban exiles around Miami.
|
| When Florida was a swing state, that was enough to make every
| presidential candidate be pro embargo.
|
| Now that Florida is a red state, it might be different.
| paxys wrote:
| The Cuban population of Miami is heavily republican and
| pro-embargo. This is why Obama got rid of it and Trump
| reinstated it.
| hadlock wrote:
| What I can't understand is WHY are the people who escaped
| for a better life, pro embargo... What, 70 years later?
| Seems like it's only being highly effective at hurting
| the general population
| whydoineedthis wrote:
| My father migrated from Cuba in the 60's and anytime I
| asked him whether it was worth me visiting he promptly
| said
|
| "No, absolutely not. Don't even waste your time
| considering it. Castro ruined it and it will never be the
| same".
|
| I think the moral is that for many Cubans the embargo
| isn't against the people, it's against the Cuban
| government, and they genuinely hate the government with
| every fiber of their existence. They hate what Castro
| took from them and have no dissolutions that letting up
| the embargo would strengthen that governments rule while
| only providing minuscule benefits to the people. Until
| the government regime changes in Cuba, any pressure we
| can apply is worth it.
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| the point is that if it's not a swing state politicians
| don't care about the state wants. so the embargo might
| fall to the sidelines
| pyuser583 wrote:
| Cuban exiles are about 50/50 on embargo. It's been around
| a while, and obviously isn't changing the regime. Making
| people poor doesn't bring democracy.
| fracus wrote:
| I think the major problem with Cuba is their relationship
| with Russia.
| throwawayq3423 wrote:
| > most of the rest of the world has fine relations with Cuba
|
| Most of the rest of the world didn't get Soviet nuclear
| missiles pointed at them by Cuba.
| apexalpha wrote:
| This is 60 years ago... In that same timeframe the EU was
| formed and grown to 26 nations including roughly 10 that
| pointed nuclear missiles at each other one time.
| Gud wrote:
| What time was that? There aren't even ten nations in the
| EU with nuclear weapons.
| kzrdude wrote:
| Just like Cuba didn't really itself point missiles
| towards the US (it was the soviets), the Warsaw pact
| nations inside current EU were used as Soviet proxies
| too.
| Gud wrote:
| Ok, I still don't get it then. The Warsaw pact nations
| were not planning on using their nukes on other European
| nations with nuclear weapons, to avoid getting nuked
| themselves. This is documented in the (formerly) secret
| war plans that were released by the Czech republic.
| throwawayq3423 wrote:
| Not only did Cuba allow for missiles to be there, Castro
| specifically argued to use them.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/1992/10/23/opinion/castro-wanted-
| a-n...
| throwawayq3423 wrote:
| https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/12/americas/russian-navy-
| cuba-in...
| thiagoharry wrote:
| You know that this was a response for american missiles
| being placed on Turkey, right? By your comment, I assume
| that you also agree with Russia, when they criticize NATO
| expansion around their borders, right?
| kgwgk wrote:
| By your comment, I assume that you don't see a difference
| between "not having a commercial relationship with a
| country" and "invading and annexing a country".
| stefan_ wrote:
| > What would it take for the US to lift sanctions
|
| Florida to stop being a swing state? We are almost there..
| bee_rider wrote:
| I have only seen Florida disappoint Democratic candidates. It
| is a trick state. Should basically be ignored.
| ashconnor wrote:
| > Cuba would be a great travel destination.
|
| Careful visiting if you want to use the ESTA to visit the
| United States.
|
| https://ogletree.com/insights-resources/blog-posts/u-s-visa-...
| astromaniak wrote:
| > Cuba would be a great travel destination
|
| There are many similar destinations, and all of them are still
| poor. Besides, Cuba has already tourists from Canada and
| Europe.
|
| My guess their best chance is to start manufacturing for cheap.
| Close to US makes them more competitive. But for this to happen
| commies government has to go.
| abernard1 wrote:
| > What would it take for the US to lift sanctions (I assume a
| radical shift within Cuba's government), and for Cuba itself
| (as a whole) to restructure their government in a way that
| would benefit them and everyone.
|
| It's irrelevant. Hard-line socialist countries don't
| voluntarily decide to change their government: their countries
| collapse and start over again.
|
| While sanctions on Cuba are irrelevant to the US these days, it
| doesn't change the fact that Cuba would be a dysfunctional
| society in any case. Venezuela was a resource rich nation and
| 7.7 million people fled (>20% of the population). The Soviet
| Union was one of the most resource-rich entities in the world,
| with similar failures.
|
| I find it somewhat astonishing that people in tech--an industry
| built around the belief that well-built systems can produce
| good results--are so dismissive of the role of agency when it
| comes to these issues. Somehow it's America's fault that people
| are leaving Cuba, Venezuela, Mexico... and left to their own
| devices, those places would be paradise.
| walleeee wrote:
| > Hardline ~~socialist~~ countries
|
| This is true of any regime which refuses to adapt to reality.
| And in any case it's more or less tautological: a "hardliner"
| is defined precisely by the refusal to budge even when it
| might be to their benefit.
| keybored wrote:
| Hardline socialist countries sometimes survive. Less hardline
| socialist countries get coup'ed or otherwise brutally
| interfered with (e.g. Chile).
| standardUser wrote:
| Obama opened up travel to Cuba. I went just months after his
| historic visit. There were still limitations, such as with
| currency, that made it a somewhat complicated travel
| destination. It would require more significant changes to make
| it a go-to vacation spot, but it's generally believed that is
| within presidential power.
|
| Trump reverted the relationship back to Cold War status when he
| took office.
| rubiquity wrote:
| > Nicaragua and Dominican Republic basically make the best ones
| last I checked.
|
| You're going to need sources on that. Cubans are still the best
| dollar for dollar.
| aconsult1 wrote:
| I've been smoking cigars for the past 15 years. I was lucky
| enough to have smoked only cuban cigars (which are legal where
| I'm from), so I know them very well.
|
| Nicaragua and Dominican Republic are garbage compared to
| Cubans, still to this day. Several times while in the US (where
| I've lived in the past few years) I tried to smoke non-cuban
| cigars. Not once I found something that was remotely close to
| the worse cuban I've had.
|
| My basic understanding is because of two factors: 1. The
| tobacco doesn't grow anywhere else like it does in Cuba. It's
| an island with very specific combination of soil and weather
| that can't be replicated. The tobacco leafs are huge in Cuba
| and that makes a big difference when making a cigar which
| ideally should use as few leafs as possible. 2. The best
| workers that know how to select, blend and roll a cigar are
| still all in Cuba. Other countries tried to replicate but they
| don't come close in terms of skills and knowledge.
|
| I don't have sources for the two factors above but my
| experience tells me it adds up.
|
| I only heard people complimenting non-cuban cigars here in the
| US. Nowhere else. Which sounds fair or else the entire cigar
| industry would have gone bankrupt without access to the best
| stuff. Overtime you won't find people in the US who understands
| what a cuban cigar is like because they have no exposure to it.
| ossobuco wrote:
| > What would it take for the US to lift sanctions
|
| Open the doors to US investors to exploit every single resource
| Cuba has to offer.
|
| Kicking out Batista the dictator and closing those doors was
| the reason sanctions were applied in the first place.
| slantedview wrote:
| > What would it take for the US to lift sanctions
|
| If you understand the origin of the sanctions against Cuba, you
| know the answer to this question is that the US wants control
| over Cuba and their resources.
| V__ wrote:
| > Most of those migrants have come to the United States in what
| experts call the most significant migration wave in Cuban
| history.
|
| With the destabilization that a population drop of 10% has, the
| potential for more migration in the long term and the associated
| costs... Wouldn't it make sense for the U.S. to invest and help
| Cuba? It would also have the additional benefit of maybe
| depriving Russia of an ally.
| chaorace wrote:
| The current U.S. position towards Cuba continues to puzzle me.
| Their geopolitical stance is nowhere near being on the same
| level as North Korea or Iran. Given Cuba's proximity and
| relative productive capacity you'd think that we'd be easy
| allies if only they hadn't upset a bunch of dead politicians 60
| years ago.
| seniorivn wrote:
| They are a hostile dictatorship, with zero resources but
| their oppressed people. Why would USA be interested in
| allying with them?
| atlas_hugged wrote:
| Their government is hostile like a friend's chihuahua. It
| will make it known it doesn't like you, but it ain't going
| to do anything about it because it can't.
|
| The people on the other hand are truly wonderful human
| beings that would love to be able to have visitors or visit
| other countries themselves.
|
| Who cares if some politicians feelings get hurt. People
| want to be free to do what they want in a supposedly free
| country.
| spiderice wrote:
| What does any of what you said have to do with the US
| though?
| joshlemer wrote:
| > it ain't going to do anything about it because it can't
|
| And, it can't because it's too poor to be able to do
| anything, which is partly a result of the sanctions.
| ImJamal wrote:
| If you open up trade they will become stronger. Look at
| China before and after we opened up trade with them. What
| happens of Cuba becomes more powerful and is still
| hostile while being so close to the US?
| energy123 wrote:
| The US should oppose expansionist dictatorships that
| attempt to alter the status quo via forceful revisionism.
| That's Russia in Ukraine and China in Asia.
|
| I don't see how opposing Cuba achieves anything in the US
| interests.
| fjdjshsh wrote:
| I keep seeing this "expansionist dictatorship" applied to
| China when the USA is discussed. The USA has invaded
| plenty of countries in the last few decades, has a
| history of colonialism (Cuba, Philippines, Puerto
| Rico...sure, less than some European countries, but
| still).
|
| Which countries has China invaded in the past few
| decades?
| energy123 wrote:
| Did you say "last few decades" to conveniently exclude
| their invasion of Vietnam? Not that it matters. Policy
| should not be made based on a naive extrapolation of
| historical track record. Culture, interests and
| leadership are all things that change over time.
|
| Modern China, like Russia, but unlike other autocracies
| such as Cuba or Saudi Arabia, is a revisionist power -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revisionist_state
|
| Their publicly broadcasted intention is to change the
| status quo, forcefully if needed. That's a euphemism for
| invading Taiwan. They keep saying it, over and over.
| Beyond that, there's a militarism, nationalism and
| irredentism that permeates Xi's leadership and the
| culture he has created in his country, which did not
| exist to the same extent under Deng. The confluence of
| such factors have historically been a bad omen.
|
| This does not mean that the US should start a war with
| China. It means the US should pivot its focus to Asia and
| continue the policy of containment, which is a
| maintenance of the peaceful status quo through a
| combination of sticks and carrots. It means the US should
| be aware that there is a rival there who may start a war
| on their own terms and on their own schedule when they
| believe they are capable of defeating the US.
| throw__away7391 wrote:
| > Which countries has China invaded in the past few
| decades?
|
| Well, all of their neighbors for starters.
|
| If we include sending warships to violate maritime
| sovereignty under that definition, we can add dozens more
| in Asia and South America.
| topkai22 wrote:
| Since WWII Tibet (annexed) Korea (at invitation of the
| North Korean government, but invaded South Korea) India
| USSR Vietnam
|
| China has been fairly quiet and well behaved since 1980,
| but it is current quite publicly talking forcefully
| reintegrating Taiwan and has had continuous naval
| disputes in the South China Sea.
|
| If we are talking about colonialism, "China" is a land
| empire that has absolutely dominated its neighbors and
| often conquered them. Making an apples to apples
| comparison to European colonialism isn't very useful and
| I don't pretend to know details, but historical China has
| plenty of expansionist and domineering episodes.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Cuba _was_ in the "attempt to alter the status quo via
| forceful revisionism" club. They had literally thousands
| of soldiers and "advisors" in various hot spots, trying
| to export the revolution.
|
| That was the 1970s, though. Cuba was allegedly involved
| in the coup in Venezuela in 1992; arguably, the
| _chavismo_ government would not have happened without
| Cuban involvement. That government still rules Venezuela.
|
| Are they still trying to stir up trouble? If not, how
| long ago did they stop? I don't know. But there
| definitely were reasons to impose sanctions on Cuba.
| incahoots wrote:
| What difference does its government make when you purposely
| employ collective punishment via embargo?
|
| For a country that prides itself as "democracy driven and
| human rights protector" it sure seems just as hostile as
| the supposed acting government.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| While Florida was/is a swing state in US elections, whoever
| secures the ex-Cuban vote wins a massive amount of electoral
| votes. Republicans are fine jockeying against Cuba "because
| communism", and so the Democrats are in a pickle in that the
| right thing to do would be to improve relations with Cuba but
| it guarantees to hand Florida over to the Republicans who
| will then have the presidency and proceed to treat Cuba as-
| is.
|
| If Florida remains reliably Republican anyway, it's possible
| the Democrats may get enough electoral support from the rest
| of the country to still win future presidencies and ease up
| on Cuba without caring about the Florida ex-Cuban vote.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Cubans who emigrate vote relatively conservatively, so
| perhaps it's in the interest of the Democratic Party to
| make it more attractive to stay if most existing anti-Cuba
| Floridians are not marginal/swing voters.
| topkai22 wrote:
| Yeah, this is basically the answer- Cuban American lobby is
| solidly against the current regime. Less so than they used
| to be, but there are still plenty of voices strongly
| opposed to normalization and few strongly for it.
|
| Without a strong counter vailing lobby there is little
| reason for politicians to risk alienating the Cuban bloc to
| normalize relations with a fairly repressive government
| that still remains broadly anti-American and opposed to US
| interests.
| eZpZpi wrote:
| Current position is easily explained; most active US voters
| are >50 yo and elect 50+ year old pols.
|
| All of those 50+ year olds were weened on "Cuba bad."
|
| Leadership is mostly ossified and low effort adults who
| rarely update their opinion; they just engage in their
| routine, recite the spoken pageantry, idle about like brain
| dead tourists of reality and die down the road.
|
| Murican Civic Life has taken hold of the same biology
| religion stumbled upon. Time to "blink" and accept physical
| statistics just keeps enough stuff on shelves the majority
| don't riot and mv /human/story/mode /dev/null
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Also Florida is a large swing state, and the Cubans who
| have fled there are the ones who hate the current
| government.
| adolph wrote:
| Change is the hardest part of changing US policy towards Cuba
| because the legal and regulatory elements are old and thus
| deeply baked in to ongoing operations. Potential alignment of
| Cuba for other adversaries isn't a serious enough threat nor
| engagement a sufficient benefit to overcome government inertia.
| Cuba isn't as much of a mess as Haiti and also isn't a tiny
| success like Singapore.
|
| Here is hoping that Cuba will be able to help itself out of a
| perhaps weakening despotism but the default hypothesis is not
| to hold one's breath.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| "Wouldn't it make sense for the U.S. to invest and help Cuba?"
|
| Part of the reason Cuba is in the shape it's in is because of
| previous US investment and "help".
| InTheArena wrote:
| That stopped being true 70 years ago, and it was the
| withdrawal of American aid that brought Castro to power (he
| still pretended to care about human rights then).
| bonzini wrote:
| "Aid" is a bit of an understatement considering that Castro
| was fighting against the US-and mafia-backed dictator
| (Fulgencio Batista). The withdrawal of American support to
| Batista happened because the corruption and violence had
| reached unsustainable levels even for an anti-communist.
| InTheArena wrote:
| People make this argument - but it's consistent through
| history with moderates as well as non-moderate
| government. Withdrawing support is always seen as
| weakness an established state and leads radicals to
| overthrow governments. Germany 1931(bankers withdrew
| funds), Afghanistan, Cuba, Vietnam.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| I did put "help" in quotes on purpose...
| ein0p wrote:
| If I were Xi Jinping, I'd step in quite heavily at this point. A
| few billions in investment would do wonders there. I'm sure a
| hypersonic nuke base could also be negotiated in return.
| InTheArena wrote:
| He'd much rather the USA just invaded it, subjugated all its
| people while proclaiming that it is a long held part of the
| post-Kennedy American empire.
|
| Fits his narrative better.
| ein0p wrote:
| I think he'd much rather have a permanent and painful boil on
| America's ass, like what the US has in Taiwan. Mexico isn't
| cooperating, so maybe Cuba will. There's precedent for that
| kind of thing, as well as for US military getting its ass
| handed to it while trying to "subjugate" Cuba.
| InTheArena wrote:
| Thankfully even CcP authoritarians have more sense than
| this. China is and will continue to foment unrest in South
| America to play the same role, but after watching china
| rape Africa's resources for the last decade, they are far
| less likely to capitulate.
| ein0p wrote:
| The correct name of the party is the CPC. "CCP" is a good
| indicator for propaganda.
| mr90210 wrote:
| Well it turns out Xi is smarter than such idea because he's
| learnt from history. Does the name Nikita Khrushchev ring a
| bell?
| ein0p wrote:
| Kruschev got what he wanted. Nukes were removed from Turkey
| at the time. They're back now, but only "stored", not
| "deployed".
| basisword wrote:
| It's interesting reading the opinions in the comments on this
| thread. As a non-US person, I don't have a strong opinion on
| Cuba. I'd like to visit someday but don't know much about it
| other than the headlines. Reading the comments here it sounds
| like a pariah state on the level of North Korea. With 1m people
| leaving in a year, it clearly has its issues - but lots of the
| comments here are a good example of how your country's media and
| propaganda can significantly colour your opinions. I don't get
| the feeling many other countries continue to have such a negative
| opinion of Cuba.
|
| Are there any countries other than the US that has a strong
| negative opinion on Cuba?
|
| I'm also curious if anyone comes from a country that has a
| significant negative opinion on another country that others might
| find surprising?
| rightbyte wrote:
| If anything Cuba is heavely romanticized outside the US I
| believe.
| totallywrong wrote:
| Maybe it used to be, probably because the Castro and Guevara
| rebellion is a great story. But today I feel that everyone
| knows that it backfired and the country is in shambles due to
| terrible totalitarian leaders.
| forrestthewoods wrote:
| > Are there any countries other than the US that has a strong
| negative opinion on Cuba?
|
| It appears that Cubans have a strong negative opinion on Cuba.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Most Americans don't think about Cuba at all, and it definitely
| isn't in the news very much (as far as I know, I cut most TV
| years ago). However, there are lots of Batista supporters and
| their descendants in Florida. They are politically influential
| given Florida is an important swing state.
| SR2Z wrote:
| The title of the article is literally that 10% of Cubans left
| Cuba between 2022 and 2023. Are they Batista supporters too?
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Cubans leaving Cuba today are taking advantage of
| immigration openness that anti-Cuba policies pushed for.
| Why would they not take advantage of that? They are
| literally the only refugees who can come to America and get
| automatic asylum. Why does that exist? Political power from
| Florida stemming from Batista supporters.
|
| I don't have any interest in this argument, but the
| situation between America and Cuba is fairly artificial and
| politically related.
| joecool1029 wrote:
| > Political power from Florida stemming from Batista
| supporters.
|
| Last I heard Batista's daughter is homeless, support
| doesn't look so great lol:
| https://www.local10.com/news/2017/06/21/ex-cuban-leader-
| fulg...
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| It's not unusual for right wingers to not be sentimental.
| martindbp wrote:
| > With 1m people leaving in a year, it clearly has its issues -
| but lots of the comments here are a good example of how your
| country's media and propaganda can significantly colour your
| opinions.
|
| What? 10% of a country leaving in one year tells you what
| Cubans think of Cuba. That's not propaganda, that's fact. On
| the contrary, it seems like you have some kind of preconceived
| notion of that life in Cuba is in fact not that bad (poor but
| laid back perhaps?), but if that were true people would not
| leave would they?
| joecool1029 wrote:
| > but if that were true people would not leave would they?
|
| Not to dig into whataboutism but the same could really be
| said about the US's island possessions:
| https://www.civilbeat.org/2021/10/census-pacific-us-
| territor...
|
| Fact is populations will leave if they see chance at a better
| life elsewhere, even if they aren't living in an active
| warzone or under some some government the US doesn't like.
| luckylion wrote:
| 10y vs 1y, internal migration vs moving to a different
| country with a different language.
|
| It's really not comparable.
| joecool1029 wrote:
| > moving to a different country with a different
| language.
|
| The US doesn't have an official language, there are areas
| that speak almost exclusively spanish. All government
| shit is available in spanish. Puerto Rico speaks spanish.
| Over a fifth of Floridians speak spanish at home.
| nailer wrote:
| I mean yes people wouldn't want to live in a US island
| possession either. That doesn't invalidate the parent's
| point.
| brundog wrote:
| Things are not so simple as Cuba bad, USA good. Wage
| differentials easily explain why so many come to the USA.
| Maybe they like Cuba but cannot come for better wages. Cuba
| has its problems, but definitely the USA/cia is targeting the
| regime with negative publicity. Who knows maybe you work at a
| cia troll farm.
| SR2Z wrote:
| > Reading the comments here it sounds like a pariah state on
| the level of North Korea.
|
| The only reason it's NOT North Korea is the fact that it
| "allows" its people to flee to the United States, where by law
| they may become American citizens.
|
| Cuba has extremely effective propaganda - folks forget that
| it's actually a dictatorship which severely limits freedom of
| speech and brutally cracks down on protest. Wikipedia has a
| great page "Foreign interventions by Cuba."
|
| Not all that much worse than China, but with the misfortune of
| bordering the US and not being powerful enough to stand without
| access to regional trade.
| jltsiren wrote:
| Comparing Cuba to North Korea makes no sense at all. You
| could compare it to the USSR or East Germany, but not North
| Korea.
|
| North Korea is effectively a caricature of a totalitarian
| state, ruled by a cartoon villain. Cuba is more like an
| ordinary country unlucky enough to have a totalitarian
| government. There are plenty of equally bad countries in the
| world even today.
| danlugo92 wrote:
| Is the propaganda really effective when a photo from an
| average cuban street says it all? (walking dead tier even in
| the heart of the capital)
| mbrubeck wrote:
| The US has by far the world's largest ex-Cuban population (well
| over 1M people). Those communities are a big part of what
| shapes US perceptions and policy toward Cuba.
| hobotime wrote:
| Cuban-Americans telling us what Cuba is like sounds ok to me.
| From what I've heard, they hate Socialists.
| ithkuil wrote:
| How much is that a selection bias (they are the ones that
| left and went to the US after all)
| silisili wrote:
| That's a fair point. One thing I will say, having lived
| near many in FL at one time, they are some of the most
| patriotic and pro USA people. I always appreciated that
| in a way, as I think a lot of us take it for granted.
| ithkuil wrote:
| The world would be a quite different place if the
| majority of people in each country made rational choices
| for their own good. I don't think we should single out
| Cubans for that
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| Definitely selection bias but well-founded.
|
| The unmotivated masses tend to follow the de-facto system
| that entrenches the successful few. The remaining
| motivated and competitive people on the other hand leave
| for better pastures.
|
| People who emigrate from countries whose governments
| micromanage the population tend to have the worst opinion
| about them. Not that dissimilar from people who ditch
| bosses who micromanage =).
| ithkuil wrote:
| The world would be a quite different place if the
| majority of people in each country made rational choices
| for their own good. I don't think we should single out
| Cubans for that
| jeffbee wrote:
| Cuban-Americans are literally revanchists. You might not be
| getting the straight scoop from this self-selected
| subpopulation.
| fdsafdsafdsfsd wrote:
| Maybe ask the Cubans who left the country?
| bawolff wrote:
| People who leave a country tend to leave it for a reason. If
| they liked their life in Cuba presumably they would have
| stayed. They are probably not a neutral source on Cuba.
| Larrikin wrote:
| Who is a neutral source when asking for the opinion about a
| dictatorship?
| swexbe wrote:
| Most immigrants don't have anywhere near as bad an opinion
| of their home country as Cuban-Americans.
| ImJamal wrote:
| The hatred towards Cuba by Cuban immigrants is much higher
| than most other immigrants. This indicates that Cuba is
| worse than most countries.
| snowpid wrote:
| On German media (including heavy left leaning Taz) you find
| various reports about human right issues in Cuba. It's a
| typical socialist dictatorship doomed to fail as its
| predecessors.
| bawolff wrote:
| As a canadian its pretty weird. Normally we get all the same
| media as usa and have relatively similar opinions. However cuba
| has always been much more popular here and is a common tourist
| destination. Its sad they are having problems.
| j-bos wrote:
| There are a lot of Cubans in the US, their experiences tend to
| affect the larger American perspective of the country.
| throwup238 wrote:
| For the most part, the only Americans that really care enough
| about Cuba to form a negative opinion are Cuban immigrants and
| their descendants. They happen to be a powerful voting block in
| Florida, a swing state, so they have an outsized effect on
| national politics.
|
| If not for them, the embargo would have been dropped years ago
| and relations would have been normalized.
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| I visited Cuba several times between approximately 2005 and
| 2015.
|
| The Cuban people I met were lovely and would give you the shirt
| off their back if you needed it, even though they might not
| possess many more of them.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| I have not visited Cuba, but from everything that see and read,
| it is far more free than North Korea.
| Acrobatic_Road wrote:
| It has also has an extremely low fertility rate.
| tehjoker wrote:
| Cuba's economy is not doing well because of the illegitimate and
| illegal US embargo. End the blockade. Take Cuba off the
| completely farcical State Sponsors of Terror list. Let Cuba live!
|
| Cuba developed its own COVID vaccine but couldn't give it to its
| own people because they could not buy metal for syringes. Its
| fucking crazy.
| WorkerBee28474 wrote:
| > illegitimate and illegal US embargo
|
| Illegitimate and illegal according to what authority? Unless
| you believe in God, there is no higher authority than the US
| government and its military might.
| bawolff wrote:
| International law?
|
| That said, i don't think sanctions violate intl law. You are
| under no obligation to trade with people you dont like. A
| blockade probably would be (generally blockades are an act of
| war which is only allowed in defense or if un security
| council approves) however america isnt blockading it.
|
| Things can morally wrong without being illegal.
| matrix87 wrote:
| international law in itself means almost nothing, it's just
| a convenient excuse for the more powerful to threaten the
| less powerful
| bawolff wrote:
| So like normal law then?
| WorkerBee28474 wrote:
| International law isn't real. You can tell it's not real
| because if it were real there would be real repercussions
| for violating it. There aren't, so it isn't. It's just
| words made up for politicking and persuasion.
| tehjoker wrote:
| this is literally an imperialist and fascist sentiment. most
| countries around the world condemn the blockade and vote it
| down yearly at the un. the only holdouts are the US and
| Israel (both currently committing genocide in Gaza). Ukraine
| abstained.
|
| https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/11/1143112
| incahoots wrote:
| Gotta love neocons and liberals voting this down as if
| you're making up facts...when it's objectively the truth
| samatman wrote:
| There is no blockade, and there hasn't been since the Cuban
| Missile Crisis. An embargo prohibits US citizens and US-owned
| businesses from trading with Cuba. A blockade would be the US
| Navy preventing anyone else's ships from entering Cuba to
| trade.
|
| Cuba is poor because Cuba is Communist. The US is not the only
| trading partner in the world, but a country has to have
| something to trade in order to engage in trade, and Cuba has
| nothing.
| mullingitover wrote:
| > Cuba is poor because Cuba is Communist.
|
| Is Cuba even _that_ poor, though, compared to its Latin
| American peers, and is communism the reason?
|
| Aside from the recent weirdness with their GDP spike in World
| Bank's numbers, Cuba's GDP per capita is basically the same
| as Mexico's, and it's higher than Brazil's, neither of which
| are communist.
|
| Furthermore, aside from raw GDP numbers it's higher in the UN
| Human Development Index rankings[1] than Brazil and Colombia
| along with a slew of other very capitalist countries.
|
| If you make apples to oranges comparisons in demographics,
| you can make any country look bad. The UK is basically
| Mississippi if you take out London. The US also fares poorly
| if you don't count the wealthiest 15% of the population. The
| median Cuban isn't well off, but they aren't wildly different
| from others in their region.
|
| [1] https://hdr.undp.org/data-center/country-insights#/ranks
| samatman wrote:
| > _The US also fares poorly if you don 't count the
| wealthiest 15% of the population._
|
| This is false. The US has the third highest _median_ income
| of any country in the world, after Luxembourg and the
| United Arab Emirates (which clearly does not count the
| income of their foreign slaves). PPP adjusted, btw.
|
| https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/median-
| in...
| mullingitover wrote:
| Hmm, I'm seeing a different story in the World Bank's
| data[1] for GPD per capita, PPP adjusted. It shows the US
| in 12th place.
|
| Regardless, I'm happy to cede this point as it's
| irrelevant to the topic I was discussing: Cuba isn't
| _that_ poor compared to its peers.
|
| [1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.C
| D?most_...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| GDP/Capita isn't median income (it should roughly
| correspond to _mean_ income); many of the higher GDP
| /capita are also higher inequality and so lower median is
| quite possible.
| samatman wrote:
| Thank you, I put median in italics and everything.
|
| The point of citing the median is that, by definition,
| the top 15% do not affect it, except by virtue of
| existing.
| mullingitover wrote:
| Okay, I already ceded that point anyway. The overall
| point that you can cherry pick to make any country look
| bad in one way or another stands, however.
| samatman wrote:
| What you've demonstrated is that one can start with false
| statistics and reach a conclusion not grounded in
| reality.
| paxys wrote:
| There is no blocade. Cuba is free to trade with whoever it
| wants, as is the US.
| tehjoker wrote:
| "DSA Says Let Cuba Live: Ending the US Blockade Today"
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXoXOo7_oLM
| agonz253 wrote:
| Is it the embargo that prohibits fishermen in Cuba from
| fishing, farmers from harvesting, cubans from freely doing
| business? Is it also responsible for cubans getting beaten and
| imprisoned for thinking differently? Was it the embargo that
| destroyed every sugar mill in the country, textile factory,
| shoe factory, you name it?... The dictatorship is the one
| responsible for all these things.
| feedforward wrote:
| CIA-backed groups in Miami were bombing Cuban hotels in the
| 1990s. They were bombing Cuban passenger airlines, killing
| many civilians. They were burning sugar fields. Of course
| there was also the Bay of Pigs invasion, the theft of
| Guantanamo harbor etc.
| agonz253 wrote:
| https://www.scribbr.com/fallacies/red-herring-fallacy/
| choeger wrote:
| Well, that explains why Cuban cigars are impossible to get since
| a couple of years...
| jmyeet wrote:
| I really want people to understand that a sterile term like
| "economic sanctions" really means "starving them to death". It's
| not just food. It's the infrastructure necessary to grow food and
| to have clean drinking water. It's basic medicines, life-saving
| stuff.
|
| What we, as a country, have done and continue to do to Cuba is
| absolutely unconscionable.
|
| It affects us too. Over the last 60+ years there have hundreds of
| thousands or even millions of Cuban migrants to the US. This [1]
| claims 2.7 million but includes US-born descendants. Cuban
| migrants aren't a random sample of Cubans. They skew very much
| anti-Castro, which means by extension they skew very pro-Batista.
| Definitely right-leaning or even pro-fascist [2[.
|
| Importing fascist or fascist adjacent people who ultimately
| became voters has changed US politics where Florida is now a
| safely red state. Here's more on the demographics of Cubans in
| Miami in particular [3].
|
| I find it interesting how this aspect of immigration is so often
| missed or glossed over.
|
| There is absolutely no justification for continuing 60+ years of
| sanctions just because our puppet was deposed.
|
| [1]: https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/cuban-immigrants-
| uni...
|
| [2]: https://time.com/archive/6762287/cuba-batista-backfire/
|
| [3]:
| https://latinostudies.nd.edu/assets/95278/original/grenchun....
| jimmar wrote:
| The UN, UK, and EU have no sanctions imposed on Cuba [1]. Why
| has no other country prevented Cuba from "starving to death?"
| Honest question. Is the United States so powerful that our
| trade is the only thing keeping countries alive?
|
| [1] https://globalsanctions.co.uk/region/cuba/
| Devasta wrote:
| Secondary sanctions. If your company trades with Cuba, then
| companies that want to trade with the US also violate the
| sanctions by trading with you.
|
| So even something as basic as opening a bank account in such
| circumstances isn't possible, as no bank will cut themselves
| off from the entire worldwide banking system just to provide
| you an account.
| jimmar wrote:
| It's a complex issue, for sure, and I admit to not being
| well informed. I did a quick search, and Biden's
| administration allowed Cubans to open accounts with U.S.
| banks, but the Cuban government does not like giving up
| control. Cuba passed laws "forcing businesses to use Cuban
| banks for payment" [1].
|
| [1] https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-
| world/world/americas...
| samatman wrote:
| This is wrong. There are no secondary sanctions against
| Cuba.
|
| Cuba is poor because Cuba is Communist. They can trade with
| everyone except the United States, if they had anything to
| trade with.
|
| The US sanctions do serve as a wonderful excuse for the
| Cuban government to blame the poverty they inflict upon
| their own citizens on the United States. Plenty of gullible
| people outside the country fall for it as well.
| Devasta wrote:
| So if I, as an Irish citizen, decided to start a business
| that traded with Cuba, US companies would have no legal
| issues doing business with me?
| Aloisius wrote:
| The EU passed a statue (No 2271/96) in 1996 that blunted
| the US' ability to sanction EU companies for trading with
| Cuba.
|
| The statue gives EU companies the ability to recover
| damages caused by the Helms-Burton Act. They even
| threatened to counter-sanction US companies making Title
| III complaints.
|
| The result of multiple countries passing similar blocking
| statues was that the Helms-Burton Act had been suspended
| by every President from 1996 until 2019 when Trump
| decided to reactivate it.
|
| According to an EU report on the statue, there have been
| threats of US legal action, but no mention of any EU
| company has actually been sanctioned.
| jmyeet wrote:
| > The UN, UK, and EU have no sanctions imposed on Cuba
|
| The US is the 800 pound gorilla in the room here. The US is
| 90 miles off the coast of Cuba. Cuba once supplied cane sugar
| to the US. Now we can't of course because it might hurt the
| corn lobby.
|
| Imagine if the EU imposed sanctions on the UK, an island
| nation just off its coast. You could say "the US is free to
| trade with the UK" and you'd be correct but do you think for
| a second it wouldn't be massively damaging to the UK economy?
| xienze wrote:
| > Importing fascist or fascist adjacent people who ultimately
| became voters has changed US politics where Florida is now a
| safely red state.
|
| And on the flip side, importing Central and South Americans who
| are socialist or socialist adjacent and ultimately become
| voters has changed US politics where California and other
| states are now safely blue.
|
| > I find it interesting how this aspect of immigration is so
| often missed or glossed over^W^W^W^Wdismissed as a right wing
| conspiracy theory.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| South and Central Americans fall back to their catholic
| roots, rejecting the communism of their home country within
| two generations.
| jmyeet wrote:
| > And on the flip side, importing Central and South Americans
|
| Which countries are those, exactly? I"ll refer you to:
|
| - "South American Immigrants in the United States" [1];
|
| - "Hispanics and Latinos in California" [2].
|
| Now California's single largest ethnicity is Hispanic. Nearly
| all are of Mexican descent. They're underrepresented in
| voting though where the typical California voter is still
| older and white [3].
|
| We have Venezuelan refugees now. Their government is
| ostensibly socialist. So Venezuelan refugees have similar
| leanings to Cuban immigrants.
|
| Colombians are a large group there. One exit poll suggested
| roughly half voted for Trump in 2020 [4].
|
| The point is that the Latino and Hispanic vote is complicated
| and certainly not monolithic.
|
| [1]: https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/south-american-
| immig...
|
| [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispanics_and_Latinos_in_C
| alif...
|
| [3]: https://calmatters.org/newsletters/whatmatters/2023/08/c
| alif...
|
| [4]: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/populist-leftist-
| colombi...
| greyvddhb wrote:
| > There is absolutely no justification for continuing 60+ years
| of sanctions just because our puppet was deposed.
|
| Two weeks ago Russia landed an armada there in a show of force
| right off the US coast. It's not an easy black and white
| situation where you can just say "USA bad."
| mordae wrote:
| It is, though. If US did not sanction Cuba, there very much
| would be no Russian visit. When US decides you are an enemy,
| you don't get to pick your friends.
| labrador wrote:
| I support immigration and oppose the Republican anti-immigrant
| platform because it seems to me there is significant brain drain
| from many countries to the U.S. and that contributes to our
| success.
|
| For example, in this article is about white collar crime, it
| points out that many Somali-Americans were professionals back in
| Somalia. I'm not concerned about the crime because that seems
| like a somewhat higher tendency until the 2nd and 3rd generation
| is able to make it into established society.
|
| A Somali-American former investigator: why you're hearing about
| fraud in my community
|
| https://minnesotareformer.com/2024/07/17/a-somali-american-i...
| greenchair wrote:
| correction: anti-illegal immigrant platform. the 3rd worlder
| influx of criminals is negative for the country not positive.
| _heimdall wrote:
| What is and isn't legal immigration is always a moving
| target. A majority of US history included open borders where
| it was legal for anyone to get off a boat, provide some basic
| info, and go on to try and make their way here.
|
| The idea of closed borders, immigration caps, etc is
| relatively modern and driven more by the fact that social
| entitlement programs cost money than a fear of dangerous
| people coming here.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Modern civilization has entitlements, if we get rid of
| entitlements, sure we can have open borders. We just can't
| do both or the system collapses.
| _heimdall wrote:
| Agreed. That's where the question is really interesting,
| and important, though. If we can only have one or the
| other, and if a majority of Americans view our southern
| border as an untenable situation, can we maintain our
| entitlement programs?
|
| Entitlement programs only work if we can secure our
| borders. If we can't secure our borders it seems to be
| clear that we can't have the entitlement programs.
| AnarchismIsCool wrote:
| Why are some societies worse off than others, to the
| point where someone would need to move countries take
| their entitlements? Might it have something to do with
| what the entitled countries did to the ones that are
| worse off?
| creato wrote:
| Even if we accept this point as fact, which I think is
| _maybe_ , _partially_ true in _some_ cases, it's such a
| ridiculous argument. Do you think the average American is
| going to think that because their 3-10x generation
| ancestors, who might not even have existed in this
| country, _might_ have been assholes to the 3-10x
| generation ancestors of these immigrants today, that they
| are now unable to have an opinion on how their government
| handles immigration and entitlements?
| rangestransform wrote:
| That doesn't force upon the US any responsibility at all
| to deal with it
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| The original immigration laws were explicitly racist. They
| were long before the entitlement programs existed.
| _heimdall wrote:
| I don't know enough about the specific racial factors in
| our older immigration laws, I'll take your word for it,
| but there isn't anything linking the two. We could have
| open borders without entitlement programs _or_ racist
| immigration laws.
| vitaflo wrote:
| > A majority of US history included open borders where it
| was legal for anyone to get off a boat, provide some basic
| info, and go on to try and make their way here.
|
| Unless you were coming off a boat from Africa. Lets not
| forget that slavery defined a large section of American
| history.
| _heimdall wrote:
| I didn't say that anyone getting off a boat was doing it
| willingly. There are a ton of problems in US history
| related to slavery, not least of which how our founding
| fathers handled slavery while attempted to build a nation
| based on freedom and individual rights.
|
| That's separate from the core topic here though. The
| slave trade and all the problems that go along with it do
| not change the fact that our borders were open for a
| majority of our history.
| jfengel wrote:
| An easy way to reduce illegal immigration is to raise quotas.
| People would rather migrate legally.
| sumedh wrote:
| Why raise quotas though?
| jfengel wrote:
| He said he liked legal immigration. So we can have more
| legal immigrants any time we want.
|
| If they don't want to raise quotas then they don't really
| want legal immigrants. They just want to keep everyone
| out.
| nozzlegear wrote:
| To get more immigrants.
| sumedh wrote:
| Why?
| apsec112 wrote:
| Trump supported a plan to reduce legal immigration by half:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/02/us/politics/trump-
| immigra...
| pton_xd wrote:
| > the Republican anti-immigrant platform because it seems to me
| there is significant brain drain from many countries to the
| U.S. and that contributes to our success.
|
| Explain how unskilled illegal immigrants contribute to our
| success. I'm open minded but I've yet to hear anything
| convincing.
|
| No one is opposed to the legal immigration of skilled workers.
| torpfactory wrote:
| There's a very sizable number of low paying, dirty,
| dangerous, and/or boring jobs that we can't find enough
| locals to do. Think farm hands, home care aides, meat
| processors, etc. Unskilled immigrants do those jobs because
| that's what is available to them (I.e unskilled). If they
| weren't doing those jobs, we'd have to pay significantly more
| for the goods and services that labor depends on. Immigrant
| labor is disinflationary or at least prevents or ameliorates
| it.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| These jobs are low-paying _because_ they 're broadly
| unproductive. If some of them weren't doing these jobs, the
| wages paid for them at the margin would increase. We are
| vastly better off importing more skilled immigrants to
| high-income countries, compared to unskilled ones.
| lrem wrote:
| How can you call literally feeding the people "broadly
| unproductive"? It's low margin, but you can't have a
| society supporting your margins without someone doing the
| bottom jobs.
| petesergeant wrote:
| Labour productivity has a specific meaning
| gertlex wrote:
| Enlighten us, then?
|
| And does "broadly unproductive" have a specific meaning,
| too?
| s0rce wrote:
| If we didn't have lower wage workers doing farm work food
| would be way more expensive and less diverse. I'm not
| sure how you judge the productivity of the worker...
| energy123 wrote:
| That's an economically illiterate comment. You're
| confusing scarcity of labor, which determines price, with
| the utility that that labor generates.
| stale2002 wrote:
| This isn't the 1900s, dude.
|
| If supply for labor goes a bit down, wages will increase
| a bit, and then companies will be incentivized to replace
| these bad jobs with automation.
|
| Those jobs going away, and wages going up, is a good
| thing not a bad thing.
|
| As few people should be doing those bad jobs as possible,
| and for the ones that do them, they should be paid more.
| markdown wrote:
| They _are_ skilled. Try taking the best and brightest out
| of Silicon Valley and put them on farms, orchards, and in
| construction, and see how well they do.
|
| This elitist attitude that low-paid workers are
| "unskilled" workers is bullshit and needs to go.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| You're absolutely right that 'skilled' is merely a
| relative term and ultimately a social construct. But
| nonetheless, the fact remains that those skills are so
| much more abundant and are not soaked up by existing
| demand (which would drive wage increases at the margin).
| herewulf wrote:
| As a software engineer who has done plenty of home
| improvement, gardening, automotive repair, etc, I think
| the best and brightest would learn quickly.
|
| Now, let's take the average farmer, orchard worker,
| construction worker, and then chuck them into a software
| job. They wouldn't know where to start and wouldn't get
| anywhere without the same educational basics that 99% of
| developers have gone through. That's not elitist, it's
| just reality.
|
| So, there's a clear distinction to be made and it's not
| necessary to water down _every_ word in the English
| language because we 're afraid of hurting someone's
| feelings.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Uh-huh. Let's see all those soft keyboard jockeys be
| efficient at hanging drywall and working on a roof all
| day long with no air conditioning in Texas or Arizona.
| They won't. They don't have what it takes.
| bavell wrote:
| Not all of us "keyboard jockeys" grew up soft and
| sheltered in big cities. The dry heat of TX/AZ isn't that
| bad compared to the sweltering humidity of the southeast
| ;)
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| I'm from the bayou. I know damned good and well what I'm
| talking about. Roofing and construction for a living is
| not the same as occasionally going outside and sitting
| around in the heat.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| I'm struck how you can't see that both situations are
| exactly the same. Go to a strawberry field. Would you
| have any idea what to do as soon as you arrived?
| Absolutely not. No one is born knowing how to manage a
| farm from instinct. You'd need to learn how the farm
| works too.
| remixff2400 wrote:
| I think the argument isn't "engineer" vs. "farmer", but
| rather engineer (or doctor, interpreter, commercial
| farmer/farm manager, industrial project manager, any
| other specialization that realistically requires years of
| training) vs. lower-skilled labor like farmhand, non-
| management/unspecialized construction worker, stuff that
| can be taught and learned relatively quickly.
|
| I wouldn't call "low-skilled" workers _unproductive_ per
| se, and personally think they're incredibly valuable, but
| economically, the cost/difficulty of replacing a "low-
| skilled" worker is relatively low: it's a lot easier to
| find a replacement farmhand than it is a replacement
| farmer that manages the farm itself.
| bavell wrote:
| I went strawberry picking a month ago with my 4yo and she
| picked it up pretty quick. She'd have much more trouble
| joining me in my day-to-day dev job.
| slothtrop wrote:
| It means, invariably, that they work positions that do
| not require high education. That's it. Any other
| euphemism in its place would just be in service of the
| same meaning.
| csomar wrote:
| Construction in a tight real estate market is broadly
| unproductive?
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| They're not all unskilled. Well-paying construction jobs,
| which used to be a path to the middle class, have been
| gutted (in the western US at least).
| sensanaty wrote:
| They're low paying because (often illegal) immigrants from
| other countries either
|
| A) are happy to put up with what is a luxurious salary for
| back home, but barely liveable locally
|
| Or B) don't have a choice once they're in, since they
| practically become indentured servants
|
| In the Netherlands, no dutchie wants to work construction
| for example, because immigrants from Eastern Europe often
| take under-the-table deals where they get paid drastically
| less than what a Dutchie would command, though still much
| higher than any job they'd get back home. The same happens
| everywhere.
|
| The answer is NOT to bring the country down by mass-
| importing low skilled workers, but by forcing these hugely
| profitable companies to actually invest in the country and
| its citizens by paying all employees as it should.
| systemtest wrote:
| Both Dutch natives and EU-migrants are to be paid minimum
| wage, however it is a common trick when hiring migrants
| to charge them a ridiculous amount of rent for very sub-
| par accommodation nearby the jobsite. For example
| EUR600/month for a bunk-bed in a room with eight others.
| That is a way many temp agencies earn extra from
| migrants.
| sensanaty wrote:
| > Both Dutch natives and EU-migrants are to be paid
| minimum wage
|
| In theory, yes, but I know a decent number of my own
| countrymen (Serbians) that most definitely aren't legally
| employed in NL, but they're still working construction.
| It's vile, but it is what it is. (Not them, the companies
| are vile for what they're doing, the workers are simply
| surviving however they can)
| 15155 wrote:
| Could it be possible that this bunk bed is then made a
| required (verbal - nobody put it in writing, of course)
| condition of employment?
| systemtest wrote:
| I don't know the contract details but these workers are
| picked up at the facility every day with an 8-person van
| and brought to the job site. Not only will it be very
| difficult to get a rental apartment for 2 months at less
| than EUR600/month, you also miss out on the
| transportation if you do.
|
| And these jobs are usually picking strawberries out in
| the rural sections or working for Amazon at some
| industrial estate that doesn't have public transit late
| at night.
| suzzer99 wrote:
| > The answer is NOT to bring the country down by mass-
| importing low skilled workers
|
| My great grandparents came to this country as low skilled
| workers. I work with a second generation computer
| programmer whose parents came as unskilled workers. I
| know a guy from Guatemala who cleans houses and put his
| three kids through college. He just about explodes with
| pride when he talks about his kids.
|
| Not everyone shares your views.
| switch007 wrote:
| > since they practically become indentured servants
|
| Yup. A lot the cheap fruit + veg in the EU is thanks to
| back-breaking work by immigrants and the farm owners
| breaching their human and labour rights..
|
| Who do you think is picking the fruit in the massive
| green house of southern spain? Not well-paid Spaniards
| I'll tell you - https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/ethicalca
| mpaigns/agricultura...
| kwere wrote:
| anecdotally, as an Italian i worked summer jobs in the
| rural side few years ago being paid 4$ an hour off the
| table, and it was considered a very good pay. I hear all
| the time of illegal migrants being paid 2/3 $ an hour
| without any contract
| np- wrote:
| I'm always deeply uncomfortable with this argument. It
| sounds like justification for a "slave" class to do
| undesirable jobs with no legal protections and sub minimum
| wage, just so Americans can save a few bucks at the
| supermarket. But at what moral cost? We can't have it both
| ways--if they're here working, then it needs to be at full
| American wage with full American regulation/oversight. But
| that itself defeats the purpose of hiring undocumented
| workers.
| mrsalt wrote:
| Why is it uncomfortable? It is the reality, and no one
| important wants to change it.
|
| There are plenty of immigrants working under the table.
| And there are plenty of employers willing to hire them.
|
| We do have it both ways.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Part of what perpetuates this sort of thing is a general
| idea in society that one can't do or learn something
| because that's not possible for them. I'm of the opinion
| that if sufficiently motivated and with sufficient
| constraints removed, anyone can learn and do anything.
| The only difference between an engineer and someone
| breaking their back for work is that the engineer was
| probably coddled from birth into being told they can do
| anything including engineering. Not as a pipe dream but a
| clear path: take these classes, apply to this college,
| take this internship, take this job.
|
| Meanwhile the laborer was probably told all their life
| they don't have what it takes, either explicitly or not,
| and that thinking held them back their entire life. Why
| try hard in school if I am "not smart"? Why try and go to
| college if I can't pay for it? Why not just do what my
| neighbor or my uncle does that I know is possible? Many
| people need to be reminded that everything is possible if
| they aren't dissuaded by unhelpful ideas or people.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| << I'm of the opinion that if sufficiently motivated and
| with sufficient constraints removed, anyone can learn and
| do anything.
|
| Anyone can do anything if they believe enough..
|
| It is a nice sentiment and I cling to it myself more
| often than not, because there is something soothing about
| it. The unfortunate reality, however, is that being
| forced onto thing for which I have no predisposition, is,
| uhh, counterproductive at best.
|
| In short, I disagree with pre-supposition that your
| position requires ( we are all amorphous blobs that can
| be molded into whatever with sufficient amount of force
| ). And that is before we get to the question of whether
| it is even worthwhile to teach a kid with down syndrome
| calculus? Not possible. Worthwhile.
|
| << Many people need to be reminded that everything is
| possible if they aren't dissuaded by unhelpful ideas or
| people.
|
| No. People need to understand themselves. They need to
| experience their limits and then cater to their strengths
| and weaknesses accordingly. It is unhelpful to think that
| billions people on this planet are interchangeable cogs.
| We are not.
|
| I am extremely unlikely to ever be like Georgi Gerganov.
| I simply do not believe I have the brain capacity needed.
|
| It is fine to aspire, but I am not changing the world
| tomorrow.
| ahartmetz wrote:
| If you believe that anyone can do anything, you have
| never done something properly difficult and watched
| yourself and / or others fail despite trying hard.
|
| Inappropriate dissuasion surely exists, but you don't
| help your case by making such claims.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >It sounds like justification for a "slave" class to do
| undesirable jobs
|
| It's the exact opposite. The slavery is being trapped in
| Cuba which the person decided to leave by their own free
| will to make it to America, where working a terrible
| factory job is going to make them ten times richer than
| they would have been otherwise.
|
| Is you being uncomfortable with this idea actually more
| important than giving that person a shot to work himself
| to a normal American life within two decades and
| certainly for their kids?
| coding123 wrote:
| Meat processors. No wonder listeria incidents, salmonella
| and a bunch of other food born diseases are on the rise.
| rangestransform wrote:
| I think it would be better to legitimize migrant labour for
| those types of jobs a la Singapore
| bart_spoon wrote:
| It's shocking to me that the argument that consistently
| gets trotted out as to why we should accept illegal
| immigration is that they perform jobs too dangerous and
| poorly paid for non-illegal immigrants to do. Perhaps if
| there wasn't a never ending stream of people so poor and
| powerless to take advantage of, these industries might be
| forced to pay livable wages or provide better protections.
|
| It's insane that the supposedly progressive faction of
| American politics is arguing in favor of a system that
| amounts to a modern version of indentured servitude and
| systemic violation of labor rights, all for the sake of
| cheaper fruit and meat.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| lowering cost of labor expands our economy, agglomeration
| effects, etc.
| windowshopping wrote:
| Why would we be opposed to unskilled immigrants? The majority
| of the people who came here from Europe in the 1700s and
| 1800s were laborers, factory workers, farmers, and other
| simple occupations. Why are we pulling up the ladder behind
| them? Did you want to freeze the US as it was circa 1950?
| Things change man. The US isn't forever, anymore than Rome
| was. You gotta stop trying to fight the current and
| pretending that by preventing "unskilled immigration" you can
| maintain the US in some hypothetical idealized state
| completely specific to your imagination.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > Did you want to freeze the US as it was circa 1950?
|
| That's exactly what we're doing (in Europe and East Asia
| even more so than the U.S.) by opposing skilled migration.
| Increasing legal skilled migration is much more critical,
| though other concerns such as asylum rights for those
| fleeing from an oppressive government or a war-ravaged
| country also matter quite a bit.
| gottorf wrote:
| > The majority of the people who came here from Europe in
| the 1700s and 1800s were laborers, factory workers,
| farmers, and other simple occupations. Why are we pulling
| up the ladder behind them?
|
| The welfare state did not exist in that time, so the cost
| of absorbing immigration was confined to acculturation.
| Immigrants had to quickly start generating value or perish.
| The incentives are radically different now and the marginal
| cost to society of absorbing each additional immigrant is
| much higher.
|
| US government spending as a percentage of GDP remained low
| single digits until WW1; it is roughly 35% today.
|
| > You gotta stop trying to fight the current
|
| You must also remember that the natural state of everything
| is decay, and the natural state of mankind in particular is
| "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short". The current
| grinds everything down to sand. It is incumbent upon
| everyone to fight the current in the way that affords the
| greatest benefit to society.
| claytongulick wrote:
| It takes energy to fight entropy.
|
| I believe that the entropic state of human civilization
| is brutal authoritarianism.
|
| Fight the current, indeed.
|
| It's quite remarkable how effectively the citizens of the
| United States have managed to do that over the years. To
| resist the sweet, seductive lies of utopians who seek
| power.
|
| I hope we're able to continue.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| That's insightful and terrifying at the same time
| harimau777 wrote:
| What welfare costs are you referring to? Is there actual
| evidence that immigrants are a drain on the country? The
| information that I'm seeing suggests that they are a net
| positive in terms of taxes.
| murderfs wrote:
| The response of cities to Texas bussing immigrants to
| them is pretty stark evidence:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/20/us/abbott-texas-
| migrant-b...
|
| If they were a net gain, cities presumably wouldn't be
| playing hot potato with migrants by paying for one way
| bus tickets to "not here".
| oooyay wrote:
| I lived in Texas for most of my life. Immigrants quite
| literally fueled the economy of Texas. Most homes in
| North Texas shift and require foundation leveling or
| repair every 8-10 years; estimates for this kind of work
| range from cheap to _very expensive_ and it 's done the
| same way. The difference is immigrants doing the work vs
| not. There's a certain amount of migratory ag that is
| supported by immigrants. Harbors are full of immigrant
| businesses and services being provided. The massive
| expansion in housing has mostly been facilitated by an
| immigrant labor force.
|
| I lived under George W Bush, Rick Perry, and Greg Abbott
| as governors. I can tell you what distinguishes Greg
| Abbott from the rest of them is that Greg Abbott is an
| absolute piece of shit. I say that with zero
| embellishing. When I came home from the military there
| was this conspiracy theory called Jade Helm rocking Texas
| that a scheduled military training exercise in Texas was
| actually an exercise in taking peoples guns. Greg Abbott
| knew about and authorized the exercise, but stoked fears
| anyway: https://www.texastribune.org/2018/05/03/hysteria-
| over-jade-h...
|
| Since then Greg has also employed barbed wire in the Rio
| Grand so that people crossing would get stuck in it and
| drown: https://www.axios.com/local/san-
| antonio/2023/07/22/doj-abbot...
|
| Greg quite literally pried the Houston ISD's autonomy
| from them despite them completing the state mandate and
| progressing far better than anyone thought they would in
| the allotted time. Why? So he could institute a voucher
| system so that kids can go to private, Christian schools
| with state money:
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/03/27/real-
| sto...
|
| The man is a populist of the worst type. He takes an
| already bad situation, dumps fuel on it, calls it a
| solution, and acts none the wiser when things blow up;
| when they do inevitably blow up, he always has a patsy to
| blame. This is all to say, before I'd trust the actions
| of Greg Abbott and shipping people to new towns you
| should probably ask yourself, "What political game could
| Greg be playing?" and that will be closer to the truth
| than any rationalization you can come up with.
| murderfs wrote:
| Sure, I agree that Greg Abbott is an asshole. That
| doesn't necessarily make him wrong, though? I'm not
| looking at _his_ actions, it 's obviously political
| theatre. The actions that appear to be revelatory to me
| are the ones by Democratic-led cities that went from
| grandstanding of their own to immediately backpedaling
| when the burden of providing social services to illegal
| immigrants was shared with them. Greg Abbott is taking a
| bad situation and sharing it with his neighbors, but they
| were closing their eyes and saying "there is no problem,
| and it's good actually" until they had to deal with it
| themselves.
| oooyay wrote:
| Yes, they are griping because those cities already house
| most of Americas immigrants:
| https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/08/20/key-
| findi...
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Conservatives play funny games in their states to appease
| their racist and misinformed base. I wouldn't think too
| deeply about it. California for example doesn't do that
| song and dance and their economy is better than texas.
| 5th best in the world in fact if you considered
| california its own state separate from the rest of the
| US.
| LunaSea wrote:
| And this bussing showed that Ney Work and Chicago
| democrats were all talk and zero substance.
| harimau777 wrote:
| My observation was just the opposite. Unlike Texas, the
| Democratic cities did what they could to help the
| immigrants.
| LunaSea wrote:
| Sure, in the beginning but it also proved the Republican
| point that you can't handle an unrestricted amount of
| immigration, even in large cities which also goes in
| favour of immigration restrictions (and of course not
| total immigration blockage which is not feasible and
| silly).
| harimau777 wrote:
| Large cities don't have the sorts of agricultural jobs
| that illegal immigrants generally work. They also already
| have high cost of living and housing shortages. So it's
| not surprising that they have a limited ability to absorb
| illegal immigrants into their workforce.
|
| Stepping back a moment. We also probably shouldn't be
| surprised that disorganized mass immigration is causing
| problems. That's why Democrats generally advocate
| comprehensive immigration reform. Its going to be easier
| to absorb immigration if its happening in an orderly
| manner.
| bart_spoon wrote:
| The public sentiment in those cities regarding
| immigration has completely flipped from the moment the
| buses started arriving. They were loudly in favor of
| refusing to enforce immigration laws when El Paso, Texas
| was dealing with hundreds of thousands of illegal border
| crossings over decades, but the second a few thousand
| start showing up in buses in Chicago and New York City,
| they declare a state of emergency and start demanding the
| stop of the immigrants being transported to their cities
| because they have no room. And now it's probably the
| single strongest issue the Republicans are going to win
| on in the election.
|
| I'm not conservative, but sending illegal migrants
| directly to sanctuary cities might be the single most
| effective strategic political move in my lifetime. It
| flipped a decades old stalemate on its head practically
| overnight.
| harimau777 wrote:
| That's a fair point, but I also think that there is
| nuance.
|
| The economy of most major cities isn't based on the
| agricultural industry that most illegal immigrants work
| in.
|
| Cities generally already have high housing costs and
| density. So a sudden population surge is going to be more
| difficult to manage.
|
| Basically Abbott bussed immigrants to the places that are
| least setup to be able to absorb them. So it's not
| surprising that there are problems. That doesn't
| necessarily reflect on whether immigrants are a net gain
| once they have been absorbed into the economy.
| diffxx wrote:
| Hobbes doesn't get the last word on the natural state of
| mankind. Thank God.
| cm2187 wrote:
| That was when those countries were going through their
| industrial revolution. Those same countries are now
| desindustrialising.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| There's still work these people are finding in the US.
| Ever been to socal? Go to an el salvador neighborhood,
| one of the most recent immigrant communities. Absolutely
| buzzing with people going to their various jobs. Are they
| stamping out Fords? No. Pouring cement and hanging
| drywall maybe, or cooking on the line. There's still
| plenty of work for people who can offer their time and
| their two hands over a credentialed resume in the US.
| petesergeant wrote:
| > No one is opposed to the legal immigration of skilled
| workers
|
| I can assure you that's not true, but we hear the most about
| illegal unskilled immigration because everyone agrees on
| that.
| hyperpape wrote:
| > No one is opposed to the legal immigration of skilled
| workers.
|
| Steve Bannon, Trump's chief strategist in 2016, argued that
| the quantity of Asian CEOs in Silicon Valley undermined
| "civic society" https://web.archive.org/web/20161117164322/ht
| tps://www.theve....
|
| There absolutely are a lot of people who want to restrict
| legal immigration. If you deny that, you're just pretending
| that you're not helping them out.
| ponector wrote:
| > No one is opposed to the legal immigration of skilled
| workers.
|
| That is not true. If no one is opposing immigration of
| skilled workers then why getting a visa is a lottery?
| bart_spoon wrote:
| If they opposed skilled immigration, there wouldn't be a
| lottery at all, there would be 0 visas allocated.
| ponector wrote:
| To continue your thought: if they really opposed illegal
| immigration, there wouldn't be illegal migrants at all.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > No one is opposed to the legal immigration of skilled
| workers.
|
| Is this why I keep reading "THEY TUKK ER JERBS!!!!!!" as a
| knock-down argument against H1-B and other legal visas here
| on HN?
| tonynator wrote:
| We don't want to become Canada.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Are IT-sector workers even that low-paid in Canada
| anyway?
| tonynator wrote:
| No idea, but housing and jobs in many sectors are getting
| extremely scarce in Canada's cities due to their insane
| immigration policies aiming to bring in """skilled
| workers"""
| herewulf wrote:
| The government is also bringing in tons of unskilled
| workers and "students" who are curiously not enrolled
| anywhere and it absolutely shows.
| rangestransform wrote:
| Compared to the US, yeah they're quite low compared to
| CoL
| coding123 wrote:
| Apparently they are pooping on the beaches there.
| gregors wrote:
| As an immigrant who works in tech, I think the H1-B issue
| in particular is a bit more nuanced. I think the feeling is
| that H1-B's are used inappropriately as a tool to leverage
| salaries lower. I don't actually know the stats on that.
|
| That being said, you do want immigrants working right?
| That's kinda the entire point.
| aegis4244 wrote:
| Economists say every immigrant is a net economic positive to
| the nation. They eat,buy food clothing, cars. Every immigrant
| child is a net negative to the state,at least until they turn
| 18. But it isn't even. Net neg per kid of maybe 800 a year,
| positive of each adult of 1200-1600 are the numbers I've
| heard on freakonomics podcast. Their guests proposed solution
| was to have the feds pay the states per an immigrant child to
| offset who bears the costs. I don't think it's even a
| debatable position that each immigrant is a net economic
| positive, in the long term. Some political groups worrying
| about losing their culture is a completely different kettle
| of fish.
|
| https://www.bushcenter.org/catalyst/north-american-
| century/b...
| j-krieger wrote:
| > Economists say every immigrant is a net economic positive
| to the nation
|
| This isn't true in general and depends on the local economy
| and the immigrants country of origin. MENA migrants are a
| net loss for Germany, for example.
|
| Even if economists agree, the money these immigrants spend
| lands in the pockets of rich capitalists.
|
| The entire topic is far more nuanced than you make it out
| to be.
| zapperdulchen wrote:
| Do you have some sources for your claim that MENA
| migrants are a net loss for Germany?
| j-krieger wrote:
| Yes. Here[1]
|
| [1]: https://www.handelsblatt.com/politik/deutschland/dem
| ografie-...
| sumedh wrote:
| > https://www.bushcenter.org
|
| Is this some propaganda website by Bush to promote neocon
| values?
| mongol wrote:
| > Economists say every immigrant is a net economic positive
| to the nation.
|
| This can only be true if they sustain themselves on their
| own work. An immigrant that does not work and only lives on
| subsidies can hardly be called a net positive.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| This is not behavior exclusive to immigrants though.
| Either way the welfare state is not very strong in the
| US. There are 75,000 homeless people in LA county for
| example.
| antisthenes wrote:
| There's an enormous welfare state in the US through what
| is essentially jobs programs.
|
| Health insurance companies, for example, are a negative
| drain on society, yet they employ hundreds of thousands
| of workers, in what can only be explained as a make-work
| program for pointless bureaucracy.
|
| Lots of this in the DOD as well. And the homeless program
| administrators, which you mentioned.
|
| It's just not explicit welfare to the poorest of the poor
| and there are a few implicit steps, because otherwise it
| looks bad.
| omnee wrote:
| This net economic benefit of immigrants varies based on
| their background and skill sets. In Denmark for example,
| MENA immigrants are a net drain throughout their entire
| productive work lives.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20240111003833/https://www.econ
| o...
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| Only because Denmark does a bad job of integrating
| immigrants.
|
| In countries like the US that are good at integrating
| immigrants, they are a huge net positive.
| LunaSea wrote:
| False: https://inquisitivebird.substack.com/p/the-effects-
| of-immigr...
| switch007 wrote:
| > Economists say every immigrant is a net economic positive
| to the nation
|
| Does that not fail your smell test?
|
| EVERY immigrant?
| labrador wrote:
| _"I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and
| convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty
| that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton
| fields and sweatshops."_ -- Stephen Jay Gould
|
| If you believe that quote as I do then unskilled laborers can
| have intelligent children. Making to the United States is
| quite a test of endurance, flexability and competance so
| people who pass that filter are quite likely to be
| intelligent
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| How many unskilled laborers do we need to accept to get one
| future Einstein? The ratio matters.
|
| >Making to the United States is quite a test of endurance,
| flexability and competance so people who pass that filter
| are quite likely to be intelligent
|
| I doubt this is true in cases where you can literally just
| walk across the border.
| labrador wrote:
| I doubt you have many Mexican locals living next the the
| border literally walk across the border and then travel
| to the interior of the country. Most of them are from far
| away places and endure quite a challenging journey to get
| here. I live in San Jose in a neighborhood with many
| older Vietnamese boat people. Columbians have been moving
| in. There isn't an easy way to get from Columbia to
| Mexico by walking.
|
| Crossing the Darien Gap: Migrants Risk Death on the
| Journey to the U.S.
|
| https://www.cfr.org/article/crossing-darien-gap-migrants-
| ris...
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| Yes, the trek is hard for many. But physically hard
| doesn't imply cognitively hard or selective for cognitive
| traits. These paths are well trodden and the difficulty
| is purely physical.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| I don't think anyone knows what factors lead to the next
| einstein or else we'd have nothing but einsteins coming
| out of the public school system.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| But what about the many skilled laborers who are just as
| willing to immigrate to the U.S. and other high-income
| countries? Don't they have at least just as much of a right
| to try and make it there legally?
| zapperdulchen wrote:
| Once someone gave me a similar argument in a rather rude
| utilitarian way: Look at all the white kids in our society.
| They get all the support they need. Any Einstein in there,
| we will catch. Adding support want change the outcome much.
| But look at the immigrant's children. There's so much
| hidden potential. Adding support has the chance to change
| the outcome dramatically.
|
| I still have to come to terms with this way of thinking but
| in a world of limited resources it gave something to think
| about.
| AnarchismIsCool wrote:
| Unskilled labor isn't a thing. There are plenty of people who
| can go from zero skill to writing decent python in a weekend
| (literally better than I've seen on some production systems)
| if given the chance. The same goes for building houses or
| airplanes. In real life, shit just isn't that complicated if
| someone is willing to spend a couple hours teaching the
| basics.
| Tao3300 wrote:
| Crowdstrike? Is that you?
| goatlover wrote:
| I sure hope surgeons spend more than a week to become
| decent.
| chaorace wrote:
| Many are arguing the case for the net economic value of
| immigrant labor which I agree is a fairly compelling case.
| I'd like to offer an alternate avenue of attack, however:
| population trends.
|
| Without immigration, U.S. population growth would be well
| below replacement rate. This is a growing problem throughout
| the entire developed world with no fair answers --
| increasingly, it looks as though the next several decades of
| geopolitical power will be defined by which countries can
| attract the immigrants necessary to maintain, at minimum,
| some population growth.
|
| I won't pretend that the U.S. is a race utopia. We hit just
| about every single branch on the way down, if I'm being
| honest... but most of the ethnostates currently competing for
| world-power status haven't even realized there's a tree that
| they need to be descending yet. We have a powerful edge in
| the coming geopolitical era as one of the most pluralistic,
| multicultural nations in human history. We have unmatched
| institutions and experience when it comes to integrating
| immigrants -- not to mention the incredible advantage of
| having a language & culture that is familiar to the majority
| of living humans.
|
| In my opinion, walking back from these advantages at such a
| critical turning point is probably not something that the
| country could survive in the long-term. We either embrace our
| identity as the world's melting pot or we wither away as
| hermits.
| kwere wrote:
| >Without immigration, U.S. population growth would be well
| below replacement rate. This is a growing problem
| throughout the entire developed world with no fair answers
|
| We are living in a death cult(ure), we arent reproducing
| maybe for economic conditions as in most developed
| countries wages have compressed in real terms and people
| prefer to have less if none kids than to lower their
| lifestile below what they were born into, maybe is the
| anti-family culture that permeates society, seiing the
| nuclear family as a burden to personal fullment, woman
| independence, career obstacle, problem for the enviroment
| or the miriad of other factors.
|
| Importing migrants is just a band aid that moves the
| problems of our unhealthy society few years down the line,
| we need to focus on our dying societies.
| chaorace wrote:
| And how would you say that these two solutions are
| incompatible? How does delaying the replacement rate
| issue with immigration prevent solving the core problem,
| or are you just advocating for accelerationism?
| onetimeusename wrote:
| I am opposed to legal immigration of skilled workers. My
| reason is because it causes what Peter Turchin called _elite
| overproduction_. We have too many highly credentialed people
| who fight over who gets entrance to our top schools and who
| monopolize the highest ranked high schools. Immigrants have
| more social and income mobility than natives. I would argue
| that the professional class has become increasingly isolated
| and contemptuous of non-elite citizens as they continue to
| grow in size and monopolize elite positions. For example, our
| top schools seem to mostly be the children of immigrants or
| immigrants themselves. Those schools feed into the most elite
| business and government positions giving those people
| disproportionate power.
|
| The reasons for inviting them I think are a combination of
| disingenuous or outdated. The arguments about economic
| survival or humanitarian reasons just don't seem true to me
| anymore but that's a separate point.
| gottorf wrote:
| > I'm not concerned about the crime
|
| You may not be concerned about the crime, but many voters are.
| The author of the article you linked to also exhorts the Somali
| immigrant community to not engage in crime.
|
| > because that seems like a somewhat higher tendency until the
| 2nd and 3rd generation is able to make it into established
| society.
|
| History and data from various European nations suggest that
| some immigrant groups aren't able to integrate with the host
| society after multiple generations, and remain ghettoized with
| low employment and high crime rates (vastly higher than the
| native population, for certain categories of crime).
|
| It's clear that the national interest is in accepting skilled
| immigrants who migrate legally and are able to integrate fully
| into the host society, a la Teddy Roosevelt's dropping of the
| hyphen. It is not desirable to have separate ethnic groups who
| "share the same language, culture and faith" distinct from the
| mainstream.
| spamizbad wrote:
| > History and data from various European nations suggest that
| some immigrant groups aren't able to integrate with the host
| society after multiple generations, and remain ghettoized
| with low employment and high crime rates (vastly higher, for
| certain categories of crime).
|
| I'm not sure that's true. For example, in the United States,
| it took numerous generations of German-Americans to fully
| integrate into society, with towns in Wisconsin speaking a
| dialect of German well into the 1940s. Despite this lack of
| cultural integration, these cities experienced very little
| crime.
| gottorf wrote:
| Different immigrant groups have better or worse outcomes,
| hence my saying "some immigrant groups". The cultural
| distance between the English progenitors of the US to the
| large wave of German immigrants in the 1800s is not as
| great as, say, that of Turkish immigrants to Germany post-
| WW2, or Syrian immigrants to contemporary Denmark.
|
| Another way to look at it is that immigrant groups bring
| parts of their old world with them; German-Americans left a
| high-social-trust, low-crime culture and established it in
| their new country.
| rayiner wrote:
| You can see this with Italian immigrants to America. I'm
| in New Jersey right now, and recently was in Wyoming.
| These are obviously not the same people despite being
| "white." They're more different than Pakistanis and
| Bangladeshis and we fought a war to be separate from each
| other.
| spamizbad wrote:
| > German-Americans left a high-social-trust, low-crime
| culture
|
| Did they? I can't speak to the crime rate of the German
| empire, but a very common reason to immigrate, in
| addition to availability of farm land, was to avoid the
| draft (low social trust). The slow rate of assimilation
| is also a signal that these were not people coming from a
| "high-social-trust" background.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| WWI also forced the issue in a way that hasn't quite
| applied to other "ethnic" folks in the US. German
| immigrants, by and large, have been pushed towards
| forgetting their national culture altogether and
| assimilating into a newly-manufactured (by early 20th-
| century Progressives, no less), unified "White" identity.
| deaddodo wrote:
| There was as much (more, even) pressure on the Italians
| and Irish to do the same.
|
| But, to add to and enforce OP's point, their cultures
| were a larger schism away and they instead held on and
| entrenched their identities (to their objective
| detriment, no matter your moral stance). Meanwhile,
| Anglo, Franco, German, Dutch, etc cultures all kind of
| melded into the early "White American" identity; due to
| the general ease of assimilation.
| foobarian wrote:
| How much difference is there, really, between various
| European nationalities? They are all white and Christian,
| using similar language and script, mostly the difference
| is in the Christian denomination.
| mongol wrote:
| Similar language is a stretch. Sure, European languages
| have similar roots, if you go enough far back. But the
| ability to speak your native language with a fellow
| European of another nationality, and have a fluent
| conversation, is quite limited.
| FredPret wrote:
| About 1000x more than the difference between US states
| bavell wrote:
| I guess you could ask the same question of the middle
| eastern countries. Pretty reductive perspective, no?
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Crime among immigrants is largely correlated with
| unemployment rates. European countries with immigrant crime
| problems have high unemployment rates, the US does not.
| hurril wrote:
| This is not a good explanation without also looking at who
| is unemployed. In Sweden, the unemployment is low:ish but
| it is basically non-existent with the natives, but very
| high among immigrants. So it might be true that crime
| correlates with unemployment rates, but Sweden does not
| have a high unemployment.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Canada has a much higher middle Eastern population than
| Sweden. Canada does not have a middle Eastern crime
| problem nor a middle Eastern unemployment problem.
|
| I imagine the biggest difference is that the core of this
| group has been in Canada for almost 50 years.
| hurril wrote:
| Much bigger per capita?
| ponector wrote:
| Some are unable, other groups are successfully integrating.
| Like Ukrainian refugees into neighboring European countries,
| especially Poland.
| mrybczyn wrote:
| Ukrainians integrating into Polish culture is similar to
| the East and West German unification post wall, only more
| complicated by a few extra generations...
| ponector wrote:
| Did western and eastern Germans had different languages?
| Different alfabet? Different religion?
|
| Better comparison is to protestant Germans with Catholic
| French people.
| dakiol wrote:
| > It is not desirable to have separate ethnic groups who
| "share the same language, culture and faith" distinct from
| the mainstream.
|
| Why not? Mainstreams are temporary. The Romans shifted from
| pagans to christians in just a decade (officially speaking).
| The German speaking region of Belgium was annexed in the
| 1900s (now the country has 3 different official languages).
| The whole latin america started speaking Spanish long before
| they became actual countries. Spain was mostly muslim for
| over 700 years.
|
| There's no mainstream. We are always changing and the mix is
| always better.
| guille_ wrote:
| Not every culture can integrate, not every culture is a
| step "forward". Also, your examples are quite weak 1.
| Paganism was not doing too well by the time Christianity
| became official. 2. Belgium is a joke country (sorry!) that
| still has a divided population based on the language they
| speak. Hardly a success case. 3. Americans speaking Spanish
| also resulted in losing native languages and cultures. It
| might be okay to accept it, but the implications in your
| case are obvious, and it definitely would deserve a fair
| bit of debate whether we're okay with that. 4. Right,
| because the Reconquista was famously a period of peace and
| prosperity...
|
| If these are the arguments FOR massive immigration then
| don't be surprised the vast majority of the public is
| against it.
| dakiol wrote:
| I don't know man. This idea of certain cultures being so
| distant that they cannot be integrated with others sounds
| a bit alien to me. If anything, we (all the different
| cultures in this planet) are the result of a vast amount
| of mixing over the centuries. We probably don't notice it
| anymore (proof that the mix has worked wonders) and we
| think we all are so good because "our" culture, "our"
| values. I mean, if something so profound such as religion
| was literally imported to America, anything is possible.
| Sometimes I wish we were invaded by aliens 100% different
| from us in every aspect, so that we realised once and for
| all that we all humans just are and feel the same.
| wrycoder wrote:
| The problem occurs when the newcomers adopt a haughty,
| colonialist attitude and yet have little to offer to
| their hosts.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Presumably they contribute to the hosts bottom line by
| satisfying labor demand and generating new tax revenue.
| sensanaty wrote:
| Even relatively harmless things like haram vs non-haram
| meats can cause a huge struggle, yet alone other more
| nuanced, complex cultural issues.
|
| Also should we really be accepting of cultures that
| openly and unashamedly want to harm marginalized groups
| such as anyone who identifies as LGBT? Getting some new
| recipes or whatever (as it appears that's the direction
| you're thinking of) is one thing, having people
| decapitating school teachers [1] because of a drawing
| (which itself was based on a lie) is a whole different
| thing which nobody sane should be in support of in
| literally any context, ever.
|
| [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67664805
|
| What benefits do you see from importing and allowing this
| kind of barbarism into society?
| ESTheComposer wrote:
| The real question is why you're equating 6 teens to 23%
| of the world (1.8 billion people)
| sensanaty wrote:
| Nowhere did I do that.
|
| Also, it wasn't solely the 6 teens, it was also their
| parents and their communities at large outraged about
| what the teacher did and wanting his head on a spike
| (show a drawing of Muhammad). Not to forget the spark of
| the outrage, the girl who was skipping class and lied
| about what the teacher did, which instigated it all.
|
| There was also that small Charlie Hebdo thing, and the
| Quran burning in Sweden, and countless other similar
| events over the years _in Europe alone_.
|
| I was born and grew up in Indonesia, and the crap that
| was happening in Aceh, one of the only islands in
| Indonesia that practices Sharia law whereas the rest of
| the country is more secular, churns the stomach. I have
| no problems with Islam for the most part, but proponents
| of Sharia law are truly sociopathic monsters that have no
| place in the 21st century.
| thephyber wrote:
| > What benefits do you see from importing and allowing
| this kind of barbarism into society?
|
| Freedom of choice. Is that insane?
|
| Those of us who have different opinions than you probably
| got there because we right-size the risk of the threat
| you appear to hold so high.
|
| Do you believe you are presenting an honest appraisal of
| both the upside risk and downside risk of immigration?
| sensanaty wrote:
| Freedom of choice? You realize we're talking about a man
| who got _beheaded_ because of showing drawings of
| Muhammad to his students, right? (Ignoring the fact that
| the instigator of the whole event lied about what he
| actually did)
|
| Do I not have the freedom of choice of _not_ wanting
| people who will murder over something like that in the
| same country as myself?
|
| > Do you believe you are presenting an honest appraisal
| of both the upside risk and downside risk of immigration?
|
| I never said I'm anti-immigration. I'm an immigrant
| mysely, soon to be a naturalized citizen of my host
| country after years of hard work at embracing its culture
| and traditions as much as I can.
|
| I am, however, anti-immigration if the kind of people
| we're talking about are the types of people that go
| around beheading people, regardless of their reasoning.
| keerthiko wrote:
| this is the most holier-than-thou (literally and
| figuratively) broad strokes opinion phrased as if it's a
| nuanced opinion about cultures.
|
| i think it's self-evident from history and society that
| "importing" "barbarism" into "society"* is how we even
| started doing things like _not_ unashamedly harming
| marginalized groups in the West. if i 'm not mistaken
| most christian sects, whether in europe or america have
| had various levels of being okay with ostracizing and
| harming queer and trans people until very recent times.
| your comment smacks incredibly of thinking only western
| white civilizations are capable of overcoming "barbarism"
| and evolving into a more just society for people over
| time, especially using the common scapegoat of other
| cultures taking longer to catch up on LGBT rights.
|
| fascinating that other people's systems of being is
| "barbarism" and yours is "society". and thus, it's
| reasonable that most of the world thinks american society
| was barbaric with their deep rooted slavery and racism,
| and european society barbaric with their violent colonial
| extractionism defining much of their past and present.
| sensanaty wrote:
| > your comment smacks incredibly of thinking only western
| white civilizations are capable of overcoming "barbarism"
| and evolving into a more just society for people over
| time...
|
| I'm neither a Westerner, nor am I (entirely) White (1/2
| Serbian, if you count it as white (you'd be surprised),
| 1/2 Indonesian). I also grew up in and lived in Indonesia
| the majority of my life. Nowhere did I state that only
| Western societies are the good ones, either, I tend to
| believe that Taoist and Buddhist countries have a better
| track record both in the modern day and in the past for
| the most part.
|
| I'd appreciate if you didn't build a strawman of me,
| because I'm probably not the person you're imagining in
| your head. It's shocking, but people _outside_ the west
| can also believe the west is doing things right and would
| like them to continue doing so, often _because_ of the
| cultures they 've observed back home.
|
| No, what I consider barbarism is a system of being in
| which it's okay to commit a brutal beheading because the
| victim dared to show some drawings of a guy you call a
| Prophet. Or the one that throws people they don't like
| off of buildings. Or the one that buries people in the
| ground and chucks rocks at their heads until they die. Or
| preventing little girls from attending primary and high
| schools.
|
| How many beheadings of innocent people exercising their
| freedoms provided by the nation they were born in are we
| okay with until we finally admit, maybe we shouldn't be
| letting them play in our nice garden if they're just
| going to kick the flowers and rip out the roots?
|
| I grew up in Indonesia, and the entire reason I'm in the
| West is because of these types of people who'd do such
| heinous things. And guess what? The Europeans welcomed me
| with wide open arms, whereas many of my own countrymen
| would have me grievously harmed due to not being a
| follower of their hideous beliefs.
| keerthiko wrote:
| it was evident to me from your other comments that you
| yourself are an immigrant to the west, but it was also
| evident that you believed the west is in a better place
| because "it is doing things right", and therefore other
| places (including where you came from) are doing things
| wrong. my comment was less about who you _are_
| (ethnically, passport-wise, etc), but about the cultural
| superiority you ascribe to the west with your comment
| (which many non-white non-westerners do). i myself am an
| american citizen by immigration, probably for similar
| reasons to yourself, after having lived approx half my
| life in 4 other countries, but i don 't know how relevant
| that is either. that these countries have welcomed you
| and i with open arms doesn't reinforce your opinion that
| they won't harm someone who didn't follow _their_
| beliefs, it just so happens that we follow their beliefs
| and so we get along. in fact, your comment is literally
| arguing for _not_ welcoming people who don 't follow your
| beliefs (assuming they are of violent intent).
|
| this discussion imo is far too complex for a HN comment
| thread, but your depiction of "barbarism" is deeply
| rooted in western narratives omitting details such as
| many people from those places also find those atrocities
| terrible, and they are perpetuated because of a few
| powerful bigoted people and lots of propaganda. when
| atrocities are justified with propaganda, i think it's
| crude to think the _people_ or the _societies_ are
| barbaric as much as the leaders (usu. religious ones)
| are. western societies moved past honor killings,
| feudalism, slavery, concentration camps and other
| barbaric practices not-so-long ago, and to a great extent
| because of the resources they extracted from other
| countries during that time afforded them to bandwidth to
| focus on equitable societies. following that, wanting to
| isolate people of those other societies from also
| becoming part of these more equitable societies by
| precluding them as barbaric and therefore shouldn 't be
| allowed here, imo, is what is barbaric.
|
| the contemporary west has also repeatedly shown itself
| capable of direct barbarism too, like brutally levelling
| a school of innocent children in Pakistan or drone-
| striking innocents as collateral damage with no
| restraint. or what, is unjustified murder & cruelty only
| barbaric when done on your own soil, and fair game done
| in someone else's country with citizen tax dollars?
|
| also somewhat unrelated but yes, serbian is white insofar
| as they genetically present features mostly associated
| with western white society (light-colored eyes, hair
| color other than black, caucasian bone structure) so
| without considering family circumstances/political
| background, that's white, at least on observation. of
| course with your mixed heritage i understand this may not
| be true of you specifically.
| RamblingCTO wrote:
| I've seen this a bit throughout the discussion so let's
| make it explicit: how on earth would someone socialized
| in a world where women are second tier, murders in the
| name of protecting the family honor, sidelining official
| judiciary systems, putting religion over the state, rape,
| sexual assault and on an on integrate well with a country
| that has totally different values (i.e. is a child of
| enlightenment)? How does that work? We see again and
| again, that it does not work. We (=Germany) have plenty
| of statistics to offer. Why some countries (muslim
| countries btw) have a way higher part of that and others
| don't.
|
| How is the culture of Talibans compatible with western
| morale? How? It's just not. We aren't all the same,
| that's just ignoring the truth of how the world works and
| is plenty naive. That doesn't mean that these people are
| lesser beings, but that the gap between "them" and "us"
| (which is a culture thing btw, not a gene thing) is
| bigger. And that also means that it's not equidistant
| throughout. We're not all socialized equally.
|
| Example source: https://www.nzz.ch/der-andere-
| blick/kriminalstatistik-2023-d...
|
| 40% of suspects don't have a German passport while the
| base group is 15% relative to the whole country.
|
| Opinons like yours prevent successful immigration
| discussions because you have the wrong foundation. That
| prevents us from having a) a proper integration
| discussion b) solving current issues and c) creating a
| working immigration system.
| mrbombastic wrote:
| How do you define better if there is no mainstream culture?
| mharig wrote:
| > and the mix is always better.
|
| Mixing races or cultures is like mixing many colours: at
| the beginning you get interesting patterns, then a boring
| uniform brown.
| alluro2 wrote:
| Yeah, but it seems like some nations are only willing to
| invest a low amount of effort in it working out. I.e. if
| you're highly educated skilled worker who will integrate on
| their own, great. If you're a manual laborer who will do the
| work no one wants, for less money, pay tax and integrate
| their kids, great. But if the host society needs to invest in
| their education, social programs and integration, then screw
| it, let them ghettoise and hope the resulting jump in
| nationalism and animosity towards them will balance things
| out.
| HPsquared wrote:
| If there are all those externalities, the "for less money"
| part is a bit weak.
| GolfPopper wrote:
| "The mythical tie between immigration and crime"[1]
|
| 1. https://siepr.stanford.edu/news/mythical-tie-between-
| immigra...
| gottorf wrote:
| As far as I understand it, this study is of limited use in
| discussing today's illegal immigration wave because of two
| reasons: one, it does not distinguish between legal and
| illegal immigrants; and two, it does not distinguish
| between the incentives driving immigrants before the
| establishment of the welfare state and those thereafter.
|
| It stands to obvious reason that an invited houseguest is
| better-behaved than one that jumped the fence to be there,
| and doubly so if there is free cake being served. Any
| claims to the contrary need to examine the two groups
| separately.
| throwaway4220 wrote:
| Again, laying low is what illegal immigrants do. What
| "free cake" do illegal immigrants get? Shelter and food?
|
| Just look at Georgia's law a few years ago where they
| enforced strict paperwork with the threat of arresting
| the employer - probably the worst productive year for
| agriculture because they didn't have cheap labor to rely
| on.
|
| Enforce deportation to the greatest extent possible but
| be prepared to pay for it.
| Xen9 wrote:
| Slightly tangentially, there exists huge amount of
| immigration studies that have failed (intently or not) to
| take confounders into account :(
| noduerme wrote:
| > various European nations [...] some immigrant groups
|
| American Jew here, who spent years living in France and
| Spain. I've heard the same polite euphemisms refering to
| Arabs and Gypsies from the mouths of members of the Front
| National. You know, before 1945 it was said in Europe that
| Jews weren't able to integrate fully with the host society.
|
| One might ask: Was that the Jews' fault? Or the host
| society's fault?
|
| It's a relevant question. You are blaming it on the
| particular group of migrants involved in the case of Europe
| right now. But historically Europe has ghettoized other
| groups.
|
| When the US ghettoized Chinese economic migrants, American
| politicians claimed they could never integrate. And yet the
| Chinese-American population is well integrated and hugely
| successful since the host society allowed it. Same with Jews
| in America, and increasingly with Hispanics.
|
| Why is it that economic migrants do, after a few generations,
| become successfully integrated in America, while they tend
| not to in Europe?
|
| I don't think the evidence definitively supports the
| conclusion that it's down to _which group_. Europe has a
| problem with integration that has its roots in the ethnic
| character of its states (something America does not have), in
| deep-seated xenophobia that causes social exclusion of
| immigrant or out-groups, and in the fact that its states '
| reasons for existence are based on tribal boundaries and wars
| for territory rather than on achieving broader democratic and
| economic flourishing by harnessing the capability of the
| whole population. And thus Europe presents neither a dream of
| integration nor a path toward integration (as in, "to become
| American"; there is neither an equivalent aspiration nor
| option "to become French"). And then, once again, Europe
| blames the groups it refuses to accept.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Subtle topic. In France there were waves of italians and
| spaniards in the early 20th, it went bad for a short while
| and then became a non issue apparently (being born in the
| 80s, these groups were never causing trouble in the
| slightest). Sharing history probably helps too.
|
| I also never felt any issue regarding Jewish people but
| considering this was after ww2 .. nobody would really say a
| thing either, but personally they never displayed anything
| noteworthy society wise. another non issue
|
| Now it's African, northern African populations being at the
| forefront of news, but personally i had many more issues
| with them (and i'm partially brown so the chances of them
| thinking I'm too different are lower). regularly they
| displayed very low morals, aggressiveness, sudden high
| fanaticism toward religious principles they didn't really
| grasp, worse behavior in school.
|
| My mother knew people from Asia (Vietnamese, Cambodians)
| fleeing from war, with no resources, not speaking french,
| nothing in common with Europe, they mentioned seeing some
| racism, yet they too ended up being a non issue. They end
| up being as the cliche quiet-asian-1st-in-class kid and
| that's the end of it.
|
| It's possible France or other European countries have some
| underlying, hard to describe, notion of integration. It's
| less economical and more about mentality ? Maybe except UK,
| where it's often said that anybody will to work would
| rapidly integrate. I still can't say.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Jews only got full citizenship rights in many European
| countries after the Enlightenment and in many ways their
| assimilation was absolutely a success, _despite_ an
| enduring legacy of anti-Semitism (which was shown e.g. by
| the Dreyfus affair in France, not merely in places with a
| lengthy history of social authoritarianism and anti-
| Enlightenment values such as pre-1945 Germany). This, if
| anything, is proof that successful social integration can
| in fact be achieved in Europe - that "ethnic character" is
| not fixed in stone and can shift in response to incentives,
| at least over multi-generational timescales.
| noduerme wrote:
| The path from Jewish emancipation in law to Jewish
| integration in practice was slowed and stymied by
| antisemitism at every turn, to greater and lesser degrees
| in different countries. It is hard to believe that Jews
| were ever regarded as true equals, broadly, in a country
| which willingly handed over so many to the Nazis. And of
| course in Spain, Jews were not full citizens and the
| practice of Judaism was simply forbidden entirely until
| 1978.
| ghufran_syed wrote:
| the people who "handed over so many to the nazis" - what
| makes you think they wouldn't or didn't gladly hand over
| non-jews if the regime demanded it? your point about
| judaism being forbidden in spain until 1978 is shocking,
| thank you for that.
|
| I would strongly recommend the following essay, which I
| read in an ethics class and found extremely powerful. The
| essay argues that humans can relatively easily be
| persuaded or intimidated into helping murder other
| humans, as long as they are introduced to it in the
| "correct" way. So we should understand what that way is
| and be vigilant against it.
|
| Destroying the innocent with a clear conscience: A
| sociopsychology of the Holocaust
|
| John P Sabini, Maury Silver Survivors, victims, and
| perpetrators: Essays on the Nazi Holocaust, 329-358, 1980
| chefandy wrote:
| > what makes you think they wouldn't or didn't gladly
| hand over non-jews if the regime demanded it?
|
| I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. Would
| someone need to exclusively repress Jews for that
| repression to meaningfully affect Jews' economic and
| human rights trajectory?
| noduerme wrote:
| It may interest you that private confession of Islam was
| legal under Franco, but public practice of Islam, or the
| building of mosques, was banned in Spain until 1989. All
| of this goes back to the Reconquista and the Inquisition
| in the late 1400s, when Muslims and Jews were forced to
| convert, synagogues and mosques were repurposed as
| churches (and not coincidentally, ham became the national
| dish). Franco's version of fascism was merely a
| continuation of that.
|
| That being said, you can't practice Christianity or
| Judaism openly in Saudi Arabia to this day. Looking at it
| from Mecca, the point of origin of the Caliphates, to
| their furthest extent into Europe in Spain (or the
| Balkans) you can still see the traces of extremist
| religious bans existing on both sides. Jews tend to get
| caught in the middle and slaughtered at each turn, as
| they need to seek accommodations with whichever larger
| religion is in power in order to survive, and then are
| seen as enemies by the other one.
|
| All this is written on the streets and buildings of
| Granada, Spain, where ancient Jewish stars adorn old
| buildings where there are no Jews, where the oldest
| church was once a mosque, and the Alhambra, symbol of the
| Caliphate and its civilization, is the largest tourist
| attraction in Europe... where the markets sell everything
| Arabic yet the day to day interaction of Muslims and
| Christians is fraught, each understanding very well their
| own history in the place. And where it is very, very
| strange to be one of the only Jews... with both
| Christians and Muslims hating you and claiming to protect
| you.
| psychoslave wrote:
| >Destroying the innocent with a clear conscience: A
| sociopsychology of the Holocaust
|
| That sounds as a very weak perspective to start with.
| That is, what if "they" are not "innocent"? There is
| definitely a standard out there that will allow to judge
| us as guilty of some heretic behavior, whoever we are.
|
| Surely it would not be very wise to judge a book by its
| title, though.
| basementcat wrote:
| Do you mean 1968? The Alhambra decree of 1492 in which
| Jews were ordered expelled from Spain was not formally
| rescinded until 1968.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/1968/12/17/archives/1492-ban-on-
| jews...
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alhambra_Decree
| noduerme wrote:
| No. The revocation of that law from the Reconquista
| didn't change anything immediately. Jewish residents,
| some of whom were the descendents of those who had been
| there since Roman and even Phoenecian times, were not
| recognized as full citizens in modern Spain until 1978.
|
| https://www.jewishwikipedia.info/spain.html
| goatlover wrote:
| That's only part of the problem. The other part is the
| incompatible religious values of the immigrants. Not all of
| course. But at least enough to cause conflict with western
| liberal values.
| golergka wrote:
| > You know, before 1945 it was said in Europe that Jews
| weren't able to integrate fully with the host society. One
| might ask: Was that the Jews' fault? Or the host society's
| fault?
|
| Which Jews? Ultraorthodox don't integrate very well in
| Israel, for instance.
| noduerme wrote:
| The tendency of a subsection of orthodox Jews from one
| area of Eastern Europe to self-ghettoize is something of
| a red herring. In Western Europe, Jews were never truly
| integrated unless they converted. And even those who
| converted and their mixed race children were ultimately
| slaughtered for their ethnic background, giving lie to
| the notion that even a WWI veteran ex-Jew could become
| German.
|
| The Haredi (ultraorthodox) movement itself is a reaction
| to urban Jews who wished to assimilate when such a thing
| became conceivable in the 19th C. And this is a ghetto
| mentality. In American terms, your question would be
| equivalent to "which Black people?" Implying that people
| who claim and cling to ghetto culture have a hard time
| integrating. But that 1. dismisses the role that
| ghettoization had on creating a subculture in the first
| place, and then 2. pretends the subculture itself is the
| reason for failure to integrate, i.e. that it's the cause
| rather than the effect, and 3. serves to allow and excuse
| and justify the mainstream of society projecting their
| negative perceptions of that subculture onto individual
| members of the same ethnic group who would like to
| integrate without completely renouncing their unique
| heritage. And in the Jewish case, even complete
| renunciation wasn't enough, so perhaps the ghetto culture
| had a point.
| margalabargala wrote:
| To antisemites, the type of Jew is not relevant.
|
| I take your point though. Even nominally homgenous
| societies will stratify and have out-groups.
| gwervc wrote:
| You may throw a Godwin point as introduction, it doesn't
| change the fact that some groups indeed doesn't integrate
| well into France. And this is despite _billions_ of welfare
| money given for housing, free education, free access to
| health, etc.
|
| You mentioned Gypsies, well I read scholarly work stating
| that they were warmly welcomed _4 centuries_ ago in the
| towns of my region, until people discovered a tendency of
| their purses to disappear. Yes, the same exact complains
| that some French have nowadays. At some point facts are
| facts, and victimization doesn 't work. For the record, a
| lot of other nationalities blended without issues within
| two generations (Portugese, Polonese, Vietnamese, etc.)
| margalabargala wrote:
| It sounds from your comment that you are from Europe, but
| if you visit the US, you should travel to the south, find
| some white conservatives, and discuss black people. They
| will make astonishingly similar points to the ones you
| brought up, you'll find you and they have a lot in
| common.
| gottorf wrote:
| For what it's worth, I'm a nonwhite immigrant living in a
| Deep South state, with experience living in more liberal
| coastal metropolitan areas. You will find that whites and
| blacks are much better integrated with each other in the
| south, and that racism runs deeper up north. For example,
| it's widely known among black professional athletes that
| the most racist city to play in is Boston.
| Tao3300 wrote:
| And that's what we call _racism._
|
| > scholarly work stating that they were warmly welcomed 4
| centuries ago
|
| Yeah, that doesn't sound legit. Any general sentiment
| from that time period is lost, and the best your scholar
| can do is project the lens of the present onto sources
| from the past. To be fair, all histories are done that
| way.
| goatlover wrote:
| That's not true. The best scholars can do is figure out
| the lens the past sources were using, given the
| historical record about the time period. Take for example
| contemporary scholarship and the historical Jesus. It's
| now understood Jesus was a 2nd Temple apocalyptic Jew.
| Something nobody is today, since 2nd Temple Judaism and
| it's sects were replaced by Rabbinic Judaism, and
| Christianity went in it's own direction.
| noduerme wrote:
| Everywhere in Europe that welcomed Jews, their neighbors
| attacked them whenever the Plague came around, blaming
| them for poisoning wells. To be blunt, if that hadn't
| happened, the Jews would have probably disappeared into
| the general European population by the 15th Century. So
| you are supporting the point that village rumors led to a
| situation of permanent exclusion for Gypsies.
| rapsey wrote:
| Jews were money lenders, which inherently instills a
| level of hatred.
| noduerme wrote:
| Jews were not allowed to own land or engage in trades.
| What they did have was an ethnic/family presence across
| national boundaries, which placed a few of them in a
| unique position to negotiate on behalf of their lords and
| kings. This led to a condition where a small fraction of
| Jews became essential to European diplomacy, and
| subsequently became movers of money. That plus the
| Christian ban on moneylending and the need for liquidity
| nonetheless.
|
| Those wealthy "court Jews" largely converted to
| Christianity and assimilated, leaving their poorer
| brethren to die in pogroms and the Holocaust, while
| serving as the proof of blame for Jewish conspiracy at
| the same time.
| oooyay wrote:
| Honestly it shocks me how unaware people are of some of
| this stuff and I thought I lived under somewhat of a
| rock.
| delta_p_delta_x wrote:
| Couldn't agree more.
|
| Funnily enough it's not even that hard to 'become aware'.
| Start with the Wikipedia page on the Second World War,
| for instance, for a blockbuster entry to the topic.
|
| The single most marginalised group of people in the West
| since antiquity have been the Jews (with the Romani a
| close second). Pretty much every European power has
| evicted, massacred, initiated pogroms, or otherwise
| persecuted Jews. The trend continues today.
|
| Anyone who says 'anti-Zionism isn't antisemitism' _is_
| antisemitic, because that 's denying a group of people
| their homeland or _Urheimat_. That is classic genocide,
| by the way.
| imtringued wrote:
| Your last sentence makes no sense. Not every Jew
| identifies as Israeli and by claiming that Israel
| represents all Jews on this planet you are taking away
| their agency.
|
| Think about how stupid what you wrote is in the context
| of a hypothetical second Jewish country that also claims
| to represent all Jews.
|
| It is as crackpot as saying Switzerland, Austria and
| Germany all represent all Germans.
| delta_p_delta_x wrote:
| > by claiming that Israel represents all Jews
|
| That is not what I said; this is a strawman. I said,
| 'Jewish people deserve sovereignty over their ancestral
| homeland' (i.e. Zionism). This is completely orthogonal
| to 'Israel represents all Jewish people'.
|
| That being said...
|
| > It is as crackpot as saying Switzerland, Austria and
| Germany all represent all Germans.
|
| I don't think that's crackpot at all. What's wrong with
| an ethnic state representing its people's and diaspora's
| interests? Why do you think countries today issue their
| citizens with passports? Why do some countries give even
| non-citizens a fast-track path to citizenship or at least
| an indefinite multiple-entry visa, provided they're of a
| certain ethnicity?
|
| A plurality of countries today are ethnic states, by the
| way, including essentially every European state. I am
| very happy to say that the German-speaking part of
| Switzerland, Austria, and Germany absolutely represent
| Germans as a whole.
|
| As an addendum: printed on the inside front cover of my
| A1 German textbook was a map of Germany, Austria, and
| Switzerland. Make of that what you will.
| andrepd wrote:
| So many people would have "rights to their ancestral
| homeland" then.... History is full of conquest and
| expulsions and genocide. Arabs and Celts were both driven
| out of what is now my country, at points over a
| millennium ago. Shall their descendents be entitled to
| claim part of it as an ethnostate for themselves? Of
| course not, for that would be ridiculous.
|
| Having colonial powers create an state in a place where
| people already lived, and which did not consent to its
| creation, was a terrible terrible idea that led to
| tremendous suffering a loss of life over the past 75
| years. Acknowledging this is not antisemitic.
| noduerme wrote:
| They didn't say that one country represents all Jews,
| they said Jews have a right to their homeland. You made
| the point that Germans have 3 homelands, and really I
| suppose you could add Alsace and the Sudetenland and
| Gdansk and some bits of Denmark if you were ambitious
| about creating more living space. Does the existence of
| any of those take away from the agency of people who
| identify as German?
|
| Perhaps you mean that Germany and Austria have no right
| to exist, because Germanic tribes are just recent
| migrants there in the last 2000 years who came from the
| Urals or something? But wouldn't that be denying agency
| and stripping identity from the people who actually live
| there now?
| twixfel wrote:
| The Germanic Urheimat is in North Germany / Southern
| Scandinavia, not the Urals, and separated from proto-
| Indo-European on the order of 4000 years ago, not 2000
| years ago.
|
| > But wouldn't that be denying agency and stripping
| identity from the people who actually live there now?
|
| Indeed, that's why the founding of Israel was so
| problematic. Living somewhere 2000 years ago does not
| trump the rights of the people who lived there for the
| last 2000+ years. If we are to be consistent, Berlin must
| be returned to the West Slavs, London to the Celts, and
| so on... it's nonsense.
|
| In the West we have (at least) started to acknowledge the
| crimes of colonialism and the various wars of conquest
| over the centuries. For us it is not existential, to
| acknowledge that what the British did during the slave
| trade is not existential. But for Israel it is, so many
| Israelis have to just pretend that the founding of Israel
| was perfectly just and fair, when it so obviously was an
| act of total lunacy when looked at through today's eyes.
| Please note, I do support the continued existence of
| Israel, because I favour the status quo, but its founding
| was an act of monumental stupidity.
| achenet wrote:
| errr...
|
| okay I'm Jewish, and I think you're over-simplifiying
| when you say
|
| > Anyone who says 'anti-Zionism isn't antisemitism' is
| antisemitic
|
| For example, you can find here: https://tsedek.fr/
|
| a (French) collective of Jews who oppose Zionism on anti-
| colonial grounds. I don't personally agree with them (my
| own views are more accurately summed up here:
| https://arielche.net/Lydie.html ) but I do think that it
| is possible to have a logically coherent worldview that
| says "Jews are to be respected and treated like any other
| human, but the state of Israel should not exist".
|
| Personally, I don't believe that, I believe the state of
| Israel should exists, although I believe that bombing
| your neighbors is actually a piss-poor approach to
| national security, and honestly buying off the
| Palestinians by building them schools and hospitals is a
| lot cheaper in the long run than killing them with
| expensive jet fighters, but I don't go around accusing
| every anti-Zionist of anti-semitism.
|
| I know some anti-Zionists personally, and they're what
| I'd call humanist, who believe the basic idea that, to
| quote Jefferson, "all men are created equal and they are
| endowed by their creator with certain unalienable
| rights,... life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness".
| twixfel wrote:
| > The single most marginalised group of people in the
| West since antiquity have been the Jews
|
| Jewish people have generally been treated abominably for
| the last 2000 years, but surely he most marginalised
| groups don't even exist any more, because they were wiped
| out entirely.
|
| > because that's denying a group of people their homeland
|
| History is full of peoples who left or were kicked out of
| some original homeland. Jewish people are not special in
| that regard. My ancestors left Saxony about 1500 years
| ago to conquer an island, and kicked the inhabitants out
| to the periphery. That's more recent than the expulsion
| of the Jews 2000 years ago.
|
| I think Israel should exist in the sense that it already
| exists so let's favour the status quo. But clearly we've
| learned that it's a completely stupid way to found new
| countries. Let's not make more ethnostates in other
| random parts of the world where people already live. We
| tried it, it turned out that it makes a mess.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I only learned recently about usury and the relationship
| with Jewish groups and their own history. The interplay
| between local powers needing money at different
| periods... It was all very fascinating. Especially how
| simple moral principles (lending for interests) could
| ripple so far.
| Qwertious wrote:
| Jews were _merchants_ engaging in transactional
| relationships with farmers, which in an agragian society
| instills a level of hatred due to being fundamentally
| opposite to the reciprocal relations that farming
| neighbours participate in.
|
| https://acoup.blog/2020/08/21/collections-bread-how-did-
| they...
| imtringued wrote:
| The opposite. Money lenders were non-christians, because
| Christians were forbidden from charging interest. It is
| also easier to excommunicate a money lender if they
| aren't a fellow Christian, so the arrangement was
| actually to the benefit of Christians.
|
| What you are doing is "affirming the consequent". Most
| Jews were working normal jobs (obviously excluding the
| ones they were legally barred) like everyone else.
| doetoe wrote:
| I think this inverts cause and effect: they often were
| money lenders because they were excluded from more
| traditional jobs and/or land ownership
| ahartmetz wrote:
| It's not inversion, but not going for a root cause far
| enough. You are of course right. Jews were not allowed to
| pursue most/all "honorable" professions.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| It's because Christians and Muslims banned lending money
| with interest, cf usury.
| ekianjo wrote:
| not all jews though. Most of them were, I believe, middle
| class workers. You can see that from the meaning of their
| last names in the places they originate from.
| wwtrv wrote:
| > To be blunt, if that hadn't happened, the Jews would
| have probably disappeared into the general European
| population by the 15th Century
|
| That seems like a bizarre claim... If anything the
| attacks, discrimination etc. would have encouraged
| assimilation. Voluntary conversion to Christianity wasn't
| particularly uncommon either (forced violent conversion
| also occurred). Even when national governments started
| expelling their entire Jewish populations staying and
| getting to keep all of your property ussually was an
| option. Yet most chose to leave rather than convert.
|
| Yes, converted Jews might have faced discrimination and
| even violence (this depended a lot on the willingness to
| abandon your old customs and practices and varied hugely
| based on time and place, but seemingly became a bigger
| issue at the very end of the middle ages) but ussually
| they managed to more or less fully assimilate in a few
| generations.
| noduerme wrote:
| I see where you're coming from, because it sounds logical
| to someone who isn't part of an oppressed minority. But
| for the past 2500 years, religious Jews have felt
| threatened by the real possibility that less religious
| Jews would succumb to the easy life of assimilation that
| came with Helenization, Romanization, Germanization, etc.
| There is indeed a core that won't succumb to conversion
| in exchange for a place in the prevailing society, which
| is why Jews still exist in societies that have made it
| the slightest bit difficult for Jews to integrate.
|
| But contrast that with, for instance, Kaifeng[0]. The
| biggest fear of Jewish believers is that they will
| encounter a society like America or China which swallows
| their talents whole and integrates them fully.
|
| Put another way, it is a fear right now in segments of
| the Jewish community that without antisemitism, Jews
| would cease to exist. And there is a truth to this borne
| out by history. In Jewish communities it is practically
| taken for granted that if we had been treated equally,
| most of us would have given up our identity ages ago.
|
| [0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaifeng_Jews
| marnett wrote:
| I've never heard of the Kaifeng Jewish diaspora. Thanks
| for sharing!
| TrololoTroll wrote:
| >would succumb to the easy life of assimilation
|
| Have you considered that perhaps if the idea of
| integration itself is considered abhorrent by a culture
| then that culture will very rarely be accepted anywhere?
|
| Or to put it another way: if everywhere one goes smells
| like feces, maybe one should check their own boots
|
| They want the benefits of being part of the community
| without being part of the community
| agumonkey wrote:
| Sorry but I don't even need rumors about gypsies, as a
| kid some were schooled during months of winter, and they
| were .. surprisingly creative when it comes to harming
| you (and I'm being polite here). I know gypsy culture is
| also bringing beautiful music, and some are hard working
| people touring the country during the summer, but really
| you don't need to go far to have evidence of issues still
| existing to this day.
| Seattle3503 wrote:
| > And this is despite billions of welfare money given for
| housing, free education, free access to health, etc.
|
| This assumes those things help one integrate. The Unites
| States notably doesn't have these things to the same
| degree that countries in Europe do. This means immigrants
| in America need to work. And work is a strong forcing
| function for socialization and integration.
|
| > You mentioned Gypsies, well I read scholarly work
| stating that they were warmly welcomed 4 centuries ago in
| the towns of my region, until people discovered a
| tendency of their purses to disappear.
|
| Do you have a citation for that?
| Shaanie wrote:
| America also just have way fewer refugees. Seems like
| it's around 60k a year, so less than 0.02% of the
| population per year. Sweden, for example, has had around
| 26k refugees per year (the last 10 years), which is
| around 0.2% of its population. At its peak Sweden almost
| took on a full 1% in one year.
|
| Of course it's easier to integrate a magnitude fewer
| refugees, and there will be less issues overall.
| Seattle3503 wrote:
| That's true as well economic migrants are very different
| from refugees. The US is experiencing this more recently
| with refugees from Venezuela.
| oezi wrote:
| Oh, I always thought it is around 500k illegal immigrants
| per year in the US (these aren't considered refugees I
| guess)
| weweweoo wrote:
| The illegal migrants coming to the US know they have to
| work if they wish to eat. Meanwhile, coming to Sweden has
| been just a ticket to easy life, where you get free
| housing and money, but will be probably excluded from the
| job market unless you learn the language and get several
| years of education.
|
| So, in practice the two phenomena are very different.
| bko wrote:
| > It's a relevant question. You are blaming it on the
| particular group of migrants involved in the case of Europe
| right now. But historically Europe has ghettoized other
| groups.
|
| My understanding is that pre-WW2 Europe you had community
| groups that dealt with their people. So in a Jewish
| neighborhood, you had powerful Rabbis or other religious
| leaders that dole out law. These unofficial community
| leaders were given a lot of autonomy as to how to deal with
| their subjects. You see hints of that today in Jewish
| neighborhoods in Brooklyn where you have un-offical private
| police [0]. I don't think its as simple as saying they were
| excluded or ghettoized.
|
| But that begs the question, what does it mean to be a
| country? Some people think its just magical land, like you
| step onto the country, get a piece of paper that says
| you're from that country and that's it. I think every
| country has a cultural identity. Much less so for America,
| since its the only country I know of where you can call
| yourself American despite not being born there or have any
| blood relatives from there but no one would bat an eye. But
| even there, some things are anti-American. Things like
| women being second class citizens (e.g. women can't drive
| or are forced to cover up). Or lawlessness (e.g. riding
| illegal scooters the wrong way down the street).
|
| I think its perfectly reasonable to say that if you don't
| accept a countries values, you should not be allowed to
| move there. If you want to treat women like second class
| citizens or don't have respect for private policy or rule
| of law, you shouldn't be allowed to come to law abiding
| Western country.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/18/nyregion/brooklyns-
| privat...
| noduerme wrote:
| I agree with your negative version of the point:
|
| >> if you don't accept a countries values, you should not
| be allowed to move there
|
| But in the positive version, I think in America it is
| much easier to integrate if you _do_ accept American
| values than it is in some European countries. And this is
| because, as you alluded, the only thing that makes
| America a unified country is a social agreement to
| certain shared values like rule of law, property rights,
| freedom to conduct business, freedom of religion, and
| more recently civil rights. Whereas those ideals are only
| recently tacked on to (most) European nations, and are
| not core to their identity; one can accept all those
| values and still never become German, for instance. Even
| France where many of those values originated has an
| ethnic nationalist core which denies integration to those
| who are not ethnically French. So what I mean is,
| accepting values in Europe is a start, but it is not
| enough.
|
| And what we see in ghettoized cultures around the world,
| from African Americans to Algerians in France, is that
| the ghetto creates its own logic of rejecting the norms
| of the society which has rejected it. Welfare is not a
| substitute for a path toward individual success and
| acceptance in society; this is perhaps Europe's greatest
| mistake. On welfare, in the suburbs, who will believe and
| not mock the supposed values of equality and fraternity?
| It becomes a generational problem.
| hansworst wrote:
| I think it's true that people in Europe feel that welfare
| is part of the problem here. In the Netherlands for
| example, one of the main right wing talking point is that
| refugees are given free social housing which could have
| gone to locals that are often on waiting lists for years.
|
| In America on the other hand, land was forcibly taken
| from the natives by colonists centuries ago. Now, if
| you're looking to move to the US, you can expect to work
| in poverty for a few generations as a second class
| citizen because that's just how the "completely fair"
| capitalist system is set up. Forgetting for a moment that
| most capital is held by a single ethnicity, and they're
| definitely not going to give it away for free.
| noduerme wrote:
| Er... speaking as a liberal American, this is a wild
| oversimplification. Housing is not a zero-sum resource.
| For one thing, to be a bit cheeky, when the white
| settlers stole the land from the Indians there was
| absolutely no housing at all. When my grandparents
| arrived in the US in the 1920s they lived in a tenement
| with one bathroom per floor. My grandfather saved his
| money as a tailor and a bartender and eventually built
| modern apartment buildings. If you _harness_ the
| ingenuity and resourcefulness of immigrants they will
| build!
|
| This is why I think welfare states in Europe are on the
| wrong path toward trying to integrate foreign
| populations, not because it takes resources away from
| native Europeans (the demand side) but because it chokes
| off the supply side of what immigrants should expect to
| need to add and contribute to the society.
| dachworker wrote:
| I agreed with most of what you posted, but you have a
| misconception about these "welfare states". The
| immigrants end up on welfare because they are not allowed
| to participate in the economy. Why? Partly because of
| bureaucracy, and partly, one might say also because of
| other reasons: protectionism, discrimination, ...etc.
| noduerme wrote:
| I think we're saying very much the same thing. Welfare to
| immigrants in Europe has become a tool to compensate for
| other elements which make finding work or gaining
| advancement difficult; so it is a subsidy meant to
| protect "native" jobs by isolating the foreign labor
| force. It serves a double purpose to prevent the
| integration of new arrivals. Worst of all, it attracts
| people who think they don't need to work. All of these
| things can be true at the same time.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| << Now, if you're looking to move to the US, you can
| expect to work in poverty for a few generations as a
| second class citizen because that's just how the
| "completely fair" capitalist system is set up.
|
| Uh. I want to hope that this is just a oversimplification
| intended to get a reaction.
|
| Yes, US does have real issues that it needs to address
| those in order to make social mobility reasonably
| attainable. Arguably, it is a lot harder to "make it"
| now.
|
| I am just an anecdote here, but, I am a first generation
| immigrant. I have a house, a dog and a partner. Also next
| week, I am taking my vacation and buying a vette ( well,
| I scheduled a test drive -- didn't mentally commit to
| buying yet ). I do not consider myself a second class
| citizen. I am not rich, but I can't say I am poor either.
| My kid is starting school ( private, public one is not
| great here -- ok, but not great ).
|
| I honestly do not think I would have been able to do the
| same in the old country.
|
| I absolutely accept that I might not be the norm and the
| current version of capitalism needs to be reined in, but,
| honestly, if you do want to drive that point, I think you
| need a better argument.
| achenet wrote:
| > Even France where many of those values originated has
| an ethnic nationalist core which denies integration to
| those who are not ethnically French.
|
| disagree with this as a French person.
|
| That "ethnic nationalist core" is the French equivalent
| of Trump supporters who say "America is a white (anglo)
| Christian nation".
|
| the country currently known as France was originally
| Celtic Gaul, which was then conquered by Romans, then by
| various Germanic tribes, most notably the Franks who gave
| the country it's current name, and didn't really unify
| until fairly late. Even to this day, you'll find people
| in Brittany identify more as 'Breton' then French
| sometimes, despite the efforts of the French state to
| kill that local identity in the late 19th century. We're
| a nation of bastards, and always have been.
|
| You'll have sad, sorry people on the far right who
| conjure up some imaginary ideal of a "true, ethnic French
| character", but it's like the KKK members in America
| talking about being 'true Americans'. It's a fallacy.
|
| The people with high levels of melanin with parents that
| arrived in the country less than 50 years ago playing for
| our national soccer team are, at least to my mind, just
| as French as my father whose family lived around Saint-
| Etienne for the past 300+ years, even if some of them act
| like the equivalent of "that girl from Jersey shore
| saying she's Italian because her last name is Spaghetti
| despite not actually speaking a word of Italian and
| having never been there" sometimes. :)
| aaplok wrote:
| > I think its perfectly reasonable to say that if you
| don't accept a countries values, you should not be
| allowed to move there.
|
| If we are still talking about France, then this is a
| country that 10 years ago saw big groups loudly oppose
| same-sex marriage, and who now oppose assisted
| reproduction. The (black female) minister carrying the
| law was subject to vile racist and sexist caricatures and
| mockery. France is a country whose president
| characterised the denunciations of sexual abuse by a
| famous actor as a man hunt. More recently still, an
| "expert" was heard on a widely watched TV network blaming
| the victims of rape for the reduction of births in the
| west. The same TV network that had to apologise a few
| months ago for claiming that abortion is the leading
| cause of deaths in the world.
|
| The common point between all of these? They were all
| people of long term French descent. Not recent
| immigrants. There is no accepted "country's values" to
| begin with. There are laws, which are enforced and which
| immigrants and natives alike are expected to obey.
|
| Now since you are talking about America, there are plenty
| of Americans, descendants of Americans for generations,
| who oppose abortion, to the point where it's all but
| illegal in several states. The past and likely future
| president is a rapist who bragged about it. There are no
| universally shared values among the American people
| around the rights of women either, and that's true even
| if we don't count immigrants as "true" Americans,
| whatever that may mean. America is a country which until
| very recently had segregation laws, and the "values"
| these laws represented didn't suddenly disappear when
| these laws were repelled.
|
| Before claiming that immigrants should be accepting a
| country's values there should be some clarity around what
| those values are. Then someone should decide what to do
| with the people in the country who don't share those
| values. Political regimes that implement such
| "values"-based systems have a name: fascism.
| noduerme wrote:
| I agree that regimes or groups that determine citizenship
| along the lines of vague "values" are always fascist or
| authoritarian, but that's why I delineated the "values" I
| was talking about and restricted them to the same ones
| embodied by the French Republic. In responding to the
| case I was trying to differentiate between those
| vagueries of ethnic background or shared religious
| "morals", and the few common things enshrined in our
| Constitution which most Americans would agree on and
| which virtually all asylum-seekers are seeking as the
| prerequisites to individual liberty and prosperity for
| their families.
|
| So I suspect but won't condemn the parent poster of
| conflating "values" with a blood/soil/religious code, but
| that is not what I meant talking about American values,
| which are applicable to all comers without surrendering
| one's belief system. In theory, French values should be
| the same. Jefferson thought so. And in practice, as you
| point out, there is a deep well of nativists in both
| countries who believe they possess some further mystic
| undefined value system which excludes this or that
| foreign practice. But as you say the law is enforced and
| the state is preeminent; the difference being that this
| simple equality under law is what people come to America
| to seek, with some conviction that they can become
| American while fusing those liberties to the elements of
| their culture that they wish to maintain.
| cen4 wrote:
| Just worth pointing out, exactly 100 years ago, they
| didn't think Jews could integrate into the America -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1924
| doetoe wrote:
| It is ironic that you would speak of a country's values,
| especially in the context of the USA, where many people
| that consider each other Americans don't even accept each
| other's values
| TMWNN wrote:
| >One might ask: Was that the Jews' fault? Or the host
| society's fault?
|
| I will speak from the perspective of one who emigrated to
| the US.
|
| _Every_ new group is initially seen as "the other". After
| some point, however, employers that hire "the other" may
| find that they can pay them less because there is less
| demand to hire them, and thus benefit financially, they
| hire more. As other employers follow suit, over time the
| salaries go up until they match that of other groups.
|
| Their children benefit. The first generation of manual
| laborers and farmworkers begets the second generation of
| policemen, nurses, and soldiers begets the third generation
| of doctors and lawyers and professors.
|
| In the US this has happened to Irish, Italians, Germans,
| Russians, Jews, East Asians, Indians, and Latinos. Why
| hasn't this happened to blacks (or has happened in
| substantially less numbers), despite the latter having the
| benefit of US citizenship and command of the English
| language from birth? Why hasn't this happened to the
| Somalians mentioned elsewhere? The Muslims of Dearborn?
|
| Or look at Britain, where you have three groups from the
| Indian subcontinent:
|
| * Indian Hindus
|
| * Indian Sikhs
|
| * Indian and Pakistani Muslims
|
| Sikhs and Hindus have been very successful; they are _more_
| likely than the average to be part of the British middle
| class
| <http://www.theguardian.com/money/2010/dec/14/middle-
| britain-...>. Muslims are, by contrast, worse than average
| in every single social measure despite being, racially
| speaking, indistinguishable from the other two groups to
| any outsider (since none knows, or cares, about the myriad
| of caste differences); they are all "Asians" in Britain.
| But the outcomes are completely different.
|
| I will ask you the same question you posed. Are these
| differences in outcome the groups' fault? Or the host
| society's fault?
| avz wrote:
| The US has extended the protection of the law to the law-
| abiding Irish, Italians, Germans, Russians, Jews, East
| Asians, Indians, and Latinos freeing them up to flourish
| and build human capital. By contrast, the same state has
| not only failed to do so for the Black community, but its
| agents have engaged in extrajudicial killings of the
| community's members with impunity since they lost their
| legal "protection" as someone else's private property.
|
| Community under assault will redirect its private efforts
| to security which then undermines cultural and economic
| development and slows down formation of human capital.
| That's because security needs are fundamental and trump
| cultural and economic development [1].
|
| Regarding Indian Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims, I disagree
| they are indistinguishable for outsiders. Typically,
| anybody who cares can tell by the name, place where they
| live, or even just the job they do.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre
| maeil wrote:
| > Regarding Indian Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims, I disagree
| they are indistinguishable for outsiders. Typically,
| anybody who cares can tell by the name, place where they
| live, or even just the job they do.
|
| It is only recently that some white Brits may have
| started clueing on to this. While these trends were
| emerging, this was definitely not the case.
|
| And even now, it very often is not the case. To give an
| example, plenty of Brits from Pakistani muslim
| backgrounds have names and surnames that <1% of white
| Brits could place as being of that background. This isn't
| rare at all, unlike e.g. Arab names that indeed most can
| tell apart.
| noduerme wrote:
| It's most significant, though, that you even say "Brits
| from Pakistani muslim backgrounds". No one says "French
| from Algerian muslim backgrounds". A French person with
| an Algerian background can only be a descendant of one of
| the million or so ethnic French who colonized Algeria,
| and is in no case a Muslim. The UK is far ahead of the
| continent in terms of integration, and the US is light
| years ahead of that.
| noduerme wrote:
| I'm not unsympathetic to the idea that mainstream Islam,
| since then 1970s, has morphed into something closer to
| extreme ultraorthodox Judaism or an extreme branch of
| Christianity. And this is certainly an obstacle to
| integration. But it is not irreversible, and I think in
| particular rejection by a foreign host culture serves to
| reinforce that extremism. North Korean defectors have a
| lot of trouble assimilating in South Korea, despite
| speaking the same language. Their hard drives are
| formatted differently, their software is different. The
| goal of a host society should be to study where the
| differences present themselves acutely and how to
| alleviate the pain and rejection of individual emigrants
| _without accepting extremism or compromising the values
| of the culture into which they have immigrated_. This
| means teaching individualism and the importance of
| education and self sufficiency rather than doling out
| welfare subsistence, but it also means the mainstream
| culture must actively try to embrace the individuals who
| wish to become part of mainstream society. Europe fails
| in both.
|
| W/r/t the failure of the US toward Black people, I
| completely agree with the sibling comment by user:avz and
| would have nothing more to add.
| TMWNN wrote:
| >The goal of a host society should be to study where the
| differences present themselves acutely and how to
| alleviate the pain and rejection of individual emigrants
| without accepting extremism or compromising the values of
| the culture into which they have immigrated.
|
| Doesn't that presuppose the conclusion? That such
| emigrants should be received regardless of how
| fundamentally different their hard drives' formatting is?
| Why should that be?
|
| If South Korea did not have strong familial and ethnic
| ties with North Koreans, it would never accept any NK
| defectors at all, and said differences in software would
| a big reason why. Heck, one can imagine the South putting
| up walls to prevent a large-scale influx of North Koreans
| after the Pyongyang regime collapses.
| noduerme wrote:
| I like this coding analogy. Would they willingly accept
| 20 million people with bizarre and incompatible software?
| Yes but barely because it's in the same language? China
| has even less desire for the NK regime to fall, as the
| formatting and language would disrupt the balance in
| Manchuria.
|
| But I'm not talking about what they want (whatever South
| Korea says they want about reunification). I mean _what
| preparations are they making for absorbing that mass of
| people in the event that it happens_... in particular,
| turning them from a faceless mass into prosperous and
| contributing individual members of a modern westernized
| society. South Korea has put a lot of study into that
| question, as did West Germany. So why can 't France? They
| did control a good portion of the Muslim world for a
| couple of centuries, after all. What's the difference
| between the potential collapse of Algeria and the
| collapse of NK, or at least what is the plan for it?
|
| No one wanted civil wars in Syria and Libya that would
| send millions of refugees to Europe, but there has been
| no systematic approach to integrating them and, let's
| say, updating their software. The prevailing view seems
| to be that this is temporary rather than just a fraction
| of what is to come. Anyone looking at the demographics
| can see that if Europe fails to inculcate its
| Enlightenment values into its immigrant population within
| a generation, those values will cease to exist. So I mean
| what is the real plan?
| zapperdulchen wrote:
| I am not sure if this argument holds for France and its
| Muslim citizens. Historically, France didn't "control a
| good portion of the Muslim world for a couple of
| centuries."
|
| They ruled Algeria for about 130 years, and Tunisia and
| Morocco for less than half that. Syria and Lebanon for a
| measly 26 years. That's barely a blip in historical
| terms. Plus some bits of West Africa with Muslim
| populations. That hardly counts as "a good portion of the
| Muslim world."
|
| So it's rather decades here, not centuries. And more like
| "strategic chunks", instead of "good portion". Let's not
| conflate limited colonial holdings with some kind of vast
| Islamic empire under French rule.
| noduerme wrote:
| Maybe I exaggerated. But France controlled essentially
| all of Muslim west Africa at one point or another, and
| France's former colonies are the overwhelming source of
| their immigrant population. Outside of Quebec, the
| Francophone world is largely Muslim and African. For that
| reason, the analogy should hold: The people flooding into
| France were former subjects and partial citizens. South
| Korea views all Koreans from the North as citizens and
| has a plan for their integration, just like Israel views
| all Jews from Ethiopia or Morrocco or France as citizens;
| and has plans to absorb them. What is France's plan?
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Are we really grouping all black people in one group
| here? The only thing that matters is income in the US. A
| poor white and a poor black have a lot in common, and the
| reason why we tend to have poorer black vs whites is
| because of lasting damage from institutional racism over
| the last century that precluded many opportunities
| contemporary whites had to begin building generational
| wealth. It's that simple. That being said, generational
| wealth among the black population has been building all
| this time. There are black communities today that have
| very high income levels and rates of homeownership.
| noduerme wrote:
| >> the reason why we tend to have poorer black vs whites
| is because of lasting damage from institutional racism
| over the last century that precluded many opportunities
| contemporary whites had to begin building generational
| wealth
|
| Yes. And even after the institutionalized racism was
| banned in various forms, the social system of racism
| continues to this day in the form of lower wages for the
| same jobs, less chance of hiring or buying a home with
| the same qualifications.
|
| What I am saying is that this is the indigenous European
| attitude toward migrants, and it is creating generations
| of ghettoized people who no longer believe they can
| integrate, just as generations of Black people in America
| gave up on integration, seeing that they were still kept
| out on a daily basis even after having achieved legal
| equality.
| alephnerd wrote:
| "Indian" is not a monolith.
|
| Neither is "Punjabi", "Gujarati", or "Pahari" which are
| most South Asians in the UK.
|
| I'm South Asian American with family in Europe, and in
| all honestly Asians in Europe aren't as well integrated
| because of Europeans.
|
| The US and Canada is nowhere as passive aggressively
| racist as Europe is (well, Massachusetts is very similar
| in it's attitude).
|
| In much of North America, there is still buy-in for the
| "Horatio Alger" story and communities are fairly used to
| immigrants.
| scrubs wrote:
| I strongly recommend modiano's occupation Trilogy on this
| general subject (jews in europe) 2012 Nobel prize winner
| (year from memory but modiano (french) def got a Nobel in
| literature)
| Georgelemental wrote:
| Many Gypsies _do_ integrate, and soon they are no longer
| Gypsies. The ones that remain are the descendants of
| generation after generation that _chose_ again and again
| not to integrate. See also the Irish Travellers, an
| ethnically unrelated group with a similar culture.
| wwtrv wrote:
| > And then, once again, Europe blames the groups it refuses
| to accept.
|
| Can you explain in what way did this manifest in Sweden for
| instance? Or have any data/evidence besides some semi-vague
| claims about antisemitism and some immutable
| characteristics of European societies (which are hardly
| monolithic to begin with).
|
| It's not that I even necessarily disagree with what you're
| saying but unfortunately your comment is 80% demagoguery
| and 20% substance.
|
| > Why is it that economic migrants do, after a few
| generations, become successfully integrated in America,
| while they tend not to in Europe?
|
| Possible different population samples that don't overlap as
| much? By and large (unless you're crossing the Mexican
| border I guess...) immigrating to the US has been
| significantly harder than to the EU even if you're
| educated/relatively high skilled. The US can afford to be
| much more picky.
|
| > One might ask: Was that the Jews' fault? Or the host
| society's fault?
|
| There are 2x more Jews in France than before WW2? Guess
| from where most of the threats/attacks towards them are
| coming? (hint: not the host society).
| init wrote:
| > Can you explain in what way did this manifest in Sweden
| for instance? Or have any data/evidence besides some
| semi-vague claims about antisemitism and some immutable
| characteristics of European societies (which are hardly
| monolithic to begin with).
|
| If you live in Sweden then you will also know that the
| state puts refugees in the same areas (Rinkeby, Vivalla,
| Tensta, etc ...). These areas are then labeled as unsafe
| because of a slightly elevated crime rate and because
| they're labeled unsafe, swedes start moving out and
| quality of services and house prices drop and the
| downward spiral continues until the area becomes a ghetto
| even though they're usually not that bad.
|
| Although SFI exists to teach Swedish to immigrants, the
| quality of the teaching is not great in most schools.
|
| That's where the integration effort stops.
|
| Even professionals who move to Sweden for work have a
| hard time integrating in Swedish society. That's how you
| end up with people living in upscale parts of Stockholm
| for 10+ years and can barely form a sentence in Sweden.
| Ma8ee wrote:
| It's not the state that put the immigrants there, but
| outside those areas it's almost impossible to find
| something to rent, and as an immigrant without a steady
| income it's kind of impossible to buy anything.
| RubberbandSoul wrote:
| > state puts refugees in the same areas (Rinkeby,
| Vivalla, Tensta, etc ...).
|
| No it doesn't. Refugees are placed in municipalities all
| over Sweden but most choose to move to the big cities as
| soon as they can and end up in these districts because
| they are the cheapest.
|
| > slightly elevated crime rate.
|
| Citation needed. Compared to what? Casual crime is very
| high compared to traditional Swedish society. Also a lot
| of crime goes unreported because the locals don't trust
| the police to be able to do anything.
|
| > That's where the integration effort stops.
|
| Simply not true. There are oodles of integration efforts
| all over Sweden at many levels; public projects, local
| initiatives and on top of that immigration heavy areas
| gets more public funding than average for schools, after-
| school activities, park/street cleanings, etc.
|
| > Even professionals who move to Sweden for work have a
| hard time integrating in Swedish society.
|
| That's because Swedish is a small language and most
| professionals don't plan on staying. Most Swedish
| professionals speak English on a native speaker level and
| most large Swedish companies has English as the official
| corporate language. In my experience most non-English
| speakers that comes to Sweden spend their efforts on
| becoming fully proficient in English while the English
| speakers are delighted to find that they can use English
| everywhere in society. Learning Swedish has a very low
| priority and after a couple of years most expats grows
| tired of the cold, darkness, taxes, low salaries, etc.
| EGreg wrote:
| In my opinion, refugees should be spread out and placed
| among neighbors who are willing to interact positively
| with them and invite them to stuff so they can integrate,
| and NOT allowed to relocate their residence for 5-10
| years. That will be better for the country. Beggars can't
| be choosers, they're happy to get asylum.
|
| How to enforce that: fine whoever sells/rents to them
| outside where they are supposed to live. And threaten to
| deport them if they move without the years passing or
| showing they've integrated / learned the language /
| culture etc.
|
| Obviously, exceptions can be made for reasons of safety
| or being closer to a job they got, but then the same
| procedure should be followed (spread out and surrounded
| by neighbors willing to help integrate them).
|
| They should also have access to resource to accelerate
| the cultural integration, like meetups and schools etc.
| RecycledEle wrote:
| I like the idea of setting an immigration quota based on
| how many meighborhoods overwhelmingly vote to welcome
| immigrants, and then requiring the immigrants to live in
| those neighborhoods as a condition if their immigration
| status.
|
| If the immigrants enrich the community, those who
| welcomed them get the enrichment.
|
| If the immigrants bring crime and disease, those who
| welcomes them get the crime, disease, and decreased
| property values.
|
| I love solutions that work whether my views are right or
| wrong.
|
| May I steal that for part of my political platform?
| EGreg wrote:
| Sure. It sounds very bottom-up and libertarian, the kind
| of libertarian I am is exactly this thing ... making a
| new bottom-up system with software, giving people the
| tools to self-organize, get critical mass in various
| local areas, and then using the new tech to bring about
| change by working with the old top-down structures.
|
| Facebook and Uber and AirBNB did it in social networking
| and transportation and housing, respectively, starting in
| colleges and cities.
|
| I am doing it for all kinds of things, and sometimes
| selling it to political campaigns such as I did with
| https://qbix.com/yang2020.pdf but that is not really my
| goal, just to help some politicians was never my goal
|
| I put out a few apps like Groups on iOS and so far we
| attracted a million small community leaders in 100
| countries, who have our app on their phones. So the first
| phase (bottom-up) is under way
|
| I even launched blockchain applications worldwide, that
| are actually helpful: https://intercoin.org/applications
|
| including working on launching a fund for refugees that
| will be crowdfunded by people worldwide:
| https://community.intercoin.app/t/fund-for-refugees/2688
|
| Years I go I met with Rohingya Project guys and working
| together to create the R Coin, Identity and Academy on
| decentralized platform for the Rohingya refugees:
| https://rohingyaproject.com/platform/
|
| Now this year for the first time, we got a VC (Balaji's
| fund) leading our round for Network States. Balaji is a
| big proponent of these (kind of like Estonia's
| e-residency), his fund also has Naval Ravikant, Fred
| Wilson and others on their investment commitee...
| basically a lot of people involved in Web3 (CoinBase,
| CoinList, etc.)
|
| I'm going to Singapore on Sept 22nd for their conference
| to meet with Vitalik and others:
| https://balajis.com/p/network-state-conference
|
| So if you're serious about doing the first part of the
| solution (software) I recommend you can do it in
| software, and working on the ground with small towns and
| neighborhoods. I already have a platform doing just that,
| so if you want to do it locally, we can reach out about
| doing something together. We're eventually looking to go
| to every part of the world, but currently we're at a
| stage of just doing local pilots. Look at my profile and
| you can email me.
|
| And/or come to the Singapore conference on September 22nd
| and let's all meet and discuss there in person :)
|
| But PS: our platform isn't only about resettling
| refugees, although it is a big part. It's about dating,
| job boards, local currencies, and much more. I think that
| if Donald Trump and Co get into office again, there will
| be a huge "crypto summer" but we need to use crypto for
| actual applications like the one I mentioned, with global
| donation crowdfunding and transparency and benefitting
| the stateless people on the ground, instead of crazy
| ponzi schemes round 4 LOL.
| kgwgk wrote:
| It's what has been happening lately in the US. Not based
| on quotas but on putting people on buses:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/20/us/abbott-texas-
| migrant-b...
|
| It has had interesting consequences:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/27/nyregion/adams-deport-
| mig...
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/18/nyregion/shelters-are-
| ove...
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/25/nyregion/hotels-
| prices-mi...
| qb1 wrote:
| Do it! Start-up meet-ups and find a way to make the
| labor, especially the idle labor, more productive. This
| is entreprenuerism. It is also hard and then there are
| the costs--who pays?
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| > Citation needed. Compared to what? Casual crime is very
| high compared to traditional Swedish society. Also a lot
| of crime goes unreported because the locals don't trust
| the police to be able to do anything.
|
| Citation needed? You haven't provided a single citation
| for any of the wild claims you've made.
| ryan93 wrote:
| Don't need a citation for that
| Ma8ee wrote:
| As a Swede, we have always been very bad letting
| foreigners in. Most, even otherwise liberal and well
| educated, have been low key racist. One part has been
| that anyone not speaking perfect Swedish has been seen as
| bit stupid. Having a foreign sounding name has made it
| much harder to get to an interview. Imagine growing up
| with hard working parents with engineering or medical
| degrees working as cleaners because no one wants to
| employ them because of their names or the way they speak.
| Would you be motivated to study or work hard? The only
| places where you feel welcome are in the mosques or in a
| gang.
|
| What gives me a bit of hope is that this seem to be quite
| rapidly changing, at least in part of society. I have
| been working at a company in central Stockholm where
| none! of about 100 employees had even immigrated parents.
| I'm working in a large company right now where some
| departments still are 100% native Swedes, but other, that
| see what a waste it is to not use all this talent, employ
| 50% or more first or second generation of immigrants.
| weweweoo wrote:
| To be honest, it's also the quality of migrants that
| Sweden receives. The migrants joining gangs or getting
| radicalized in Sweden are primarily ones who arrived as
| asylum seekers, usually without much language and
| marketable job market skills, and with conservative
| cultural background that can be a burden. This is a big
| contract to the United States, which doesn't receive
| anywhere near as many refugees (adjusted to its size),
| and is generally more picky about migrants.
|
| The welfare system doesn't work well with integration
| either. If all that is available to you are bad jobs due
| to your lack of job market / language skills, why work if
| welfare pays almost the same?
|
| I think Sweden does a decent job integrating those
| migrants who arrive with sufficient skills for the job
| market. It's the rest that are problematic, and they
| would probably do better in the US with its lack of
| welfare state.
| twixfel wrote:
| >I think Sweden does a decent job integrating those
| migrants who arrive with sufficient skills for the job
| market. It's the rest that are problematic, and they
| would probably do better in the US with its lack of
| welfare state.
|
| Tbh I doubt it. If it's anything like German society,
| which is incredibly insular, just being non-German is
| enough to make you unwelcome.
| NalNezumi wrote:
| >I think Sweden does a decent job integrating those
| migrants who arrive with sufficient skills for the job
| market. It's the rest that are problematic, and they
| would probably do better in the US with its lack of
| welfare state.
|
| As a (technically) second generation migrant born and
| raised I doubt this. This is a sentiment mostly only
| shared by isolated liberal wing of the society, who
| probably don't really mingle with expat population beyond
| surface chatter.
|
| And it's not just some racism sentiment but as the post
| you replied to insinuate, general xenophobic /
| supremacist sentiments. I even know other (white)
| Europeans with great education and jobs getting sick of
| this place because just how condescending and unfriendly
| people in general are, for petty things such as unperfect
| Swedish. (Native English speaking migrant being the only
| exception)
| noduerme wrote:
| I should be clear... I'm not talking about Nordic
| countries regarding Jews. Swedes, Norwegians and Danes
| are considered heroes in this regard, and the historical
| analogies to the rest of Western Europe don't hold. There
| was no history of ghettoization or discrimination there.
| I am not applying my criticism there.
|
| It should be said that the pre-WW2 Jewish population of
| Sweden was miniscule, but that Swedes took great personal
| risks to save these refugees from a culture they did not
| know.
|
| The rise in antisemitic attacks in France, conducted
| entirely by Muslim immigrants, is a feature of the
| weakness of the French pluralist/secularist and legal
| state which again appears to be failing to integrate new
| arrivals into its Enlightenment ideals. One hopes Sweden
| doesn't fall into the same trap. But my gripe is about
| integration, and historically Sweden has not had to deal
| with anything on the scale of what is happening now.
| achenet wrote:
| French Jew here.
|
| I agree that our social, educational and cultural
| institutions are doing an absolutely atrocious job of
| integrating immigrant populations.
|
| Despite that, I find that most people I know from the
| Maghreb are actually quite well integrated, mostly
| because as an educated, well-to-do person I hang around
| with other educated, well-to-do people and they tend to
| be quite nice to get along with.
|
| I grew up in Houston (arrived age 6, left just before my
| 18th birthday), and honestly I find the way
| 'native'/anglo Texans treat Mexicans (more properly,
| Hispanics, but over there everyone calls them Mexicans)
| to be probably slightly worse on average than the way
| French people treat people of African descent.
|
| However, the French welfare state + my god our
| educational system is so fucked it's not even funny mean
| that it's possible to get certain pathological cases
| where an immigrant will move to France, live off the
| welfare state while railing against everything French
| (post-colonial hatred) and then use that sweet welfare
| money to plan and execute terrorist attacks.
|
| I don't blame that one the innate character of French
| people though, just on badly designed social
| institutions. Our current welfare state was modified by
| well-meaning leftists who were aiming to make something
| more egalitarian, but instead made everything worse, and
| then modified by well-meaning neoliberals who were aiming
| to make something more efficient, but instead made
| everything worse, and now it's starting to look like a
| big ugly pile of legacy code written in Perl.
| noduerme wrote:
| This is a fair take. And my experience with Arabs who are
| well off and relatively secular in France and Spain, and
| even more so Maghrebis who quietly identify as Berbers,
| tracks with what you mean as far as their integration and
| acceptance. But I did live in Avignon for awhile and saw
| some of the worst of the well-meaning welfare state in
| action, just outside the city walls.
|
| I'm not blaming the character of the French any more than
| the character of the Arabs, I just think the system is
| not built in a way like America where assimilation is the
| goal of either party.
| underlipton wrote:
| If you don't mind, I'll chime in with an American
| perspective. America is itself not a perfect case on
| immigration. Beyond high-profile recent developments
| under Trump: per our history of official, state-led
| segregation - within living memory, and certainly within
| the memory of much of our existing municipal and physical
| infrastructure, and which famously was, in part, a model
| for what the Third Reich aimed to achieve - the road to
| assimilation for the individuals and populations seeking
| it is not of equal length and equally unimpeded for
| everyone.
|
| Being educated helps a lot. Being wealthy helps a lot.
| Speaking English helps a lot. Being white helps a lot.
| Not having these attributes is not a deal-breaker (we DID
| manage to elect a black president), but they do
| significantly effect how someone and their children might
| be able to access the greater community, education, jobs,
| and more, and particularly outside of the immigrant
| community they might belong to. This is exacerbated by
| the state of our geography: America is big, and spread-
| out, and was built in its current form with an eye toward
| advantaging car-ownership and ethnic/economic
| segregation. It is possible to come to this country as
| someone who is not American, become American, and then
| become fabulously successful as an American, but it's not
| a given, and there are often headwinds.
|
| It's a difficult problem. We shouldn't despair because
| our governments haven't been able to tackle it. It's one
| worth continuing to try at because the alternatives
| (terrorism and internecine violence on one end, a form of
| genocide on the other) are horrible.
| psychoslave wrote:
| I feel you are a bit harsh in this last comparison, this
| poor Perl codebase doesn't deserve such a stigmatization
| as to low it down at the level of systematic failure
| constructed by several generations of incompetent wannabe
| elite of the country regardless of continuous
| demonstration of total inability to take a single
| decision that make sense in regard to the goals of the
| mandate they are supposed to fulfill.
|
| At least no one can pretend that Larry was missing the
| skills to handle the job, Perl community neither laked
| dedication on par with the flowing resources, and what
| they build still make stand a significant part of the
| internet diligently.
| achenet wrote:
| dear friend,
|
| thank you, your response made me laugh out loud <3
| wanderlust123 wrote:
| Do you have evidence for that claim?
| twixfel wrote:
| I am a British immigrant in Germany and I can vouch for
| how impossible it is to integrate into these northern
| European societies, if the rest are anything like
| Germany. I tick all the boxes of what German boomers
| would want in a "Good Immigrant" (white, educated, from
| western Europe, speaks German, good job), but it doesn't
| help.
|
| I think overall Germans, deep down, don't really want us
| here. We are here to pay for the pension bill--that's
| literally it. But since we are here, they want us to
| completely assimilate and give up everything about
| yourself that came from our homelands. There is no
| respect nor appreciation for any external culture, so
| your "differences" have negative value, because you have
| to Be German.
|
| I dated a third generation Turkish German for 2 years
| whilst I lived here and she faced fairly casual racism
| from white Germans with a regularity that would be
| unthinkable in the UK. She was often getting complimented
| on how good her German (it's her mother tongue) was or
| asked about what country she came from (she was born and
| raised in Germany). It's a racist country. Don't believe
| the PR about how liberal Germany is--it's liberal if
| you're white and German.
|
| And I say all this as a white Western European. It's
| going to be so much harder for the average Syrian or
| Afghan.
| mharig wrote:
| Continental Europeans have very bad experiences with
| British tourists. I really like Brits, but just if they
| stay on their Islands. And I am quite sure I get support
| from around a 100 Million dead guys from India.
|
| Turks are a very big community (I guess more than 20
| Million counting all generations) in Germany with a lot
| of not well adapted folk.
|
| In my 2500 souls german home village live people from
| more than 40 nations. I never heard negative comments
| about them from one of the natives. But the shithole you
| live in of course may vary.
| twixfel wrote:
| Aren't you just proving my point, though? Your post is
| objectively xenophobic.
|
| > Continental Europeans have very bad experiences with
| British tourists
|
| Funnily enough I've never been anywhere where our trashy
| British tourists go (why would I?). So actually I don't
| know what they're like, but I've heard very bad things.
| I've also heard even worse things about the Dutch,
| though.
|
| > And I am quite sure I get support from around a 100
| Million dead guys
|
| Well whoever they are that you're talking about, they are
| dead, so I am not sure they're in a position to support
| you at all. Having said that, I wonder what the all the
| dead Europeans and Jews murdered by Germans would think
| of Germany.
|
| > But the shithole you live in of course may vary
|
| I live and work in Hamburg.
|
| >Turks are a very big community (I guess more than 20
| Million counting all generations) in Germany with a lot
| of not well adapted folk.
|
| Yes, because of how the majority ethnic German population
| treated them and continues to treat them. It's a very
| racist country. That's what living and working in Germany
| and falling in love with a Turkish German taught me.
| Thank you for the cultural exchange.
| kgwgk wrote:
| People will always find reasons to complain:
|
| 'Cliched': Turkish-Germans react as president brings
| kebab on Istanbul trip
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/24/cliched-
| turkis...
|
| (Not trying to make a point, I just found the controversy
| kind of funny.)
| mharig wrote:
| > Funnily enough I've never been anywhere where our
| trashy British tourists go (why would I?). So actually I
| don't know what they're like, but I've heard very bad
| things. I've also heard even worse things about the
| Dutch, though.
|
| You are calling me xenophobic and second the point I
| made? Are you mentally ill?
|
| And btw, never heard anything worse or even comparable
| about the Dutch.
|
| And btw 2, never about Scots, either.
|
| > Well whoever they are that you're talking about, they
| are dead,
|
| I guess you know very well who they are. The people
| killed in India by the British colonialism, according to
| the study of an US american institute. And yes, other
| monkeys are murderish assholes, too. Especially when the
| uniformism of the nation state mindset kicks in.
|
| And you should discuss your argument that the dead cannot
| give support with the Jews.
|
| > That's what living and working in Germany and falling
| in love with a Turkish German taught me.
|
| I doubt your objectivism.
| twixfel wrote:
| Actually your post is really useful, thanks. It's a
| perfect display of how so many Germans respond to
| criticism of their country by immigrants who live there.
|
| Reader: never let anyone tell you Germans aren't
| nationalistic. They are as nationalistic as anyone, they
| are simply more subtle about it and eschew overt
| symbolism.
|
| >I doubt your objectivism.
|
| Yes, to truly understand the racism of Germany, I have to
| witness someone who I do not give a shit about being
| victimised. If I care about that person, then it doesn't
| count and I am not allowed to form an opinion. Lol.
| adornKey wrote:
| I - a white German - got verbally attacked in the subway
| of Berlin by a man because I looked somehow foreign to
| him... So even being white and German sometimes doesn't
| help... Being from the wrong side of the village can be
| bad enough.
|
| Integration is hard - I recently went to an intergration
| event at a local church - almost no Germans there - and
| also the different foreign communities didn't really
| interact with each other. E.g. there's severe hatered
| between the different groups of Turkish people.
|
| I think there are a lot of outsiders in German society -
| ethnic integration is hard. Maybe Special interest groups
| - like Computer Meetups or Maker-Spaces can help with
| Integration into a new Clan?!
| twixfel wrote:
| I really think you're right. Actually I do truly believe
| everyone suffers under the prevailing German attitude
| towards social contact and human interaction. It's just
| worse for immigrants, because we've even more outsiders
| and often visibly so.
| NalNezumi wrote:
| While being an exchange student in Asia I met an Austrian
| girl studying in Germany. Her best friend was Iranian-
| German, born and raised in Germany. When they both tried
| to apply for renting places close to Uni, several times
| her Iranian-German friend was ignored by the land lords.
|
| Even though the Austrian girl had heavy accent and
| technically being the migrant, her "germanic" name and
| white face gave her access to the most basic
| thing:housing; something a German born Iranian (studying
| engineering, well educated and mannered), will struggle
| to have. One of the landlord she met, an old lady, even
| explicitly said she was happy "a German" applied and she
| felt she would take care of the place better.
|
| Similar discrimination exist in Japan, where I lived. All
| my European expat friends complained about how they
| struggle getting apartments because landlord silently
| decline based on their foreigner name.
|
| Very few of them even want to BELIEVE the above Austrian
| girls story. The common reply is always questioning the
| story. Maybe some other reason, it's an anecdote, how can
| she be sure. (when the Austrian girl tell her German
| friends same questioning occur)
|
| At the core of it the unfriendliness of northern Europe +
| Germany is a double punch: you're often silently
| discriminated, and when you try to voice it, you're often
| gaslighted.
|
| At least in USA or other English speaking places those
| voices are allowed to be voiced, without condemnation
| (people will debate it, but we won't even get there for
| places like Germany or Sweden )
| twixfel wrote:
| Yeah this is extremely common, surnames are probably the
| single most important thing in Germany when it comes to
| finding quality housing. Actually the housing market in
| Germany is really bad, somehow seemingly even worse than
| the British one, albeit in different ways. All the
| Germans I know live really well, because finding
| somewhere to live is more about connections ("Vitamin B",
| Genossenschaft, friend/colleague "giving" you their
| contract/flat) and being German (so you're not filtered
| based on your surname) than anything else. Of course, if
| you're an immigrant then you're unlikely to have
| connections, and it's unlikely your dad signed you up to
| a Genossenschaft 20 years ago.
|
| Some Germans may like to think of Germany as a country of
| immigrants, but it just isn't, regardless of how many
| live here.
| iudqnolq wrote:
| When looking at how wealthy democracies integrate
| immigrants the English speaking countries are
| dramatically more successful across all the standard
| objective metrics like crime rates or income compared to
| the native population. So Sweden isn't relevant.
| qwytw wrote:
| Is the UK that particularly better than all the countries
| on the continent? And comparing US/Australia/NZ with
| Europe in the regard isn't exactly fair (they are much
| better at controlling and picking who can or can't come).
|
| US specifically already has extremely high crimes rates
| (compared to most developed countries) which might
| overshadow any effect immigrants might have.
| beaglesss wrote:
| The US has very weak employment checks and it's trivial
| to illegally work ones life here without having to commit
| any other crimes.
|
| We also have weaker regulations that allow you to start a
| business with basically $20 and a pressure washer, and
| you can legalize it with a foreign passport. The English
| speaking countries generally have lowest barriers to
| start a business which is a good release valve when you
| can produce value but racists won't hire you (customers
| will at low enough price).
|
| I suspect illegals and foreigners in general don't cause
| so many problems here because its easier to survive
| helping us than hurting us.
| iudqnolq wrote:
| Yes the UK is. Check out these charts for example: https:
| //www.ft.com/content/c6bb7307-484c-4076-a0f3-fc2aeb0b6...
|
| I agree there's near infinite confounding factors. But I
| think the correlation is striking enough that it's
| relevant to this conversation especially considering that
| the post I'm replying to cites only non-Anglosphere
| countries.
| jajko wrote:
| This post is incorrect in quite a few parts. Being a
| visitor, albeit even longer term, doesn't make you an
| automatic expert nor give you that much understanding, this
| thing isn't a linear function of time spent. Even being
| married or integrating hard doesn't automatically cover
| deeper topics.
|
| Not going to write novel about this complex topic but in
| US, if you fail career/financially wise, society lets you
| easily die homeless on streets, nobody really bats an eye
| and everybody is focused on 'american dream', chasing money
| and career. Not so much in Europe. This stressor for
| newcomers aligns people towards direction that is actually
| beneficial to native society, unless they fail and turn to
| highly punished crime. Here in Europe we are often
| benevolent with social help (sometimes too much I'd say),
| and abuse is not uncommon, especially with migrants since
| systems were often not designed with this in mind. Most
| people perform very differently if they have firm pressure
| on them from many/all directions vs not so much.
|
| Also, absolutely nothing you write is relevant about ie
| Switzerland, which works a bit more like US in terms of
| those pressures and it shows on the ground.
|
| The issue is easily 10 levels deeper and wider, no point
| drilling into all of that. But please refrain from
| reductionism and clearly very US-centric and confident view
| and judging of society you clearly don't understand that
| much.
| weweweoo wrote:
| Personally I think it's less about accepting others, and
| more about the fact European economy sucks, has rigid job
| markets, and lacks entrepreneurial spirit. Historically
| people left Europe to the US, because that's where you
| could improve your life through hard work. Those Chinese-
| Americans improved their life by founding successful
| businesses, which doesn't seem to happen so much over here.
|
| Obviously the US being a land of immigrants with most
| commonly spoken language in the world helps a lot too. The
| fact Europe isn't like the US doesn't make it xenophobic.
| Compared to pretty much anything except the US, it's still
| among the most accepting towards people of different
| cultures.
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| The economy sucks for everyone, not only a subset of poor
| migrants. A subset of african migrants show up in crime
| stats way more than plenty of other poor migrants coming
| from pretty much everywhere, be it asia, africa or latam.
|
| Some poor indian has no advantage coming to Spain
| compared to someone from the Magreb, in fact we could
| argue quite the opposite as their support
| networks/country of origin are pretty far away.
| skrebbel wrote:
| Great observation. I'm European and I agree.
|
| We Europeans love to look down upon America when it comes
| to stuff like functional government, bicycle paths and
| public services, but wrt immigration we're so far behind
| the US, it's not even funny.
|
| > a path toward integration (as in, "to become American";
| there is neither an equivalent aspiration nor option "to
| become French")
|
| We really need to copy this vibe wholesale from the US (and
| Canada). That people can move here but even their
| grandchildren won't feel that they're properly French (or
| in my case, Dutch) is obscene.
|
| I like your observation that the root cause is the ethnic
| character of our states but that doesn't mean we can't take
| a note or two out of the American playbook. Truth is we're
| not even trying.
|
| Instead we're hopelessly split between the left who
| stubbornly refuse to acknowledge that there's a problem
| (and calls you a racist when you try), and the right who
| want to hold onto some ethnic nation state pipedream that
| we never were and never will be.
| sickblastoise wrote:
| One thing nearly every American agrees on is if you're a
| citizen, you're American. It's actually an extremely
| welcoming and beautiful thing about this country.
| jkestner wrote:
| Brown people love carrying around citizenship papers so
| that some Americans can be extremely welcoming.
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| The only reason you're thinking this way it's because
| you're thinking about problematic migrants, but there are
| many others you don't see. They don't need to become
| French, Spanish, Dutch, etc. They're perfectly fine
| feeling from $country in $eurocountry, going on with
| their lifes.
|
| Europe is not the US, it can't be, and that doesn't mean
| we're at fault of everything. Many poor migrants come and
| do ok and have the same opportunities and challenges that
| others who fail.
|
| But somehow is always the same subset we think about.
| skrebbel wrote:
| I attack the idea that someone born and raised in, say,
| NL whose grandparents moved in from, say, Turkey, is
| considered a Turk, often both by themselves and other
| people. In my opinion, if someone is born and raised
| here, they're Dutch, or something like "Turkish-Dutch"
| maybe, but instead everybody talks about them like they
| are an immigrant.
|
| To lock people inside their little immigrant identity
| groups, even when done out of some loving inclusive anti-
| racism vibe, has the adverse effect of what's intended.
| It's totally possible to be Dutch _and_ Turkish and we
| should celebrate that, not fight it.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| > One might ask: Was that the Jews' fault? Or the host
| society's fault?
|
| Or even ask, how much should they integrate? I'm in the UK.
| Jewish communities seem to have held on to a certain
| cohesion, and kept their traditions alive well past when
| the natives gave up on their own traditions and communities
| andrepd wrote:
| Right in the money.
|
| No matter how many decades one lives in the Netherlands,
| one would never be seen as "Dutch". Whereas a Mexican
| living for 10 years in the USA and throwing BBQs in his
| backyard would be seen as 100% American.
| dazc wrote:
| 'Europe has a problem with integration that has its roots
| in the ethnic character of its states...'
|
| In the UK we have large numbers of both Pakistani and
| Indian immigrants. One group has integrated mostly
| successfully in all walks of life and the other one has
| not.
|
| Hard to argue that this has not been a consequence of
| choice although plenty of experts, who have never lived
| with 100 miles of these communities, tell us otherwise.
| alephnerd wrote:
| The Pakistani (most Pahari/Mirpuri) community was
| segregated in de facto ghettos and were brought to work
| unskilled manual labor jobs in a couple industrial
| estates in the 50s-70s.
|
| When the UK began deindustrializing, they were extremely
| hard hit because the factories shut down.
|
| Poverty and Northern England racism (BNP was normalized
| and doing hate crimes well into the early 2000s, schools
| were shite with grammar schools closing, etc) kept
| Mirpuris stuck in the ghetto.
|
| And trust me - a Brown guy - when I say that tbe UK is
| miles more racist and passive aggressive to Desis
| compared to the US or Canada.
|
| Why integrate in a country that keeps being passive
| aggressive and using your community as a scapegoat.
|
| This is why my parents moved to North America instead of
| Europe in the 1990s - heck my dad had an offer to work
| for ARM plc in Cambridge back then around the initial
| IPO.
|
| None of the doors I was able to open here in the US would
| have been opened if I were in the UK or Germany.
|
| I'll get amazing schacenfreude when Labour finishes
| signing the FTA with India in a couple months and Rolls
| Royce and Dyson begin slowly moving operations.
| dazc wrote:
| None of the doors I was able to open here in the US would
| have been opened if I were in the UK or Germany...
|
| The UK recently had a Prime Minister of Indian descent,
| that he was able to breakthrough the glass ceiling of
| racism is quite remarkable given he subsequently was
| unable to demonstrate a talent for anything.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > The UK recently had a Prime Minister of Indian descent
|
| And the US had an African American President yet police
| brutality incidents still occur.
|
| And that Prime Minister has anyhow left the UK and
| returned to California (a couple blocks from the Santa
| Monica Pier). Some GSB alums are setting up a VC Fund for
| that PM post-Downing Street as we speak.
|
| Hell, his business career only started AFTER he
| immigrated to the US and then returned to the UK to work
| at TCM.
|
| > he was able to breakthrough the glass ceiling P Money
| is the ultimate equalizer in a country as status obsessed
| as the UK.
|
| Sunak attended an independent school which his parents
| were able to afford being specialists.
|
| Grammar Schools were shut down in the 80s-90s and
| comprehensives continue to underperform independent
| schools in placing students in Russell Group programs.
|
| If you're parents were working class, you statistically
| will remain working class.
|
| Intergenerational Social Mobility remains lows in the UK
| [0][1][2][3], and add to that economic depression in the
| North+Midlands and the very real othering that happens in
| the UK and that has caused the Mirpuri community to
| remain economically deprived.
|
| --------
|
| In the US I never get asked where I'm from, or told that
| "my English is excellent", or after a couple pints with
| coworkers get told "you're one of the good ones". Yet
| I've faced this kinda BS ALL THE TIME whenever I'm in the
| UK for work. It's worse on the mainland.
|
| Fundamentally, in the US I am not treated as a token nor
| do I face microagressions. In the UK or Mainland Europe I
| have to deal with both.
|
| [0] -
| https://www.goldmansachs.com/intelligence/pages/from-
| briefin...
|
| [1] - https://ifs.org.uk/news/social-mobility-continues-
| fall-and-m...
|
| [2] - https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-
| sector/our-insigh...
|
| [3] - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/14
| 68-4446.1...
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| In Europe we have inmmigrants from all over the world, but
| consistently there's an area in a continent that shows up
| in crime stats way more than others. Can you explain that?
| Is that we are all xenophobic or racists or can we admit
| that there's a cultural component into it, because similar
| migrants within the same continent but different culture do
| actually do ok?
|
| Other times may have different outcomes because countries
| and cultures change. Spain for example is a completely
| different country from what it was in the 80s, economically
| and culturally.
|
| When you live in a place, and you see the same people
| showing up in stats, and people see the same behavior over
| and over and over and over, it's about time to quit calling
| people things and admit that something is going on and we
| should do things differently.
|
| And if you don't then someone will show up promising to
| deal with it.
| RecycledEle wrote:
| Noduerne, may I ask a question? I hope I do not offend you.
|
| I know that million of white men died fighting against the
| Germans in WW2.
|
| Why is it that 95% of what I hear from Jews is condemnation
| if white men for being NAZIs, when the majority of white
| men and the winning side fought against the Germans?
|
| It seems like there should be a 60% gratitude to 40%
| condemnation split.
| chewz wrote:
| > I've heard the same polite euphemisms refering to Arabs
| and Gypsies from the mouths of members of the Front
| National. You know, before 1945 it was said in Europe that
| Jews weren't able to integrate fully with the host society.
|
| I my country Jews lived for 800 years until they left
| without saying Godbye in 1940s. But we have never held them
| hostage - they were free to move to Ottoman Empire or North
| Africa if that suited them better. Or behind Pale of
| Settlement.
|
| Living in ghettoes, sitting shiva for members of community
| that married non-Jews or assimiliated, being under
| influence of fanatical rabbis didn't help with integration.
| mihaic wrote:
| > I don't think the evidence definitively supports the
| conclusion that it's down to which group. I've lived
| besides Gypsy communities, and had during school Gypsy
| friends. Some were in the top of the class, and many were
| not. The big predictor for integration was not ethnicity
| but culture.
|
| Some have a culture that indoctrinated them to exploit and
| explicitly not integrate with the general population. How
| would you integrate a culture that explicitly rejects
| integration without changing the culture itself?
| dgb23 wrote:
| > Some have a culture that indoctrinated them to exploit
| and explicitly not integrate with the general population.
|
| Can we be more specific please?
|
| I live in an European country and have not observed what
| you're describing here.
|
| There are individuals and groups that have tendencies
| like you describe, but the generalization doesn't hold in
| my eyes.
|
| I've had refugees in my family, inner circle, at
| workplaces and so on. The most general observation I can
| make is that people who tend to flee or migrate from
| authoritarian, politically oppressive places tend to be
| very appreciative of social democratic systems.
| mihaic wrote:
| Specifically I meant some groups of Gypsies from Eastern
| Europe, where I've seen this behavior. Most immigrants
| don't fall in this pattern though, like you describe.
| grugagag wrote:
| I think there's a term confusion here, jews generally
| integrated well wherever they went but what they didn't do
| was assimilate in the larger population. They kept their
| own traditions over the ones in the countries they migrated
| to and continued to keep tightly knited communities, to the
| envy or suspiciton of the host countries.
| nso wrote:
| You may not know this, but the word Gypsy is considered an
| insult by the people you reference to. It's like the N-word
| for black people. The preferred name is Romani.
| aussieguy1234 wrote:
| Australia has a large number of ethnic groups, media and the
| far right claims similar issues.
|
| Using statistics on the background of prisoners, in
| Australia, most non-white ethnic groups have lower
| representation in prison compared to their percentage of the
| population when compared to white Australians.
|
| Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_crime
| thegrim33 wrote:
| I wanted to verify the claim from your post/wikipedia link,
| as I don't believe it's true, but it's kind of a shame that
| wikipedia accepts a link to a 238 page report as the
| citation for a claim. It should at least refer to a
| specific page or section in the report. I don't want to
| hunt through hundreds of pages of this report to verify the
| claim. The report also doesn't have any sort of
| "conclusions" section so there's no quick way to even
| verify that the report is saying what they claim it's
| saying, let alone find the data behind the claim.
|
| However, I did a quick search for every sentence containing
| the word Australia, and found nothing that seemed to back
| up the claim.
| nmfisher wrote:
| This definitely wasn't true when I was researching during
| university (~2005). That was obviously a long time ago,
| so it's very plausible that things have changed. However,
| I'd want to see some very well-vetted data to believe it.
| zapperdulchen wrote:
| According to this statistic
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/1411761/australia-
| share-... Indigenous Australians are significantly
| overrepresented in the prison population. As of 2022,
| Indigenous Australians made up 31.8% of the prison
| population, despite constituting only about 3.3% of the
| total population. Because of this massive
| overrepresentation, it might well be that other non-white
| ethnic groups are underrepresented. It's statistic and
| doesn't tell why one minority ends up in jail so often.
| duud wrote:
| "African (predominantly South Sudanese) youth comprise at
| least 19 per cent of young people in custody despite being
| less than 0.5 per cent of Victoria's youth population."
|
| https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-03-25/racial-profiling-
| conc...
| 39896880 wrote:
| > History and data from various European nations suggest that
| some immigrant groups aren't able to integrate with the host
| society
|
| This is the primary reason why the US is the greatest country
| in the world: the ability to integrate immigrants.
| hollerith wrote:
| Yes, it is such a nice feeling that the US is able to have
| the policy you prefer without _any_ risk of negative
| consequences.
| 39896880 wrote:
| Of course there's a risk of negative consequences. In
| fact, the US experiences many of them. But, it ultimately
| ends up stronger.
| rgbrenner wrote:
| _European nations suggest that some immigrant groups aren 't
| able to integrate with the host society after multiple
| generations_
|
| You as an American can move to France, and you'll never be
| considered French. Doesn't matter if you speak french every
| day for the rest of your life with the most perfect French
| accent the world has ever heard. And if you and your American
| wife have kids in France after living in France for 20 years,
| your kid isn't French either.. even if he lives there for
| another 80 years. Better hope your kid finds a french wife,
| or his kids won't be french either.
|
| The idea that you move to a country and you're one of them is
| an American concept.
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| French society values immigrants who integrate far more
| over those who do not.
|
| Macron's hand-wringing and the 2021 Separatism law are two
| concrete examples.
| Aeglaecia wrote:
| it would be polite to act magnanimously in stating that
| America is not the only country with this behaviour, really
| I'm glad to see that the American god complex affects those
| across all walks of life
| woodruffw wrote:
| I don't know why you think this: the French are explicit
| (and proud) of both their cultural chauvinism _and_ their
| willingness to integrate those who fully assimilate into
| it. Assimilation _is_ required, but it 's also sufficient
| (in contrast with the US, where it's neither required nor
| sufficient).
|
| > The idea that you move to a country and you're one of
| them is an American concept.
|
| Not a very old one[1].
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyphenated_American
| Seb-C wrote:
| That is just not true. My grand parents migrated from Spain
| to France and my family perfectly assimilated. I never once
| in my life felt like anyone of us was not accepted as
| French.
|
| Now I decided to myself live in Japan and I hear the very
| same speech as yours again and again about my host country.
| Yet my experience is very positive, I have integrated well
| and made my life here, and I never felt like I wasn't
| accepted.
|
| But of course it took a lot of work to get there. Learning
| a new language, getting familiar with the local culture and
| embracing it is far from easy. The problem I see with some
| foreigners here is that they simply don't do this work and
| keep living in their own (often unhappy) bubble. Or even
| refuse to embrace some local customs because they are
| convinced that their own culture's way of doing things is
| superior to that.
| eastbound wrote:
| > Doesn't matter if you speak french every day
|
| Of course you will have the French nationality, and of
| course we'll consider you French! Don't even need a French
| wife - I have many friends like this.
|
| I might not consider you French if you scream "I hate
| France, vive l'Algerie" everyday, but a LOT of people will
| consider you French and, quote, "More French than the
| right-wing extremists". Oh, the irony. You can say you hate
| France and all of the people in the center of Paris and
| Lyon will consider you are a good French.
|
| So no, what you are saying is blatantly false.
| seszett wrote:
| > _You as an American can move to France, and you 'll never
| be considered French. Doesn't matter if you speak french
| every day for the rest of your life_
|
| I wonder why you would think that. France is one of the few
| countries were it does work like this.
|
| Unlike the US, in France it's not common to even ask where
| someone "comes from" if they speak French, most people will
| just assume you're French. After all, one of the current
| candidate Prime Ministers is half Vietnamese, and a former
| Prime Minister (somewhat candidate today as well I guess)
| was Spanish. But they are both as French as anyone else
| without question, because being French is not an exclusive
| identity (traditionally at least, but the rise of the
| extreme right these days is trying to change that).
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Those voters concerns aren't driven by the actuality of
| social issues with the integration of Somalis they are
| largely driven by racism and fantasy while on the overall
| actual crime continues to decline.
| TMWNN wrote:
| >History and data from various European nations suggest that
| some immigrant groups aren't able to integrate with the host
| society after multiple generations, and remain ghettoized
| with low employment and high crime rates (vastly higher than
| the native population, for certain categories of crime).
|
| Twice as many Britons joined ISIS as served in the British
| military. <https://www.newsweek.com/twice-many-british-
| muslims-fighting...> The new ISIS members are not first-
| generation recent arrivals; they are the children and
| grandchildren of those who arrived decades ago.
| BenFranklin100 wrote:
| The US is not Europe. The US is singular in its ability to
| assimilate immigrants. It is our superpower.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| Canada? NZ? Australia? Netherlands? Brazil?
| BenFranklin100 wrote:
| If voters are concerned about crime, then the need to
| educated that immigrants, even illegal immigrants, have crime
| rates about the same as Americans at large.
| roamerz wrote:
| I don't think the statistical crime rate of illegal
| immigrants matters much to Jocelyn Nungaray's family and
| friends.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Oh come on. Every human population has insane people.
| Lets not bite hook line and sinker into conservative
| biases.
| rangestransform wrote:
| Because legal immigrants are both pre-filtered and have
| something to lose, it's more reasonable to take the
| approach that one crime is too many with immigration,
| rather than comparing with the crime rate of society at
| large.
| BenFranklin100 wrote:
| This is a MAGA talking point so there are people who
| agree with your take. I think that is an unreasonable and
| ridiculous position given its impossibility. In light of
| how much the US benefits from immigration overall, it's
| also shortsighted.
| rangestransform wrote:
| Zero immigrant crime is absolutely impossible, I agree,
| but targeting zero crime should be an immigration policy
| goal. Enshrining some moral obligation to help the rest
| of the world into law is wrong.
| BenFranklin100 wrote:
| Again, you're repeating MAGA talking points. Targeting
| zero crime is code for restricting legal immigration via
| Byzantine immigration requirements. Moreover, the goal
| has been largely achieved: immigrants are significantly
| less likely to commit crimes than Americans [1], [2].
| Your last sentence is nonsensical in the current context.
|
| [1]
| https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2024/03/immigrants-
| are...
|
| [2] https://www.nber.org/papers/w31440
| mlyle wrote:
| > You may not be concerned about the crime, but many voters
| are.
|
| So, if we're concerned about crime, let's create a set of
| laws where we can A) get the immigrants we need for
| demographic and workforce reasons, but B) where we can
| actually screen and be selective.
|
| Plugging our ears and relying upon illegal migrants isn't
| going to result in good outcomes.
|
| > It is not desirable to have separate ethnic groups who
| "share the same language, culture and faith" distinct from
| the mainstream.
|
| The desirable place is somewhere in the middle. We benefit
| from distinct identities and varied culture, but we also need
| to reach enough of a common ground to pull as one nation and
| for two random people to be able to get along meaningfully.
|
| A whole lot of joys that I experience in life come from the
| ways we're varied, but breaking into enclaves would prevent
| those joys _and_ weaken us.
|
| We tend to reach various kinds of overreactions. Respect for
| diversity is great, but not to the point to completely reject
| integration. The avoidance of appropriation-- avoiding
| adopting traditions of another culture without attribution or
| respect-- is important, but not to the extent that it
| prevents mixing or getting along.
| webninja wrote:
| You have a wonderful skill at keeping the temperature down on
| hot issues. I know a simple upvote would suffice but I wanted
| to drop a compliment here regarding this talent of yours.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| > History and data from various European nations suggest that
| some immigrant groups aren't able to integrate with the host
| society after multiple generations...
|
| I wish we as a society could focus on people, not ethnic
| groups.
|
| Deport people who can't assimilate, keep those who can.
| Figure out more accurate ways to determine who is who then
| skin color (or even things like personal taste).
|
| Some stereotypes are backed by statistics, but there's a
| reason why all stereotypes are bad.
| scrubs wrote:
| I support immigration. I know a ton of university educated
| parents who either came here so or paid msrp price at
| American universities to get their education. And their kids
| all went to American universities. Through undergrad they got
| no free rides or scholarships either. They're smart and went
| to places like Emory or CMU.
|
| But why is so damn hard to also solidly insist on an orderly
| border? The US is a proper country with borders. It cannot be
| if you shoot or sneak in you're served like the wilds of old
| western bar frontier living. That's not operationally
| effective.
|
| I want both.
|
| It's congress far, far, far more than any president that is
| responsible for taking a 0 on all this.
| baby wrote:
| > It is not desirable to have separate ethnic groups who
| "share the same language, culture and faith" distinct from
| the mainstream.
|
| How so? Short term or long term?
| stouset wrote:
| > You may not be concerned about the crime, but many voters
| are.
|
| Then I have great news for them! Immigrants to the U.S. are
| responsible for fewer crimes per capita than native-born
| Americans.
| gottorf wrote:
| To my knowledge, there is no version of this claim that
| distinguishes between illegal and legal immigrants. (I'd be
| happy to be proven wrong.) In fact, it would be silly to
| claim that illegal immigrants as a group commit fewer
| crimes per capita than natives, since 100% of them have
| already violated laws by being on US soil to begin with.
|
| Legal immigrants, on the other hand, are absolutely less
| likely to engage in criminal behavior than the general
| population, because they are both selected for positive
| traits as well as knowing that a criminal record will
| jeopardize their chances of citizenship.
| throwaway4220 wrote:
| Whoa there - by your logic illegal immigrants should also
| keep their head down so they don't get deported.
|
| Also, how are legal immigrants "selected for positive
| traits"?
| bavell wrote:
| Citations/sources conspicuously absent. If you go far back
| enough, just about the entire population of the US could be
| considered immigrants. Which wave of immigrants are you
| referring to? Are you including petty crimes in your claim
| or just the more serious ones?
| jollofricepeas wrote:
| In the US and Canada:
|
| All mass influxes of immigrant communities will have some
| crime element initially due to poverty and discrimination.
|
| This is normal and should be expected.
|
| It's a part of the integration process over initial
| generations.
|
| For the US, you can trace the phenomena to the influx of
| Irish Catholics in the early 1800s and from there to...
|
| Eastern European Jews, Italians, Armenians, Russians, Cubans,
| Chinese, Indians, Puerto-Ricans, Dominicans, Central
| Americans, Nigerians, Somalians and other immigrant
| communities.
| dachworker wrote:
| You cannot use Europe as an example, because, it might
| surprise you, but European cultures are vastly different from
| American culture. A lot of the marginalized groups in Europe,
| have no problem integrating in the US.
|
| And to put the blame of lack of integration purely on the
| immigrant group is very disingenuous when you have all these
| far-right political parties openly showing their colours and
| saying matter of fact that they do not want any foreigners,
| including legal ones, including educated ones.
|
| And finally, what's the link between integration and crime? I
| don't see the connection. If anything, the people who are
| least integrated are the ones who are the most law abiding.
| The lead a pious life according to their faith. They aren't
| the ones going around dealing drugs in night clubs. Those
| drug dealers are much more integrated in the host culture.
| After all drug consumption is very European.
| gottorf wrote:
| > And finally, what's the link between integration and
| crime? I don't see the connection.
|
| Here's some data from Denmark[0], for example, that breaks
| down various statistics for different immigrant groups in
| Denmark. I take it as axiomatic that immigrants from other
| Western countries are better integrated to Danish society
| than those from farther-away (culturally speaking)
| places[1]. You can see that as a group, immigrants from
| majority Muslim countries are very strongly overrepresented
| in violent crime.
|
| > to put the blame of lack of integration purely on the
| immigrant group is very disingenuous
|
| Modern immigration isn't slavery, where someone was
| forcibly brought to a new land against their will. Nobody
| has a right to be in any country they please, other than
| their home. So it follows that the onus is on immigrants to
| assimilate to the laws and cultures of the country they
| voluntarily chose to go to. Of course, it would be
| welcoming of the host country to facilitate that process,
| but I don't see that as being obligatory.
|
| [0]: https://inquisitivebird.substack.com/p/the-effects-of-
| immigr...
|
| [1]: Of course, you may disagree, but I would regard that
| as a strange position needing a stout defense.
| f6v wrote:
| > History and data from various European nations suggest that
| some immigrant groups aren't able to integrate with the host
| society after multiple generations
|
| This might be true, but some European countries are
| notoriously hard to integrate. The situation could be vastly
| different in societies that aren't monocultural, e.g. USA.
| WilTimSon wrote:
| > History and data from various European nations suggest that
| some immigrant groups aren't able to integrate with the host
| society after multiple generations, and remain ghettoized
| with low employment and high crime rates (vastly higher than
| the native population, for certain categories of crime).
|
| Does it suggest that, though? It suggests that, in the
| specific conditions that were presented to those groups, they
| turned to crime. However, we can't pretend that the previous
| generations of immigrants had exclusively good experiences
| and quality of life, even in Europe. Obviously, some
| countries tried their best but in the past decades we had far
| less experience on proper integration (we as in the
| collective we, no country has worked out some perfect plan on
| it).
|
| In fact, certain countries specifically created
| neighbourhoods (ghettos) for immigrant populations, all with
| positive intentions. Can't really blame the migrants for then
| becoming "ghettoized" in such a scenario. Granted, I know of
| other countries that specifically did not do that and still
| had struggles, which just goes to show how the whole thing is
| a minefield, where good intentions can clash with harsh
| reality.
| iudqnolq wrote:
| Interestingly various European nations turn out to be a poor
| comparison group for the United States. No one has
| conclusively determined why yet, but we know there's a strong
| correlation between a country having English as the primary
| language and immigrants integrating well.
|
| This is especially true for second-generation immigrants.
| First generation immigrants are general less likely to commit
| crimes, but in countries like Germany and France the rate
| rises significantly with the second generation. That doesn't
| happen in the US or Canada, for example.
|
| The children of immigrants in English speaking countries tend
| to do better financially than their parents whereas in many
| non-english speaking European countries the children of
| immigrants slide into poverty.
|
| Edit: Here's a related article with some charts illustrating
| the correlation https://www.ft.com/content/c6bb7307-484c-4076
| -a0f3-fc2aeb0b6...
| mk89 wrote:
| There are only 3 or 4 countries in the west having English
| as their main language.
|
| What about UK, how did that work out for them? I can't see
| the charts.
| iudqnolq wrote:
| The UK has significantly better integration than the
| continent in line with the other Anglosphere countries.
|
| I agree it's not enough evidence for anything conclusive.
| But I think it's enough evidence to say arguing about
| what will happen to the US based only on Sweden data is
| unsound.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > No one has conclusively determined why yet
|
| Ask immigrants or the children of immigrants (like me).
|
| Western Europe are just extremely insular and passive
| aggressive and will gladly bury their head in the sand
| regarding their own racism.
|
| Anglo countries at least tried to tackle racism by
| introducing education about racism (eg. Civil Rights
| Movement in US, Aboriginal Rights Movement in Australia,
| First Nation's Movement and racial quotas in Canada, the
| anti-Skinhead movement and the trade union lead anti-racism
| movement in the UK) and trying to build an identity that
| trascends race or ethnicity.
|
| Similar movements happened in mainland Europe as well, but
| aren't taught about, so mainland Europeans remain insular
| in their mindset.
| gottorf wrote:
| > No one has conclusively determined why yet, but we know
| there's a strong correlation between a country having
| English as the primary language and immigrants integrating
| well.
|
| To me this has a simple answer: (Western) countries with
| English as the primary language are all New World
| countries, with the obvious exception of the British Isles
| nations.
| jppittma wrote:
| Why stop at the country level? We could just as easily have
| ethnic and cultural homogeneity on a global level. We'd have
| much lower crime and higher employment if all culture world-
| wide were homogenous. No ghettoized countries and such. /s
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| > You may not be concerned about the crime, but many voters
| are.
|
| What voters are "concerned" about and "reality" tend to be
| highly divorced from each other these days.
|
| https://www.ojp.gov/library/publications/comparing-crime-
| rat...
|
| > The study found that undocumented immigrants had
| substantially lower crime rates than native-born citizens and
| legal immigrants across a range of felony offenses. Relative
| to undocumented immigrants, U.S.-born citizens are over 2
| times more likely to be arrested for violent crimes, 2.5
| times more likely to be arrested for drug crimes, and over 4
| times more likely to be arrested for property crimes.
|
| Would you prefer a conservative source? Here ya go.
| https://www.cato.org/blog/illegal-immigrants-have-low-
| homici...
|
| Conservative voters also think crime in general is spiraling
| out of control, because a certain fan of fake tanning
| products keeps shouting it to them. It's not even remotely
| true. Both violent and property crime have plunged for
| decades and by and large is still falling:
| https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-
| content/uploads/sites/20/2024...
|
| Hilariously, a significant uptick in homicides occurred
| during Fake Tanning Product's presidency, and it's dropped
| during Biden's:
|
| > In 2020, for example, the U.S. murder rate saw its largest
| single-year increase on record - and by 2022, it remained
| considerably higher than before the coronavirus pandemic.
| Preliminary data for 2023, however, suggests that the murder
| rate fell substantially last year.
|
| Voters were also 'concerned' Democrats were running a pedo
| ring out of a pizza shop basement. That pizza shop _does not
| even have a basement._ By your logic, we should be hiring
| more FBI agents to inspect pizza shops looking for pedo rings
| because "voters are concerned" and writing legislation that
| requires pizza shop owners get CORI checks.
|
| > History and data from various European nations
|
| Why are you using historical data from another continent that
| is very different culturally, when there's data from the US
| Undocumented migrants and immigrants in the US commit _half_
| the crime US citizens do. Probably because they 're here to
| work to do things like send money home, and so they're
| keeping their heads down (not to mention, busy working...)
|
| I already provided a study, but here's more about the issue.
| The Brennan Center article includes links to numerous studies
| refuting your claims. The evidence is overwhelmingly
| conclusive: immigrants, documented or not, commit
| significantly fewer crimes per capita than US citizens.
|
| https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-
| opinion/debu...
|
| https://www.npr.org/2024/03/08/1237103158/immigrants-are-
| les...
|
| https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2024/03/immigrants-
| are...
|
| https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/.
| ..
| jeffbee wrote:
| Isn't that the opposite of what the stats tell us? Immigrants
| are the most law-abiding Americans, and their descendants
| converge to typical amounts of lawlessness in 1 or 2
| generations.
|
| https://www.nber.org/papers/w31440
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Republicans are strongly anti-illegal immigration, and that
| appears anti-immigration to some.
| apsec112 wrote:
| Trump supported a plan to reduce legal immigration by half:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/02/us/politics/trump-
| immigra...
| philk10 wrote:
| As an immigrant in the US I looked at the plans ( produced
| by Stephen Miller) and would not have qualified to be
| admitted.
| refurb wrote:
| That's an article from 7 years ago?
|
| Don't you think it makes more sense to look at Trump's 2024
| platform?
|
| https://rncplatform.donaldjtrump.com/
|
| The only statement on legal immigration: _" Republicans
| will prioritize Merit-based immigration, ensuring those
| admitted to our Country contribute positively to our
| Society and Economy, and never become a drain on Public
| Resources."_
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| The amount of room they give to interpret that vague
| statement however they want could fit an aircraft
| carrier. Their actual policy position is in their project
| 2025 materials and it curtails legal immigration pretty
| significantly along similar lines that trump attempted to
| tread in his first presidency.
| coding123 wrote:
| Stop spreading mis-info about Trump and Project 2025
| which he is not involved in.
| refurb wrote:
| Project 2025 is not the Trump official 2024 platform.
| It's a policy white paper published by an independent
| think tank.
|
| Why would I look at that?
| mikem170 wrote:
| A lot of former Trump administration officials are
| involved in Project 2025, at least 140, which is more
| than half of the people listed as authors and
| contributors to their Mandate for Leadership document
| [0]. There's also over 100 conservative organizations on
| the Project 2025 advisory board [1], organizations that
| have also endorsed Trump for president. There's a lot of
| overlap in this document with positions that Trump has
| endorsed.
|
| It appears to everyone, on both the left and the right,
| that Project 2025 is what conservatives want for a future
| Trump administration. There doesn't seem to be much of a
| competing vision for the future of the Republican party,
| certainly nothing as detailed as this 900 page document
| nor as widely backed by other conservatives.
|
| This is why a lot of people are looking at this document.
| Maybe you should be, too?
|
| I do acknowledge that Trump has been trying to distance
| himself from Project 2025 lately, coinciding with the
| press coverage the details in that document have been
| getting.
|
| [0] https://edition.cnn.com/2024/07/11/politics/trump-
| allies-pro...
|
| [1] https://live-
| project2025.pantheonsite.io/about/advisory-boar...
| silverquiet wrote:
| In the last ten years or so, I came to understand the
| parable of "The Emperor's New Clothes" in a visceral way.
| We can all see the viciousness and cruelty to scapegoats
| is Trump and the conservatives binding principal, and
| that they've settled in immigrants as that scapegoat
| without much regard to legal status. You can tell me all
| you want that the evidence of my eyes and ears is false,
| but I am not able to turn them off.
| lowkey wrote:
| It seems like Trump's immigration stance has evolved
| significantly in the seven years since this article was
| written. A few weeks ago he appeared on the All-in podcast
| and promoted the idea of giving green cards en masse to
| foreign students upon graduation. I support the idea even
| if I don't support the candidate.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Meanwhile if we forget what his lips are doing and watch
| for the fist we'd see his republican party has a
| different agenda. Namely one about picking certain
| favorite nations and excluding others. Really just read
| the project 2025 materials and forget whatever tangents
| he goes on, as he doesn't hold himself accountable to
| what he might say.
| coding123 wrote:
| So if a text says your name 100 times, you automatically
| wrote it? He has nothing to do with Project 2025.
| mikem170 wrote:
| "In fact, at least 140 people who worked in the Trump
| administration had a hand in Project 2025, a CNN review
| found, including more than half of the people listed as
| authors, editors and contributors to "Mandate for
| Leadership," the project's extensive manifesto for
| overhauling the executive branch" [0]. Here's details on
| a bunch of them [1].
|
| People and organizations, not just on the left but also
| over 100 influential organizations on the right [2], take
| Project 2025 as the desired direction for a future Trump
| administration. Trump himself has endorsed many of the
| same positions in this document.
|
| Right or wrong, that's why people have made the
| association between Trump and Project 2025. This is what
| conservatives as a group seem to want for a future Trump
| administration. There doesn't seem to be a competing
| vision for the party, and certainly nothing laid out in
| 900 pages of detail.
|
| Why wouldn't people on the left make the association
| between Trump and this document when so many on the right
| do?
|
| [0] https://edition.cnn.com/2024/07/11/politics/trump-
| allies-pro...
|
| [1] https://www.newsweek.com/project-2025-ex-trump-
| contributors-...
|
| [2] https://live-
| project2025.pantheonsite.io/about/advisory-boar...
| ndiddy wrote:
| The Democrat obsession with Trump implementing Project
| 2025 strikes me as similar to the Republican obsession
| with Biden implementing the Green New Deal a few years
| ago. It's the president's radical legislation that isn't
| endorsed by the president and isn't legislation.
| hnpolicestate wrote:
| The grassroots of the Republican Party absolutely want a
| reduction in all immigration. Few actually in Congress
| though. I'm talking about voters.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| There's a very interesting question to be answered as to
| whether more high-quality immigrants come through legal
| immigration or illegal immigration.
|
| Legal immigration is more likely to bring those you actively
| desire via quotas. Still illegal immigration has the
| advantage of raw numbers.
|
| There's also the question of how many 2nd/3rd generation
| immigrants go on to become high-quality from each group.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| There's absolutely nothing preventing large "raw numbers"
| of legal skilled immigrants to high-income countries,
| _except_ policy choices that are overtly hostile towards
| increasing legal immigration.
| margalabargala wrote:
| Being strongly anti illegal immigration is among their
| positions, yes, but I think OP is more referring to their
| position of erecting additional.barriers in the way of
| _legal_ immigration.
|
| They have discovered it is easier to win political points by
| making current legal immigrants illegal and deporting them,
| than addressing what people think of as "illegal
| immigration". But they get to call it the same thing :-)
| dangus wrote:
| It's a mistake to make the good-faith assumption that
| Republicans have logically consistent views.
|
| To Republicans, Cubans don't count as illegal immigrants
| because they're escaping "communism," and their immigrants
| consistently vote red. Plus, the majority of Cubans are white
| and Christian, unlike the brown immigrants that Republicans
| don't want in the country.
| api wrote:
| Shutting off US immigration is national suicide. Immigration is
| our superpower. It's like a company deciding they don't want
| any more customers. Utterly beyond idiotic.
|
| As birth rates drop globally the countries that are magnets for
| the highest quality immigrants will explode and basically rule
| the world.
|
| The kind of immigrants we get are the envy of the world too. I
| am a little more sympathetic to European concerns because the
| immigrants they are getting are coming for different reasons.
| Many of them are refugees not people coming because they
| genuinely want to be there, and that is a different deal
| entirely.
| cm2187 wrote:
| The number of actual refugees in Europe is tiny (ukrainians
| excluded). What is large is the number of people who pretend
| to be refugees, like it is at the southern border of the US.
|
| And even actual refugees are really economic migrants after
| they crossed half a dozen countries where they wouldn't be in
| danger.
| ryan93 wrote:
| That's why it has to stop. It must be just that much worse
| for the countries losing their talent
| j-krieger wrote:
| > it seems to me there is significant brain drain from many
| countries to the U.S. and that contributes to our success
|
| This enables wage suppression
| konschubert wrote:
| High skilled immigrants also create demand, which creates
| labour demand.
|
| So it's not clear that they suppress wages.
| j-krieger wrote:
| How exactly is it that highly skilled tech immigrants
| create demand?
| konschubert wrote:
| They get a salary. And they spend it.
|
| Thought experiment: If you removed half of the population
| of a country, would that make the rest of the country
| richer or poorer?
| hnpolicestate wrote:
| What if * _some*_ highly intelligent immigrants oppose American
| values? Sounds like a recipe for disaster. They may use their
| capital and ability to politically undermine our civil
| liberties.
|
| Most people globally aren't used to the American interpretation
| of free speech or gun rights. I don't want people coming here
| using their talents to politically remove my rights. I think
| this is a fair point to make.
| michaelhoney wrote:
| the obsession with gun rights is doing your country far more
| harm than highly intelligent immigrants ever will
| hnpolicestate wrote:
| I honestly don't see it. Statistically or otherwise. Even
| if it were. It's a protected unalienable right. Cannot
| under any circumstances be circumvented. In my opinion of
| course.
| bmicraft wrote:
| > It's a protected unalienable right. Cannot under any
| circumstances be circumvented.
|
| Until the next amendment to it, be that in a couple of
| years or centuries
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_culture_in_the_United_S
| tat...
|
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-the-gun-
| becam...
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/09/13/key-
| facts...
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/fourth-july-
| musings-am...
|
| https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/
| sangnoir wrote:
| > Cannot under any circumstances be circumvented.
|
| Tangentially - I find it fascinating how the originalists
| on the supreme court get fuzzy on what a "well regulated
| militia" meant at the time the amendment was written.
| rpmisms wrote:
| This has been explained ad nauseum, but here goes.
|
| Well-regulated meant, at the time, in good working order.
| The militia meant, and still means, able-bodied men from
| 18 to 45. The right was granted to the people, not the
| militia.
|
| Please make snide comments in good faith, at least.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| The experience of the black panthers had shown us that if
| many of us attempted to live by that interpretation the
| goal posts would just be moved by those in power.
| rpmisms wrote:
| Thankfully, many of the infringements upon rights
| committed during that period are being undone.
| 15155 wrote:
| This argument is so tired: the meaning of this prefatory
| clause is not intended to be a limitation as some would
| hope.
|
| Nobody is "fuzzy" - the left-most SCOTUS Justices don't
| make this argument, see _Caetano v. Massachusetts._
| tonynator wrote:
| Imagine being a European and not being allowed to defend
| yourself lol
| AnarchismIsCool wrote:
| I'm with you on this, but imagine being an American in
| prison for 10 years because you drilled a 1/8" hole .123"
| from the edge of a funny shaped piece of aluminum.
| tonynator wrote:
| Yeah that is also pretty pathetic, agreed.
| tstrimple wrote:
| Way to invent things that don't happen to instill fear.
| Just more FUD.
| AnarchismIsCool wrote:
| People do drill that hole and do get arrested... What's
| FUD here?
|
| Someone was even arrested for selling stainless steel
| business cards that had a particular bottle-tab looking
| design laser etched on it.
| nozzlegear wrote:
| What's the reference?
| rjbwork wrote:
| Presumably the hole that makes a full auto sear in an
| AR-15 work.
| AnarchismIsCool wrote:
| It's complicated, but tl;dr, the ATF is in a constant
| spiral of trying to apply the text of the National
| Firearms Act and a handful of other laws in the real
| world.
|
| They don't define a firearm as something that can shoot
| bullets, they define it as (usually) the part that
| receives the ammunition/magazine, the "receiver", which
| becomes the serial-numbered portion of the gun. For some
| guns, it's a complicated, vaguely gun shaped object made
| up of welded and formed parts, for others it's something
| as simple as a piece of 1-2" steel tube threaded at one
| or both ends. This legally can be classified as a firearm
| and if you were to, for instance, mail it to someone
| across state lines, export it, sell it in some states or
| take it through airport security you would face jail
| time.
|
| _As an aside, this quirk is occasionally used by
| photographers and others who want hand inspection and
| chain of custody for expensive checked luggage, so they
| 'll put an inert receiver in their suitcase and declare
| it as a firearm to the airline._
|
| This gets further complicated by the other elements of
| the NFA banning machine guns and regulating short
| barrels, suppressors, and a couple other items. In this
| particular case we're talking about a specific,
| relatively simple aluminum receiver that can be made at
| home with a cheap mill or 3d printer, as it isn't
| pressure bearing. The ATF has deemed that this is,
| itself, a firearm and further, it can be modified into an
| illegal machine gun by drilling a hole near the top edge.
| In reality this does nothing, you'd need to go make or
| buy three-ish other distinct parts to modify a trigger
| group into one that supports automatic fire, as well as
| all the rest of the parts that make the bare receiver
| into a functioning firearm that can actually shoot.
|
| As the laws are extremely complicated and subject to
| fairly arbitrary reinterpretation periodically, people
| somewhat routinely get in huge trouble for breaking them
| (they're enforced extremely aggressively). Some of those
| people are trying to poke the bear for fun, but some of
| them just don't realize that screwing an oil filter to
| the end of their rifle, or tying a shoestring to the
| trigger (of particular rifles) are all felonies with a 10
| year prison sentence.
|
| It's all a bit dystopian. It would be as if there were
| certain illegal numbers that you weren't allowed to tell
| your friends about...
| anon291 wrote:
| America has an extremely low violence rate.
|
| If you remove a handful of neighborhoods with particularly
| bad problems, Americas violent crime rate is on par that of
| Europe. Given the number of guns in those safe areas, if
| would seem Americans are made of some good stuff.
| krapp wrote:
| >What if _some_ highly intelligent immigrants oppose American
| values? Sounds like a recipe for disaster. They may use their
| capital and ability to politically undermine our civil
| liberties.
|
| That should be perfectly acceptable and within the bounds of
| free speech in a democratic society. It's up to you to
| counter "bad speech" with other speech in the marketplace of
| ideas. At least that's what I'm told when I complain about
| all of the American racists and lunatics whose speech I'm
| supposed to hold sacred, while they try to undermine _my_
| rights and values.
| hnpolicestate wrote:
| You inserted their speech where I said "capital and
| ability". Because you support undermining those rights so
| you play semantic games.
|
| I mean this sincerely, isn't the debate irrelevant? You
| either support those civil rights or oppose them. I don't
| want to put words in your mouth but I assume you oppose 1A
| and 2A. Why not just say it? We wouldn't have to waste time
| discussing ancillary nonsense.
| krapp wrote:
| >You inserted their speech where I said "capital and
| ability". Because you support undermining those rights so
| you play semantic games.
|
| I never said I supported undermining any particular
| rights. The phrase "use their capital and ability to
| politically undermine our civil liberties" implies
| engagement in the political process, which implies free
| speech, which (notwithstanding _your_ semantic games) is
| already established as legitimate.
|
| >I don't want to put words in your mouth
|
| Yes you do, your comment here does so numerous times. So
| feel free to argue with the strawman, I'm out.
| hnpolicestate wrote:
| Okay, sorry.
| anon291 wrote:
| It should be within the bounds of speech for people part of
| our society already
|
| Not for people were considering allowing to join our
| society
| krapp wrote:
| Immigrants don't need "our" permission to join "our"
| society, they only need the permission of the government,
| as a matter of legal formality. And of course one could
| argue that "illegal immigrants" are a part of society,
| just not legally, because societies aren't only defined
| in the context of states.
|
| Also free speech is a universal value, is it not? It
| should apply equally to everyone, everywhere, all the
| time, and in all contexts.
| anon291 wrote:
| Free speech is a universal human value but realistically
| America is in a league of its own with what speech it
| allows.
| vaidhy wrote:
| Are American values static? If not, how did they change over
| time? Was it some group that used their capital and political
| organization to make the changes?
|
| If so, why is it ok for one group to advocate for a change,
| but the similar advocacy from another group is not ok?
|
| Just for introspection..
| anon291 wrote:
| American values are... Pretty much static. We've been very
| anti government for a very long time. Left, right,
| center... Everyone solidly agrees they need less governance
|
| Leftists will scream about civil rights.
|
| Right wingers will tut tut about high taxes.
|
| Centrists will complain about both.
|
| But the message is clear... Less government. More
| individual autonomy
| danenania wrote:
| American government since the beginning of the 20th
| century has been on a nearly uninterrupted trend of
| increasing state power, both domestically and
| internationally. Politicians sometimes pretend to be
| anti-government to get votes, but every administration
| spends more than the previous one.
|
| I wouldn't call that static.
| anon291 wrote:
| Meh... Not really true. In aggregate, perhaps, but things
| go back and forth.
| danenania wrote:
| Not only in aggregate. The only exceptions to each
| administration spending more than the previous one (in
| real terms, inflation-adjusted) were immediately post WW1
| and WW2. Look it up.
| 15155 wrote:
| > Leftists will scream about civil rights.
|
| (Except for that pesky Second Amendment)
| macintux wrote:
| > I don't want people coming here using their talents to
| politically remove my rights.
|
| I'm far more concerned by the people who are in power _today_
| who want to politically remove women 's rights. Others are
| worried about those who are in power who want to remove gun
| rights.
|
| Immigrants are very, very far down the list of people with
| power to disrupt our rights.
| nozzlegear wrote:
| What if _some_ highly intelligent people oppose American
| values and abuse the first amendment by spreading hatred and
| neo-Nazi propaganda in the town square?
|
| It's a rhetorical question -- this happens already and we
| handle it the way we'd handle your rhetorical question: shake
| our heads at the misguided worm brains, ignore it or confront
| them directly. But either way it's not a threat to American
| civil liberties, the Bill of Rights is more robust than that.
| anon291 wrote:
| Yeah personally I'm completely uninterested in skilled
| immigration.
|
| I think the only determining factor is if you demonstrate a
| commitment to American values.
|
| We do not need highly skilled authoritarians. I'd rather get
| the freedom loving farm worker from Mexico.
|
| I'm a Republican if that matters. I have met enough highly
| skilled immigrants in silicon valley to know that many hold
| American values in contempt.
|
| My own family migrated here so this is not xenophobia. Many
| of my own ethnic background actively misunderstand and
| misconstrue American values and should never be allowed to
| work here much less given citizenship.
|
| I have much more in common with the Hispanic farm worker and
| would prefer to provide a path by which they can come legally
| through a vetting process which also prevents gang members
| from flowing in.
|
| Also we obviously need a wall on the southern border. I feel
| like anyone who's been to the border will come to this
| conclusion if they're being honest with themselves.
| 15155 wrote:
| How many of these individuals should we admit annually to
| our welfare regime?
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| You don't have to immigrate to the US to do that if you are
| sufficiently rich.
| chr1 wrote:
| That's a valid wish, but there is already a large number of
| people in America who oppose American values. So in principle
| there is no difference whether their number will grow by
| immigration, high birthrate, indoctrination of other peoples
| children, or adults changing their views.
|
| So simply opposing immigration won't accomplish what you
| want, it will only be used as a weapon against you.
|
| If you really want to keep your values, you need to find ways
| to attract more people who have the same values.
|
| E.g. Cubans who run away have a good immunity against
| communism, that's why people who make it so easy to cross the
| border by foot, made it hard to enter by boats.
| liversage wrote:
| This is a very controversial topic in Europe where Florence
| Bergeaud-Blackler's book about how the Muslim Brotherhood is
| trying to infiltrate European institutions is seen either as
| a conspiracy theory fueling Islamophobia or a dangerous
| problem that has to be dealt with to protect society.
|
| https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-french-academic-
| payi...
| TheRoque wrote:
| > there is significant brain drain from many countries to the
| U.S. and that contributes to our success
|
| And I find it so tragic. It means that the best elements of a
| given country are being sucked out of it. How can this country
| ever get better if the best elements just leave it ?
| Immigration exists because some parts of the world just suck,
| with corrupt governments, wars, you name it. I don't see how
| anyone can be happy of migrations, it means fleeing your home
| and leaving your roots. I don't think most migrations are
| something to be happy about.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > And I find it so tragic. It means that the best elements of
| a given country are being sucked out of it. How can this
| country ever get better if the best elements just leave it ?
|
| They don't leave irreversibly, they can go back if the
| political and institutional milieu in their home country
| improves, and bring valuable insights from abroad. This
| dynamic has been quite common wrt. those who migrated to the
| Americas throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.
| TheRoque wrote:
| I tend to believe you, but it's not something that's about
| a lot. I would be curious to know the facts of expats
| coming back after a while, or a least investing in their
| home countries
| tstrimple wrote:
| > How can this country ever get better if the best elements
| just leave it ?
|
| By competing for their talent. I'm not a huge proponent of
| capitalism, but that's the world we live in and the world
| we'll die in. These countries simply aren't competitive in a
| way to encourage their people to stay. There are innumerous
| ways to combat this. But our current thinking is so clouded
| by short sighted profit that today's outcomes shouldn't
| surprise anyone.
| sensanaty wrote:
| Frankly, my home country doesn't deserve my brain, nor the
| brain of anyone else willing and able to leave it.
|
| It's a nice sentiment, but you also can't ignore that, if
| people like myself are willing to go through the oftentimes
| extremely stressful task of emigrating with all the things
| that entails, there's probably a reason for it. It's not like
| you can just pick up and leave, after all
| foobarian wrote:
| It's all fun and games until your host country grows a
| secret police willing to threaten what family remains
| behind to keep you from leaving.
| sensanaty wrote:
| None of my family has been back in decades, we've long
| since abandoned it.
|
| Also, that situation is a lot more likely to occur in the
| mother country than most people's host countries, if it
| doesn't happen already. There's a reason it was the
| _East_ germans fleeing, and not the other way around.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Its only tragic if you think of the world as a bunch of
| sports teams winning points, rather than a planet occupied by
| the human race. Would you rather the researcher toil
| fruitlessly in their home country that lacks the funding to
| properly support a good research environment? Or would you
| rather they had the opportunity to actually conduct their
| experiments or build their invention? They will draft a
| patent or a research paper that the entire world can now see
| coming from the US.
| DragonStrength wrote:
| Or if you value community and realize all the folks with
| ambition leaving an area is sad for that community. I don't
| have to be cheering for my hometown to win to think it's
| sad someone must choose between the community they grew up
| in and using their talents.
| cryptoegorophy wrote:
| Legal or illegal immigration? Should we background check
| immigrants for crime?
| carom wrote:
| Building a class of undocumented workers who are outside the
| normal legal system is simply a gift to corporations. I am
| staunchly against illegal immigration while being very pro
| legal immigration. If we need workers, bring them in legally
| instead of allowing them to exist in a legal grey area as
| exploitable labor.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| You can have protections for illegal immigrants that prevent
| a lot of abuse. California has some good laws about this.
| SuperNinKenDo wrote:
| All fair points, however if we take everything you said at face
| value (which I mostly do, with some caveats) it does give give
| one pause to consider what a constant stream of new migrants
| means. It all sounds well and good to say that the problem is
| self correcting after a few generations, but if you are
| constantly "importing" new (1st generation) migrants, this lag-
| time becomes a serious issue quickly.
| wil421 wrote:
| Most people are against border hooping illegal immigrant not
| legal immigrants. There's a huge difference. For some reason
| the internet puts them in the same camp.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| The first mistake when approaching immigration is to take all
| the different types of immigration and even non-immigration and
| lower the level of detail to simply "immigration". This means:
| 1. refugees 2. legal immigrants
| 3. non-immigrants magic beam of
| 3.1. temporary workers --infinite--> "iMMiGraNTs"
| 3.2. tourists irrationality and
| "mIGrAntS" 4. students 5. illegal immigrants
| 6. stateless 7. prisoners of war 8. etc
|
| If you want to fix a problem you need to divide it into
| subproblems and solve each problem, not mix everything together
| and make a larger problem harder to solve.
|
| Mixing everything together is obfuscating the problem which is
| the modus operandi of those who want to prevent the solution of
| the problem as they have an incentive to keep the problem
| around.
|
| Politicians like keeping immigration a problem because it gives
| them a way to divide people into groups and rewarding those
| groups depending on their political needs, making you easier to
| rule. Which is what they do for everything else. In their case,
| _you_ are the problem to solve, not the actual problem they so
| passionately talk about. And when you get angry you play right
| into their villain claws.
|
| The brain gain/drain dynamics between countries is real. Brain
| gain is what you definitely want as a country.
| vikingerik wrote:
| Brain drain to the US helps the US, yes. The key word there is
| the brain. What doesn't help is taking in unskilled and manual
| laborers; that only creates downward pressure on wages and
| upward pressure on housing prices and other scarce resources,
| even before we get to any correlation with crime.
|
| Countries with a highly successful immigration system, notably
| Canada, do it by being highly merit-based, for education and
| professional skills. The US hasn't put together any significant
| plan for that. Trump briefly tried proposing merit-based
| immigration in his first term, but it was quickly shot down
| with all the usual accusations of discrimination and so on. The
| US kinda unofficially does it via H1-B and O-1 visas, though
| that's only for employment and mostly not for permanent
| residence.
| codexon wrote:
| > Countries with a highly successful immigration system,
| notably Canada
|
| You probably aren't aware of this but that is definitely not
| the sentiment with Canadians recently.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaHousing2/top/?sort=top&t=year
| ckdarby wrote:
| Canadian here, but not speaking on half of all Canadians.
|
| We do have a highly successful immigration system, but
| don't have a highly successful infrastructure. There is a
| housing crisis.
|
| The irony is I believe in the longer term Canada will face
| an immigrant shortage and not a housing crisis. As a born
| Canadian I am seeing less & less value to immigrating to
| Canada unless you're coming to employed as a Uber
| driver/Food delivery.
| codexon wrote:
| Ok and what about all the people in that subreddit
| complaining about lack of jobs and healthcare? It's not
| just a housing crisis.
| searealist wrote:
| So you support skilled immigration. That sounds like a
| republican position to me.
| culopatin wrote:
| But you need the friction for the brain drain, otherwise it
| will just be anyone. Brain or no brain. I'm an immigrant and I
| can tell you that without the difficulties you'd just get
| people that would save enough to buy a ticket and land here and
| just "figure it out". There is already lots of surplus in the
| retail area.
|
| I'm convinced that the system expects a percentage of leakage
| by design as a strainer to keep the low effort migration out.
| sumedh wrote:
| > I'm not concerned about the crime because that seems like a
| somewhat higher tendency until
|
| Would you share the same opinion if you were a victim?
| rpmisms wrote:
| I support immigration too, as long as it's people we vet. Smart
| people want to live here, and will jump through hoops to do so.
| We should make the hoops easier for them, and actually deport
| people who spit in their faces by waltzing over the border and
| staying. It's not fair to the hard-working honest people who
| played by the rules.
|
| Also, you should be concerned about the crime. Have you seen
| what the cartel does in Mexico? It's terrifying, and those
| (cartel members) are not people we want here.
| timschmidt wrote:
| > Have you seen what the cartel does in Mexico?
|
| The ones the DEA has partnered with[0], arms[1], and enables
| through backward drug policy[2]?
|
| 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinaloa_Cartel#Alleged_collu
| si...
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATF_gunwalking_scandal
|
| 2: https://insightcrime.org/news/analysis/how-100-years-
| failed-...
| rpmisms wrote:
| What, you assume I think the government is good? The cartel
| is worse by a fair margin, but we do not have a virtuous
| government. The difference is that government has a modicum
| of public responsibility and can't/isn't likely to simply
| murder most* of us for no good reason.
| timschmidt wrote:
| Did you find any assumptions in the references I
| provided? Since you evoked the cartels as a boogeyman it
| seems relevant to point out that they're one of our own
| creation. Changes to US policy no greater or more complex
| than those proposed for immigration could eliminate the
| economic conditions which drive their violence.
| rangestransform wrote:
| Well prescreening immigrants lets us avoid dealing with the
| consequences of our actions, so why not
| timschmidt wrote:
| Poe's law strikes again. I'm unsure if you're being
| sarcastic or not. I think the consequences of our actions
| will find us one way or another regardless of immigration
| policy. That's not an argument against screening, but for
| policy reform.
| rangestransform wrote:
| The government has a responsibility to minimize the
| consequences on its own people, everyone else be damned.
| Of course the US needs screening for immigrants, and I
| don't know anyone reasonable who'd argue otherwise. Zero
| crime among immigrants is unrealistic, but society should
| make the tradeoff there based on economic and social
| factors instead of feeling any kind of moral obligation
| wrt. immigration.
| rpmisms wrote:
| If I can avoid dealing with the ruinous consequences of
| governments that existed before I was born, I absolutely
| will.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Cartel members are already here you know. It's not their mere
| presence that results in wanton violence and a lack of
| government authority to deal with it.
| rayiner wrote:
| I oppose immigration as an immigrant myself. America is the way
| it is because of the culture of the particular groups that
| founded it. My parents have lived here for 35 years, and
| they'll never have the mentality that made America what it is
| today.
|
| Assimilation at the superficial level happens quickly. But deep
| culture--things like social trust or views on the relationship
| between people and government, are sticky:
| https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=35594. The peak of
| continental European immigration to the U.S. was more than a
| century ago, but there is still a significant correlation on
| cultural attitudes between European countries and Americans
| with ancestry from those countries:
| https://cis.org/Richwine/Still-More-Evidence-Cultural-Persis...
|
| Having the smartest people isn't what makes a country great--
| which is why the super smart Indians and Chinese come to
| America instead of making their home countries rich.
| e40 wrote:
| A lot of words but they really don't explain why you are
| against immigration.
| rayiner wrote:
| To;dr -- regression to the mean.
| duped wrote:
| I don't think the difference is European in nature, I think
| that immigrants 100 years ago have a totally different
| experience than today.
|
| I can only speak to my family's history and that I saw
| growing up, but my great-grandfather was an immigrant from a
| Slavic region (to be technical, Poland didn't exist yet, but
| he was a Catholic who spoke Polish).
|
| To make a long story short, none of his kids ever spoke
| Polish. That wasn't familial pressure, but the physical and
| emotional abuse inflicted on children in schools to beat the
| slav out of them if they acted or sounded "fresh off the
| boat" - to the point where four generations later, all of us
| know that phrase because it's been said to us one way or
| another.
|
| Contrast this with the most recent wave of Polish immigration
| to the same neighborhoods almost 80 years later. These are
| kids I grew up with. They had Polish clubs in school, they
| went to "Polish school," they spoke the language fluently and
| publicly, and to a certain degree that was celebrated by the
| rest of the community. The external pressure _not_ to be
| Polish is essentially gone.
|
| I don't have a grand point here, it's just something I think
| about a lot in these debates. I learned what the experience
| of my ancestors was, and saw something of what happened to my
| peers, and the only difference was 100 years. It seems to me
| the difference between what we think of as assimilation is
| really how likely a community is to join the melting pot
| depending on the internal or external pressures on that
| community.
| kwere wrote:
| Yeah, fast changing demographics means fast changing
| values.People that come in mass from failing or disfunctional
| or just very different societies can and do bring with them
| "incompatible" values. Us modern ability to integrate /
| assimilate people in mass is probably ovverated, expecially
| in a fast paced mass migration scenario of a multiethnic
| society. the future is probably some version of Brazil
|
| Usa got lucky integrating most europeans first and skilled
| immigrants later. but it struggled with other demographics,
| notably afro-americans, native americans
| ericmcer wrote:
| I thought the republicans wanted stronger border control.
| Border control and immigration policy are different things. If
| anyone can just hop the border and walk in and we don't deport
| them then our immigration policy is irrelevant because we are
| choosing not to enforce it.
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| > _I support immigration and oppose the Republican anti-
| immigrant platform_
|
| Republicans are anti-illegal immigration, not anti-immigration.
| Trump's wife is an immigrant.
|
| > _because it seems to me there is significant brain drain from
| many countries to the U.S. and that contributes to our
| success._
|
| It would only be a brain drain if you filter by skills or IQ.
| But if you just let everyone in, you can make things worse, not
| better.
|
| > _I 'm not concerned about the crime_
|
| Of course, and we can see the results.
| defrost wrote:
| The FBI data also shows a 59% reduction in the U.S. property
| crime rate between 1993 and 2022, with big declines in the
| rates of burglary (-75%), larceny/theft (-54%) and motor
| vehicle theft (-53%). Using the BJS statistics,
| the declines in the violent and property crime rates are even
| steeper than those captured in the FBI data. Per BJS, the
| U.S. violent and property crime rates each fell 71% between
| 1993 and 2022.
|
| Of course the real reason for comments such as that above are
| that: Americans tend to believe crime is
| up, even when official data shows it is down. In
| 23 of 27 Gallup surveys conducted since 1993, at least 60% of
| U.S. adults have said there is more crime nationally than
| there was the year before, despite the downward trend in
| crime rates during most of that period.
|
| The only real uptick of note in recent years has been the
| murder rate in the US during the COVID years, staying home
| and feeling under threat led to an increase in US citizen on
| citizen crime - not immigration.
|
| Of course those with a blinkered news bubble ( _Fox_ , et al)
| tend to believe the hyped up overstaing of every low
| occurrence incidence and clutch their pearls in response.
|
| The data says otherwise.
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/04/24/what-
| the-...
| jwilber wrote:
| "The data says otherwise" in aggregate, up to the year
| 2022.
|
| Posting aggregate stats just comes off iso a "gotcha"
| instead of a real discussion involving thought or context,
| both of which are needed in any discussion including data.
|
| There's many angles someone could take this.
|
| You mentioned Fox News. They certainly don't drone about
| crime in Little Rock -- they complain about the "anarchist
| hellscape" of liberal cities (or whatever superlative they
| want to call it that hour). The worst of which? HN HQ San
| Francisco! (fwiw I love SF).
|
| Unfortunately, in stark contrast to your stats, property
| crime has certainly gone up in San Francisco since 2012
| [1]. SF is also a hot destination of migrant relocation
| busses [2], so is probably a city Fox mentions when it
| comes to migrant crime.
|
| (Fwiw, Cubans often end up in liberal cities in
| conservative states, like Miami, Houston, Kentucky, not
| SF)[3].
|
| Anyways, I have no horse in this race. I'm not really sure
| what my point is with this tangential response, other than
| to say your stats require context, and can just as easily
| factually be opposite to what you wrote, depending on that
| context.
|
| 1 https://www.economist.com/united-
| states/2019/02/16/property-...
|
| 2 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/20/us/abbott-texas-
| migrant-b...
|
| 3. https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/interactive/2
| 024/...
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| You know what helps crime stats? Not prosecuting (some)
| criminals at all. Just dismiss the charges, and your stats
| magically get better.
|
| Another thing you can do is reclassify felonies as
| misdemeanors.
|
| Reminds you of anything?
| rangestransform wrote:
| How has property crime trended post pandemic though?
| anonu wrote:
| > the Republican anti-immigrant platform
|
| It's just illegal immigration.
|
| We need more immigration. But people's first act as American
| citizens should be a legal one.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Its an anti legal immigrant platform too as they work to
| limit visas.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| 98% of women in Somalia are sexually mutilated. Guess what
| Somalis are doing _in France_ to their little girls? That s
| right: they re mutilating them.
|
| But I take it 98% of Somalis women getting sexually mutilated
| in Somalia is the fault of colonization or something?
| AaronFriel wrote:
| Blanket accusations like this are racist. Genital mutilation
| is an abhorrent practice. While the impact is uniquely
| horrible for women, it is definitely "throwing stones in
| glass houses" to act as though it's a strange cultural
| practice to damage the nerves of a child's genitals, a
| practice done to millions of boys in Europe by those of
| multi-generational European descent.
|
| Now, you could be opposed to both practices of course, but
| you are choosing to make a blanket accusation to suit a point
| of view.
| danielheath wrote:
| I mean, it's drawing a _bit_ of a long bow, but there's a
| pretty cogent argument to be made that European powers in
| many nations funded/armed criminal gangs (by buying
| slaves/selling weapons), and those gangs took over the
| country with that backing, which destroyed what public
| institutions existed, and normalised "strongman coercion".
|
| There's various points and counterpoints within that and I'm
| woefully ill equipped to evaluate them, but it's not wrong
| "prima fasciae".
| LunaSea wrote:
| Careful, the "doctors and lawyers" mantra was already tried in
| Europe since 2015 and failed miserably.
| Brechreiz wrote:
| cringe rightoid opinion. you don't live in Europe and Fox
| News is lying to you.
| LunaSea wrote:
| I am living in Europe, always have and you should look at
| the studies made in Denmark and Germany to find out how
| this went down.
| renegade-otter wrote:
| It's sad and painfully ironic that the same escapees of the
| regime will almost exclusively vote for Republicans. Cubans are
| very similar to ex-Soviet expats in that regard, something I
| can speak to firsthand.
|
| The GOP found a magic word to "unlock" these people. Say the
| word "socialism" and all logic centers immediately shut down.
| It is replaced by panic and fear. No data or common sense is
| helpful - ask them to choose between Democrats and We Are Going
| To Eat Your Babies Party, and they will ask what kind of
| condiments you would like for the baby.
|
| I am only half-kidding. Alexander Vindman's father from Soviet
| Ukraine's Odesa, for example, was all in for Trump until only
| well into the process of seeing his son's career destroyed and
| threats received for telling the truth under oath. My own
| father, who had a very close brush with the KGB - is the same
| way.
|
| They want to be authoritarian, they TELL them that this is what
| they want, musing about retribution, gulags, and "punishing"
| the enemies, and it's still not going through. They even showed
| just a taste of the cruelty by making migrant children
| orphaned. It's worse than the Soviet Union in that sense
| because repressions were a tool but _sadism_ was not a public
| policy. Shit, even THEY left children alone.
|
| It's just so amazing, but it also shows you the power of words,
| branding, and marketing.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| Fair point. Everyone with education, practical skills and high
| iq is welcome legally. Any reasons why we need the rest?
| Especially crossing the borders illegally?
| 0dayz wrote:
| That's because you guys vet them like crazy before allowing
| them in a lot of European countries don't.
| stainablesteel wrote:
| i dont want to support the brain drain of other countries, it
| will leave too many hungry and desperate and this will sow
| seeds for future wars
| xkcd1963 wrote:
| That is kind of a one-sided view. There is plenty of
| opportunity arising for those that stay too.
| bart_spoon wrote:
| There is an important distinction between anti-immigration
| policies and anti-illegal immigration policies. I don't know of
| many politicians who are against immigration of any kind. But
| there are plenty who are for doing something about the hundreds
| of thousands crossing the border illegally and/or abusing the
| asylum process. This isn't even a partisan issue. Many of those
| opposed to fixing this problem did an immediate 180 the moment
| those illegal immigrants began being bussed to their city.
| marcusverus wrote:
| > I support immigration and oppose the Republican anti-
| immigrant platform because it seems to me there is significant
| brain drain from many countries to the U.S. and that
| contributes to our success.
|
| If it's brain-drain you want, the Republican party's
| immigration plan seems superior, actually. The previous
| Republican administration attempted to replace our current
| lottery-based legal immigration program with a meritocratic,
| point-based system, but was blocked by the Democrat-led house.
|
| True, Republicans would reduce legal immigration and greatly
| reduce illegal immigration, but if your specific issue is
| bringing in brains, which seems like a better haul? 100,000
| young, English-speaking, elite scientists, academics and
| professionals from around the world? Or two million randos
| picked out of a hat?
| diogenescynic wrote:
| I'm for limited immigration but not how it is right now when
| there are millions entering the country each year and we're not
| building more homes to keep up with the new demand and we
| already have a housing crisis. Immigration should be orderly
| and law based.
| riffic wrote:
| perhaps it's time to normalize relations with their government
| and end the blockade.
| wildrhythms wrote:
| "No." -The U.S. and Israel
|
| https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/un-votes-end-us-embar...
| kjellsbells wrote:
| The problem commonly skated over is that two views cam be true at
| once. For example:
|
| - the "Batista" regime was dictatorial and repressive. The people
| fought back with Castro. The first wave of people to land in
| Miami were essentially the moneyed class who lost everything.
| Unsurprisingly they hate the Castro regime and its descendents.
| The US government were happy to accommodate them under the guise
| of anti communism.
|
| - the "Castro" regime is dictatorial and repressive. The people
| cant fight back so they leave. The people landing in Miami and
| their descendents hate the regime for taking everything. The US
| Republicans are happy to accommodate them under the guise of
| sticking it to the libs.
|
| I dont see any of this changing until the regime changes in Cuba
| to a more democratic one simultaneously with the Republican party
| imploding in Florida. Which basically means not in my lifetime.
| epolanski wrote:
| > the "Castro" regime is dictatorial and repressive.
|
| As someone whose family comes from the former Soviet union, and
| has friends that come from other repressive places let me tell
| you that this really doesn't matter.
|
| Economy and how you are doing are what matters in the day to
| day life of people.
|
| People really don't think about the oppression or lack of
| elections, they care how much they need to suffer to put food
| on the table, whether they can afford vacations on the beach,
| how expensive it's gonna be, etc etc.
|
| I consistently asked my grandparents and people from oppressive
| places whether they cared about politics and no they didn't.
|
| They knew that people across the borders lived the same lives
| they did, but they could afford a better car and better
| vacations that's all.
|
| The average Joe does not care about politics, even those who
| talk about it and share on social media don't care.
|
| The amount of people that campaign, try to get elected, try to
| do anything even in their own neighborhood has always been low
| and probably never as low as now.
| its_ethan wrote:
| They may not care about the politics, but if the politics is
| what contributes to the economy / shortages / difficulty in
| getting things like food... then the politics matter,
| regardless of if any given citizen is consciously aware of
| it.
|
| And as a reciprocal anecdote, I have family that grew up
| behind the iron curtain - and they were very much aware of
| and knew the importance of the governments politics
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| What can you do if you are effectively disenfranchised
| though? Either keep on keeping on or die in bloody
| revolution where there's no certainty its not just a
| different oligarchy at the top when the dust settles.
|
| Even the US suffers from this to an extent. Who the
| president is matters most for the people who make a lot of
| money from government contracts than you or I who broadly
| lead the same lives every presidency.
| lo0dot0 wrote:
| Do you think the economy can not be influenced by political
| decisions? Also do you live behind the moon?
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| The little man is told he has all the control but really he
| is along for the ride. The big man plots the course and
| convinces the little man their interests are shared when
| they may not be.
| blackhawkC17 wrote:
| This is cynical thinking that causes corruption and
| incompetence to thrive. People have a say in their
| government but often refuse to use it for good. That's
| how bad leaders get into power.
|
| Many countries continually elect smart and competent
| leaders and become prosperous, but some people have
| somehow convinced themselves that they have no say in
| politics, meaning they don't care when their system rots
| with horrible leadership.
|
| This cynical thinking is what has ruined many third-world
| countries, and I hate to see it propagated.
| diego_moita wrote:
| I find it amusing how you just don't get it. Your narrow
| worldview is typical of everyone who comes from oppressive
| regimes and doesn't understand citizenship. The writer
| Svetlana Alexievich wrote a lot about this kind of
| alienation.
|
| > Economy and how you are doing are what matters in the day
| to day life of people.
|
| Yeah, but "economy and how you are doing" is inseparable from
| freedom and democracy.
|
| You need the rule of the law and respect for private property
| to ensure a functional economy. You need transparency,
| freedom of information and speech, freedom of assembly and
| political representation to demand responsible government
| from authorities.
|
| > The average Joe does not care about politics
|
| That's how Putin screws up the average Ilich, and the Castros
| screw up the average Juan. See the connection?
| wildylion wrote:
| > Economy and how you are doing are what matters in the day
| to day life of people.
|
| Very much so. Look at how people in Krasnodar started
| protesting after they lost power for 10 hours. After 2.5
| years of Putin's war.
|
| > The average Joe does not care about politics
|
| Sadly, true. My parents blame everything on 'queer
| Westerners', while turning literally a blind eye to the
| torture of those who were against Putin. Might have a point
| though - my grandmother's family wouldn't have stayed alive
| if they weren't silent in the 1930s... she remembers how her
| building was 'purged' of mostly intelligentsiya.
|
| My friends are oppressed and many can't return home. _I_
| can't return home because my country will happily jail me for
| who I am, literally (I'm queer)
|
| My country lost any chances of becoming a nice place to live
| for the next 100 years. AND IS THIS THE FUTURE MY FAMILY
| WANTED FOR ME?!!!.
|
| I... I don't know what to feel anymore. I left the day after
| the war started. My friends turned refugees. Countless
| civilians dead. Bombed by my own country. Sometimes I wish
| Russia was nuked out of existence, and I wish I was at the
| ground zero. Sometimes I wish Sun went nova and wiped any and
| all life because life is overrated and unnededed in this
| universe that was meant to be cold and lifeless forever.
| 0dayz wrote:
| This is a terrible example, the USSR deliberately ensured
| that people were uninformed and uninterested in politics as
| interest in politics is a huge security concern for an
| authoritarian state.
|
| The really issue in democratic countries is that people are
| becoming complacent and passive in upholding and participing
| in democracy.
| surfingdino wrote:
| This plus low fertility rates paint a bleak demographic picture.
| What happens to a country whose population collapses? I don't
| think we have past data to reference here?
| joecool1029 wrote:
| Again and again I've been arguing for access to information. Let
| Cuba land an underwater cable in Miami. Ever since I was young I
| was fed this line 'Glasnost helped accelerate the collapse of the
| Soviet Union, people wanted things their government wouldn't give
| them... free access to information not filtered by their
| government', but the US argues for some reason that Cubans can't
| have this.
|
| Is it fear of an even bigger migration? Why? Is it expat Cubans
| looking to kick out the ladder?
| nradov wrote:
| I agree with you, but if Cuba wants better Internet access
| there's nothing stopping them from landing an underwater cable
| in Mexico. It's about the same distance.
| joecool1029 wrote:
| Except Mexican government has a relationship with the US
| government and if US says 'don't do this' to Mexico there's
| not much upside to them going through with it.
|
| Also maybe consider this? A substantial amount of
| news/rhetoric in the US revolves around US/Mexico border
| problems. Do you think Cuban expats want Cuba to be
| associated with Mexico in any way?
| nradov wrote:
| Nonsense. Mexico already has an active trade relationship
| with Cuba. The US hasn't done anything about it.
| epolanski wrote:
| Russians didn't give two shits about "free access to
| information", they cared to see that people in US lived richer
| lives that's it.
|
| Russians in Soviet union had to illegally trade and commit
| felonies to get their hands on some Italian mortadella. They
| had to go through insane lengths to buy a new tv.
|
| It wasn't glasnost but the oil crisis that ultimately killed
| the SU's economy and made people think that in democracy it was
| gonna be better.
|
| Is it better? In absolute terms, yes, but so is virtually
| everyone in the world compared to 1989.
|
| In terms of gdp per capita Soviet russia was 33rd in the world
| in that year. Modern Russia is 52nd.
|
| But you wouldn't be able to say that such a massive decline
| happened when modern Russia is far cleaner, richer and very low
| unemployment.
|
| Modern Russians are richer in absolute terms, but poorer in
| relative ones.
| abernard1 wrote:
| > In terms of gdp per capita Soviet russia was 33rd in the
| world in that year. Modern Russia is 52nd.
|
| GDP was also calculated based upon prices in a free market.
| The problem being, if you don't have a free market, you don't
| have an efficient way of knowing if the "value" of the goods
| produced actually mattered. The Soviet Union massively
| overproduced goods that nobody wanted, as this was efficient
| for production. But in terms of quality of life, it didn't
| matter. Overabundances and shortages were the norm.
| gottorf wrote:
| > richer in absolute terms, but poorer in relative ones.
|
| Off topic, but it's funny how big of a problem this turns out
| to be in real life.
| nradov wrote:
| GDP calculations for the Soviet Union were bullshit and not
| to be relied upon. The numbers were heavily manipulated, and
| much of the country ran on a command economy where money
| didn't even mean much because you couldn't buy things with
| it.
| crngefest wrote:
| Cubans have fairly free access to the internet through mobile
| phones and VPN. So it's not like cut off or anything just
| internet is really slow and expensive. But you can get a
| "download" of many sites including popular YouTube/Netflix etc
| from a neighbourhood dealer.
|
| Source: visited a couple months ago.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Note that it's only the US that has an embargo against Cuba.
|
| The rest of the world trades pretty freely with them.
| wslh wrote:
| The article exactly says "US embargo".
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Sure, but a lot of people seem to think Cuba is cut off from
| world trade. They're only cut off from one country.
|
| Someone called it a "blockade" on this page.
| spacebanana7 wrote:
| Cuba's ability to trade with the rest of the world severely
| impaired by the US embargo.
|
| Most international banks get very nervous about
| facilitating transactions involving Cuba and even tourists
| who visit Cuba can have their travel to the US restricted.
|
| https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/usa/entry-
| requireme...
| mgbmtl wrote:
| Cuba rarely stamps passports to avoid those problems.
| They give you a piece of paper with a stamp, that you
| return on your way out.
| berdario wrote:
| At minute 12:33 in this video it explains the 180-days rule
| and other details:
|
| https://youtu.be/WgWK6_AYq_o?si=5aqdt7DW-gYd7XdN
|
| it might not be completely cut off, but the embargo is
| harsh, especially for an island ot only 10M people
| incahoots wrote:
| The US embargo includes NATO members. I don't have the
| source handy at the moment but it's clear that any current
| trade partners with the US would be violating the embargo
| if they attempt read with Cuba.
| eoverride wrote:
| This is very misleading.
|
| From Wikipedia:
|
| "The United States has threatened to stop financial aid to
| other countries if they trade non-food items with Cuba."
|
| "While the US measures against Cuba do not amount to a
| blockade in a technical or formal sense, their cumulative
| effect is to put an economic stranglehold on the island,
| which not only prevents the United States intercourse but
| also effectively blocks commerce with other states, their
| citizens and companies."
|
| "Despite the existence of the embargo, Cuba can, and does,
| conduct international trade with many countries, including
| many US allies; however, US-based companies, and companies
| that do business with the US, which trade in Cuba do so at
| the risk of US sanctions."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_embargo_against
| _...
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| My friend's father can't travel to the US anymore
| (including transfer flights through) because he is higher
| up in a nickel mining company that does a lot of business
| in Cuba. Bank accounts, trading accounts, wire transfers,
| etc.. nothing can go through the US. Ships that dock in
| Cuban ports can't then go on to dock in US ports. etc. etc.
| etc
|
| It's a kind of blockade
| linearrust wrote:
| > Note that it's only the US that has an embargo against Cuba.
|
| And that's the only embargo that matters. Given a choice
| between an embargo by the US or embargo by the rest of the
| world, cuba and every country in the world would choose 'the
| rest of the world'. Especially so for cuba since it's just
| right off the coast of florida.
|
| > The rest of the world trades pretty freely with them.
|
| No they do not.
| TapWaterBandit wrote:
| > Given a choice between an embargo by the US or embargo by
| the rest of the world, cuba and every country in the world
| would choose 'the rest of the world'.
|
| No way is this true. Look at this list of countries by
| biggest trade partners (import & export) https://en.wikipedia
| .org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_leading_t....
|
| You really think countries will willing choose to trade with
| the USA over the rest of the world when it isn't the biggest
| destination for their exports nor their major source of
| imports? Why would they do that exactly?
| Galanwe wrote:
| > You really think countries will willing choose to trade
| with the USA over the rest of the world when it isn't the
| biggest destination for their exports nor their major
| source of imports? Why would they do that exactly?
|
| Yes, any day. Because US embargos prevent you from trading
| in USD, which is pretty much the de facto currency for any
| trade due to its stability and backing.
|
| Also, even if you manage to settle your trade in say EUR,
| you now have to trade without using any US intermediary.
| Nothing related to this trade can involve a US bank,
| payment system, legal firm, etc.
|
| A US embargo is pretty much the worst thing that can happen
| to a country. Only if your country has already strong ties
| to the middle east, Russia or China can you hope to do any
| sort of export.
| Galanwe wrote:
| US embargos are much, much more than just preventing Country
| <-> US trades.
|
| - The US applies embargo transitively. That means any movement
| of fund related to an embargoed country and transiting to the
| US is illegal. In other words, you cannot use a US bank,
| mortgage, funding, accounting firm, etc for these trades.
|
| - The US applies extra territotial rules to USD. Any trade
| involving USD, even if completely remote to the US, is under US
| jurisdiction.
|
| These constraints make a US embargo a very, very high bar to do
| any kind of trade.
| sorushn wrote:
| Sounds like you deeply misunderstand how US embargo works.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| I'm repeating what I've read in many places, but I don't know
| much detail myself.
|
| So that could be true.
|
| If you have a link explaining how it actually works, I'd
| appreciate it!
| tryauuum wrote:
| Don't know much about embargoes but at least with GPUs it's
| much more evil
|
| Even if GPU manufacturer sells GPUs to a company which is not
| in embargo list they usually have agreements in place about not
| reselling them to the companies in embargo list
| trhway wrote:
| >Other factors were a high number of deaths, 405,512,
|
| With such a population churn the chances of dying at sea while
| trying to run away don't look that bad.
| greyvddhb wrote:
| Did US sanctions cause this? Why or why not?
| icar wrote:
| This happens because of the US embargo, so I'll blame US until
| they stop.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| The embargo has been in place for most of a century, and was
| actually relaxed recently.
| incrudible wrote:
| Cubans can not eat your blame.
| PentiumBug wrote:
| As a Cuban that is currently living in Cuba, I think it _might_
| be useful to voice my opinions, as I have read some comments here
| which I consider less than accurate in some respects. To avoid
| typing too much, I 'll summarize with... bullet points?
|
| * The published figure of 10 million people is already outdated.
| First, they are official figures, which means that they are not
| telling the truth. Second, six months have elapsed; which means
| the actual number of residents is less than 9 million.
|
| * Not only a large amount of people are gone, but most of them
| are young, productive people; lots of them professionals in
| several critical aspects of a functioning society. Where I work
| I'm only one of the few that remains in my activity (IT & IT
| adjacent).
|
| * Also gone are many of the more... reactive? brave? People that
| voiced discontent with the government and just chose to leave.
| What remains are relatively elderly people that are very
| conformist, or simple are not brave enough to voice their
| concerns.
|
| * Is Cuba a dictatorship? No.
|
| * Is Cuba a totalitarian state? Absolutely. The Cuban Communist
| Party is the only one allowed, as is written in the (relatively
| recent) Constitution. Even more than that, it exists above the
| Constitution, so this texts has no value at all.
|
| * Are there human rights violations in Cuba? Yes, no doubt.
|
| * Does the US embargo negatively impacts Cuba? Absolutely. Every
| single day, for the common people, that is. The elites? The top
| dogs of the Party? Of course they are unaffected; they are your
| run of the mill corrupt people in power, and they can have
| anything.
|
| * Can Cuba trade with other countries? In theory, yes... in
| practice, it is very difficult. In addition, Cuba is a minuscule
| market that interests no one. China, for instance, has very
| little presence in Cuba, despite we being "allies". But they
| don't care.
|
| I don't know how this could unfold in the future, except with a
| total collapse. I really wish the end of the embargo, _and_ the
| possibility of open an free elections. We, common people, are at
| the mercy of US politics and being managed by inmensely
| incompetent leaders. We could debate all week on who 's at fault
| here, who threw the first stone, but, as of this moment, that
| would be sterile. This country will be gone.
| fragmede wrote:
| thank you for sharing
| copperx wrote:
| The situation sounds dire. Why haven't you left (it seems you
| have the opportunity)?
| PentiumBug wrote:
| I do have the opportunity to leave, yes. But, on the one
| hand, there's immediate family that depends on me (and not
| just economically.) On the other hand, I'm approaching an age
| which I feel does not makes me very hireable, so to speak,
| despite my 30+ years of experience in the field.
|
| Yes, the situation is dire; and I'll be here to witness how
| this unfolds :|
|
| (thanks a lot reading me!)
| blendo wrote:
| > Hardliners have grown worried that the experiment with
| capitalism could threaten the government's tight grip on power,
| and the Cuban military, which used to control most foreign
| currency coming into the island, is viewing these companies as
| competition, sources in Cuba said.
|
| How much blame does the military have for the mass exodus of
| Cubans?
| PentiumBug wrote:
| Everything? Allow me to expand a little.
|
| The military is where all the real power is concentrated, and
| _not_ because of being military per se. They have no might
| whatsoever in relation to other countries... they probably
| have two working jets from the 1970s, four boats with rotting
| hulls, eleven pistols, and eight rifles. However, they do
| have a shadow and parallel economic system that exists beyond
| public scrutiny. By design. Quoting the Treasury Department:
| _Grupo de Administracion Empresarial S.A. (GAESA) is a Cuban
| military-controlled umbrella enterprise with interests in the
| tourism, financial investment, import /export, and remittance
| sectors of Cuba's economy. GAESA's portfolio includes
| businesses incorporated in Panama to bypass CACR-related
| restrictions_.
|
| Those people can, and do, summon whatever resources they need
| to do whatever they want. In particular, the idea that Cuba
| should be a tourist destination has made them build hotels
| left and right, bleeding other services dry. And by services,
| I mean, everything else. That's why everything is in decay,
| collapsing, and why people choose to leave (one of the
| reasons, of course).
| gdwatson wrote:
| > Is Cuba a dictatorship? No.
|
| Would you clarify what you mean by this? Does the first
| secretary of the Communist party no longer have de facto
| dictatorial power?
| pizzafeelsright wrote:
| When I was there the painted picture I was taught was
| different than what I saw.
|
| I am not a dictator in my house. No one would say that
| either. They would say I do make the rules and have final
| authority. Can I determine our living conditions? Yes. I try
| to run a good house and love those under my care. We are
| communists in practice. Not by name.
| PentiumBug wrote:
| In the past, when Fidel Castro was alive and in full
| posession of his faculties, you could easily say that he was
| a dictator. Everything of importance was designed,
| implemented, and micro managed by him. The man was a
| megalomaniac and, and history would show, also incompetent;
| but boy, the cult of personality goes deep here, not only in
| mass media but many of the sicophants.
|
| Today the Secretary General has no power. Everybody knows
| that; along with the fact that he is also a puppet with the
| charisma of bucket half filled with sand. Guidance and
| executive power come first from the Central Committee; which
| I'm sure follows "tips" and "recommendations" from Raul
| Castro (Fidel's brother), a man that should be effectively
| retired. Everybody knows that's not the case.
|
| However, and being honest, I really don't care about labeling
| this place as a dictatorship or not (it is a fuzzy concept
| for _me_ , and I won't fight hard for one or the other).
| Unless there's a clear definition, labels are sometimes
| subjective. Hell, this is not even a communist country,
| despite what they themselves like to present; this is not the
| _dictatorship of the proletariat_. And never was.
| dimgl wrote:
| > Is Cuba a dictatorship? No.
|
| Lol Cuban here. This is disingenuous. By definition and in
| theory, a military dictatorship and a uniparty "republic" are
| not the same.
|
| In practice, it is very much the same. They are extremely
| dangerous, oppressive regimes that are dominated by few
| families.
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| you could have read the next line...
| santiagobasulto wrote:
| Argentino here. I think Venezuela is going through the same
| issues. We had A LOT of Venezuelan immigrants in Arg and Chile
| and they said the same thing you're saying: that people leaving
| were the "brave, smart, willing to work people" and the ones
| remaining were the scum.
|
| Can I ask you what are the reasons you decide to stay?
| desperatecuban wrote:
| Im in a similar situation than GP. Leaving can be expensive
| and dangerous, more so if one does not have support on the
| other side. I have people that directly depend on me (little
| kids, elderly parents) and not just financially. Some people
| may say "you can help them better when you are out, send
| remittances, get them out too" but its just complicated.
| lucubratory wrote:
| This just does not seem plausible. Sure, I understand the claim
| that Cuban statistics are falsified because the Cuban government
| is obviously biased about whether "Cuba is good", but the claims
| about Cuban emigration are coming from groups that are very
| distinctly anti-Cuban themselves; why should I trust them to tell
| the truth about Cuba, particularly when lying about your enemies
| is incredibly effective, common, and completely unpunished?
| michtzik wrote:
| Here's the opening sentence of TFA:
|
| > A stunning 10% of Cuba's population -- more than a million
| people -- left the island between 2022 and 2023, the head of
| the country's national statistics office said during a National
| Assembly session Friday, the largest migration wave in Cuban
| history.
|
| Is Cuba's national statistics office "distinctly anti-Cuban"?
| diogenes_atx wrote:
| There is absolutely no doubt that the Cuban economy is suffering
| through a severe crisis. However, mass emigration offers some
| benefits to the Communist regime. Many of the migrants who work
| in the USA send money back to their families in Cuba in the form
| of remittances, which provide valuable foreign exchange reserves
| to help pay for essential imports. Moreover, emigration provides
| an escape for those people who might otherwise form a potentially
| powerful class of under-employed and politically discontent
| civilians. If Cuba's emigrants were still living on the island,
| then the Communist regime would have good reason to worry about a
| mass revolution, as shown by the experience of the Arab Spring,
| when authoritarian governments in Syria, Libya and Egypt, each
| struggling with rising demographic pressures and economic
| stagnation, were destabilized by popular rebellion. The Communist
| elite is certainly aware of the dangers to its regime from a
| potential "Cuban Spring," and thus likely regards mass emigration
| as a welcome alternative, despite the obvious social liabilities
| of losing so much human capital.
| woodruffw wrote:
| Can you explain this? I'm pretty sure Cuban migrants to the US
| can't remit money to Cuba; that's one of the key points of the
| sanctions.
| diogenes_atx wrote:
| According to the Western Union website, the company "is
| resuming its money transfer service between the U.S. and
| Cuba. Following the tightening of laws by the U.S. government
| in 2020, services had to be suspended leaving those wishing
| to send money to Cuba from USA with limited and expensive
| options. Now that some restrictions have been lifted, Western
| Union is gradually bringing back limited money transfer
| services from the U.S. to Cuba."
|
| https://www.westernunion.com/blog/en/us/were-back-send-
| money...
| ndneighbor wrote:
| As a Miami native, I can tell you for a fact Cuban
| remittances do indeed happen. The sanctions loosened after
| the Obama admin d'tente even after the Trump admin restored
| most of the controls. My alma matter
| https://cri.fiu.edu/cuban-america/remittance/ has a continued
| focus of research to see how much flows go back to island
| nation.
|
| Anyway tl;dr is that Cubans use:
| https://havanaship.net/nueva-agencia-de-remesas-a-cuba-orbit,
| which is a gov't controlled remittance operator. As of
| commenting isn't on the OFAC controlled entity list. It used
| to be sanctioned after the previous remittance operator was
| associated with the Cuban Army but is now in compliance.
| woodruffw wrote:
| This is very interesting, thank you!
| mattmaroon wrote:
| Ha. You should go to Cuba. They are as clever as any other
| group of humans and they all have family in Florida.
|
| I'm sure you can't just wire the money from a US bank to a
| Cuban one, but they surely have ways to do it. The island is
| full of stuff from America they aren't supposed to have.
| BenFranklin100 wrote:
| The United States is singular in its ability to assimilate
| immigrants. It is our one true superpower. The people who come to
| our country, like these Cubans fleeing their country, often come
| from societies where they lack freedoms Americans take for
| granted. Many Americans scarcely even acknowledge these freedoms
| but immigrants with their outside eye see them clearly. In doing
| so they refresh our founding ideals of life, liberty, and the
| pursuit of happiness.
|
| As a fourth generation American and midwesterner, I welcome these
| Cuban immigrants.
| CamelCaseName wrote:
| What a cruel thing to say when it is precisely because of the
| United States that the Cuban economy has been thoroughly
| crushed.
| BenFranklin100 wrote:
| This is false. The US does not interfere with Cuban internal
| economy nor does the US Cuban trade embargo prevent Cuba from
| trading with other countries. Cuba's disastrous economy is a
| direct consequence of the policies of its communist
| government, not external forces.
| robocat wrote:
| > The United States is singular
|
| Maybe in the past, but now other countries now have wayyy more
| immigrants:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_im...
|
| Shows foreign born 15% of USA. Countries like Australia have
| 30% foreign born immigrants.
| slantedview wrote:
| Relevant reminder that Cuba has been under a brutal economic
| embargo and sanctions regime by the US for decades, which is the
| primary driver of Cuba's economic situation. The sanctions began
| during an era of land reform that saw American corporations, such
| as United Fruit, lobbying the US to overthrow the Cuban
| government on their behalf. When that failed, the US imposed
| sanctions.
| systemstops wrote:
| The arguments in favor of immigration are usually economical, but
| the resultant demographic change is a major force of disruption
| in our societies and the cause of many current social problems.
| My home state of California is an radically different place now
| than when I grew up only a few decades ago because of demographic
| change caused by immigration.
|
| The question needs to be asked "How much do you want your nation
| to change?" in exchange for the alleged economic benefits.
| Blaming the social problems caused by immigration on citizens
| because of "xenophobia" when they never wanted mass immigration
| in the first place is the height of arrogance. The pro-
| immigration people want the economic benefits of immigration
| while shifting the blame for the inevitable social problems on
| the poor citizens who are often victims of these social problems.
| It's sick.
| moneywoes wrote:
| How has this affected the country?
| zombiwoof wrote:
| I remember when I was called a Dago in NYC as a kid
|
| Yeah all us Italians are just dirty mafiaosa
| localfirst wrote:
| i hope americams know what they are doing
|
| ex) France, Uk, Germany
| technick wrote:
| So they would rather flee like cowards instead of staying to fix
| the issues suffering their country. We don't need more cowards in
| America either.
| seydor wrote:
| In southern europe we call this "Brain drain". It's a global
| phenomenon it seems, freedom of movement leads to contentration
| of productive forces to a few global cities, while the rest of
| the planet is increasingly deserted
| mattmaroon wrote:
| Doesn't brain drain imply the smarter people are moving? I'm
| not sure that's what's happening here. I think it's anyone who
| can get out.
|
| When I was in Havana our AirBnB was next to the Spanish
| embassy. There was a long line every morning of potential
| emigres waiting for their turn. (I have no idea how the process
| works when they get to the front of the line, I just was told
| they were trying to get out of the country legally. )
|
| After spending a couple weeks in Cuba it's not hard to see why.
| seydor wrote:
| True, it's now also "Hands drain" too. The phenomenon has
| accelerated. Even (illegal) immigrants are moving to richer
| countries
| mfru wrote:
| > After spending a couple weeks in Cuba it's not hard to see
| why.
|
| Which is the consequence of being sanctioned into oblivion
| for decades by the global hegemon, much to the dislike of the
| entire rest of the world.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| I used to have more sympathy for this position, and my
| political biases are strongly left wing, but having spent
| time in Cuba on and off for the last 20 years... time has
| shown just how incompetent and malevolent the Cuban regime
| is.
|
| It would suck badly there without the sanctions, too.
|
| Though I think the sanctions give the regime an excuse.
| Obama was right to start to lift restrictions... a decade
| of continued stagnation even after the sanctions lifted
| would have undermined the regime's ability to continue to
| rule more than anything else.
| safety1st wrote:
| Would it have really? I'm not particularly up to speed on
| the situation in Cuba, but there are a lot of awful
| regimes on this planet that remain in power simply
| because they have all the guns. These regimes are
| unpopular, they govern poorly, but no one can do anything
| about it, because the guns, tanks and soldiers are all
| under their control, and they've decided that a peaceful
| transition of power is not an option they wish to
| entertain. It's entirely possible for this to be a stable
| state that lasts for a lifetime.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| The Cuban regime has been able to produce an aura of
| legitimacy around itself through its history of
| resistance to US imperialism, or that's how it's framed,
| whether you take that at face value or how you interpret
| it is up to you.
|
| If the brutal ugly side of US imperialism (in the form of
| military aggression or intense actually-illegal unitary
| sanctions etc) goes away, so does the legitimacy. People
| will be asking "why" they can't buy basic consumer goods,
| and the answer will not be believable in the slightest.
|
| Cuba is not North Korea. It's not isolated in that way.
| Nor does it have a Juche style cult of self-reliance. It
| is heavily dependent on tourism for its economy. Even its
| official communist ideology emphasizes internationalist
| linkages and outlook.
|
| The sanctions are counterproductive and unjust.
| brigadier132 wrote:
| The only people who find the Cuban regime legitimate
| would find an excuse to promote its legitimacy with or
| without sanctions. Trade would benefit the government of
| Cuba as it did with China and helping nations with
| totalitarian dictatorships is a failed strategy.
|
| As the communists like to say "The capitalists will sell
| us our pitchforks".
|
| No, we don't have to.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Complete nonsense. The policy has failed. The regime is
| still there after over half a century. Meanwhile the
| Cuban people suffer.
|
| Maybe those words make you feel smart or strong or
| reinforce your ideological positions... but they're bad
| policy. Unless you cover your eyes and ignore evidence.
| brigadier132 wrote:
| How has the policy failed? The regime is completely
| destitute. If we use China as the counterfactual, imagine
| the disaster of having a rich dictatorship aligned with
| our enemies right at our border.
|
| Your mindset is that Cuban suffering is because of US
| sanctions. How about having the mindset of the leaders
| looting the country causing Cuban suffering?
|
| As someone that is self-admittedly a leftist, why do you
| put 0 agency or blame on the leaders of Cuba? All they
| need to do to have trade with the US is to have free and
| open elections.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| You didn't read what I wrote above, you're just creating
| a strawman out of me. Go get your own thread to grouse on
| if that's what you're going to do.
|
| I said exactly what you said: the regime is fucked and
| the economy will suck and things will be oppressive even
| without the sanctions.
|
| But they use the sanctions to legitimize themselves. I've
| heard it directly from Cuban apologists... And in the
| meantime Cubans suffer.
|
| Regime change via sanctions isn't going to work. 50 years
| of evidence can show you that. So what are they for?
|
| Removing the sanctions removes one excuse among many that
| the dictatorship uses.
|
| This isn't China. It's a tin-pot dictatorship on a tiny
| island right off the US, dependent on tourism.
| brigadier132 wrote:
| Where you and i disagree is that regime change is the
| sole goal of these sanctions. The purpose is to not help
| an enemy.
|
| As for your argument around legitimacy, it does not
| matter. They will find an excuse to legitimize the
| government no matter what. See what venezuela did when we
| still had relations with their government.
|
| All this talk of legitimacy actually just does not
| matter. Cuban people know their government sucks and if
| they havent realized it already they are too deep in the
| propaganda to ever be convinced
|
| edit: Also out of curiosity, if this was a fascist
| dictatorship on the border would you advocate free trade?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > All they need to do to have trade with the US is to
| have free and open elections.
|
| That is truly hilarious. There are numerous countries,
| especially in Latin America, that can tell you a story or
| two about what happens when free and open elections fail
| to lead to the USA's chosen candidate winning. It's not
| sanctions being lifted, that's for sure.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Not to mention the US has made it very clear that it
| wants all confiscated property (from, uh [does math]
| 60-70 years ago) returned. Free elections won't do shit
| to satisfy prominent ex-pat groups.
| brigadier132 wrote:
| Your point is a few decades out of date. If Cuba became
| democratic the US would reestablish relations.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| No, it would not. Cuba has been a thorn in the USA's side
| since Teddy Roosevelt. I guarantee you that 200 years of
| history would not suddenly change if Cuba, say,
| democratically elected a pro-Russian socialist.
|
| Also,the USA cares absolutely _nothing_ about democracy
| in their partners. Never has, still doesn 't. One of the
| USA's biggest curent allies is Saudi Arabia, one of the
| least democratic nations on Earth.
| hollandheese wrote:
| Tell that to Bolivia.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| Trade almost always undermines the despotic regimes.
| Corruption results in inefficiencies which can be
| exploited through trade by those wishing to compete with
| the regime, even for their own corrupt reasons. Fostering
| competition between corrupt entities. Sanctioning takes
| away these alternative sources of power and consolidates
| it entirely within the regime.
|
| For example, Russia would have had a hard time policing
| their rambunctious oligarchs who would have used
| corruption to undermine the Putin regime to obtain more
| power for themselves - perhaps they could have supplied
| backing to Prigozhin with an offer that they could
| replace the Putin regime with something better. By
| sanctioning the oligarchs it forced all of the oligarchs
| to abandon any hope of competing with Putin and greatly
| strengthened Putins grip on power. Sanctioning polices
| the behavior of the Russian oligarchs much more
| effectively than Putins regime could have done,
| effectively outsourcing the cost of compliance to less
| corruptible 3rd parties.
| brigadier132 wrote:
| Do I need to bring up the obvious counterfactual in
| China? I also disagree with your analysis on Russia,
| Putin's grip on power has not meaningfully changed due to
| sanctions. What has changed is Russia's ability to fund
| its war.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| I see the same efforts to sanction China, especially with
| Chips as beneficial to China as continued trade would
| undermine their efforts to create an indigenous chip
| industry.
|
| I guess you're referring to how trade has not lead to
| liberalism of the Chinese and I wasn't suggesting it
| would. There are plenty of elite in China who have
| benefited from trade outside of the regime and that's
| probably still one of the biggest threats to the regime
| within China. As soon a China loses the 'mandate from
| heaven' we could see the alternatives move in.
| MarkSweep wrote:
| In case anyone else was confused, "mandate from heaven"
| is a Chinese political ideology. It is like the western
| concept of "Devine right" for kings, except that if your
| reign gets end by a revolution, it means you lost your
| mandate from heaven.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandate_of_Heaven
|
| Not to be confused with the American Revolution era Navy
| flag that has a pine tree and the motto "an appeal to
| heaven". That flag was recently in the news because the
| wife of a Supreme Court justice flew it at their house.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_Tree_Flag
|
| Coincidently, both "mandate from heaven" and "an appeal
| to heaven" define a right to rebellion.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> a stable state that lasts for a lifetime.
|
| This particular stable state has lasted more than a
| lifetime. The average age in Cuba is 40, which while
| higher than many countries still means that the average
| Cuban has no living memory of any of the events that lead
| to the sanctions, much less could they have participated
| in them.
| dangus wrote:
| If we assume that sanctions are the major barrier to
| Cuba's prosperity, a competent government that governed
| with the best interest of its people in mind would have
| been working for the past half century to try and
| convince the United States to lift those sanctions.
|
| You would think that being less than 500 miles off the
| coast of Florida that Cuba would want to have strong
| relations with the USA rather than Russia over 6,000
| miles away.
|
| The Soviet Union fell in 1991. It should have been clear
| since then which horse Cuba should be betting on. Cuba
| has had 33 years to figure out that their revolution was
| dead. Their lack of success warming up relations with the
| USA and their failure to do so is on them.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > Which is the consequence of being sanctioned into
| oblivion for decades by the global hegemon
|
| or the consequence of having a clueless communist regime,
| since most communist countries do very poorly economically.
| Sanctions rarely give the whole picture.
| alsetmusic wrote:
| > since most communist countries do very poorly
| economically.
|
| It's almost as though being brutally sanctioned by a
| superpower makes it nearly impossible to succeed. Do you
| not see the irony of your statement?
| ekianjo wrote:
| You don't seem to be aware that Cuba actually trades with
| many countries, including the US, and this for a long
| time. https://www.britannica.com/place/Cuba/Trade
| kgwgk wrote:
| Was the USSR brutally sanctioned by a superpower? It was
| a superpower itself - it was supposed to be even more of
| a superpower!
|
| "In the 1961 edition of his famous textbook of economic
| principles, Paul Samuelson wrote that GNP in the Soviet
| Union was about half that in the United States but the
| Soviet Union was growing faster. As a result, one could
| comfortably forecast that Soviet GNP would exceed that of
| the United States by as early as 1984 or perhaps by as
| late as 1997 and in any event Soviet GNP would greatly
| catch-up to U.S. GNP."
|
| https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/01
| /so...
| cced wrote:
| Opinions like these are the reason why this "communism v
| capitalism" discussion never evolves beyond "them bad us
| good".
|
| China is often the target of anti communist propaganda so
| how do you square that hole? 1# economy when looking at
| GDP(PPP) so your "analysis" falls short.
|
| Communist "regimes" often have to deal with outside
| interference from the "superior" capitalist system.
|
| OP's point is extremely valid: Cuba does not have the
| right to self determination as other countries impose
| themselves on them and prevent their economic growth.
|
| The Cuba case is really quite interesting when you
| compare it to more recent cases of indivisibility of
| security.
|
| We all have short memories I guess, super heros and
| cartoon villains.
|
| Never change hn.
| luckylion wrote:
| > China is often the target of anti communist propaganda
| so how do you square that hole? 1# economy when looking
| at GDP(PPP) so your "analysis" falls short.
|
| And that primarily came to be when they cut back on the
| centrally planned economy and allowed more free markets.
| Whether they will allow that to continue is to be seen.
|
| > Communist "regimes" often have to deal with outside
| interference from the "superior" capitalist system.
|
| No, they generally don't, but they use that as
| propaganda. Eastern Germany built their "anti-fascist
| barricade" in Berlin officially to keep the evil Western
| infiltrators out, but their guns were turned to the east,
| and they murdered people for trying to escape from
| communism. The Soviet Union as a whole often attributed
| its failures to the meddling of the Imperialistic West,
| because admitting that you messed up is dangerous.
|
| Communists always find a reason for their failure, and
| it's never them. That's really nothing new.
| underlipton wrote:
| >And that primarily came to be when
|
| they courted Western investment and resource-sharing with
| promises of access to their massive population, and then
| proceeded to steal and copy everything not nailed down,
| heavily restrict foreign firms' ability both to access
| their consumer markets and to repatriate capital,
| employed sweatshop labor, all while supporting quasi-
| state quasi-monopolies that literally could not fail in
| any meaningful way. Don't take this as unqualified
| criticism; it worked, and compensated for some of the
| worst injuries and excesses of the West's relations with
| the Chinese state. But the point is that it wasn't
| adherence to tenets of "fair-market capitalism" so much
| as abuse of labor and investor trust that gave them an
| edge. (And, to be fair, a tamer version of this strategy
| featured in America's own rise to economic powerhouse;
| Liu and Andrew, Ma and Ma Bell.)
|
| Also, as an anecdote, the superfest story says hi. The
| Reds invented a superior glass manufacturing process that
| was ignored by the West until they could control and
| profit off it without it benefiting the USSR. You're
| familiar with it because it's (probably) the screen
| you're reading this on.
| gosub100 wrote:
| we criticize ourselves for sanctioning communist countries,
| but don't they necessarily have to be hostile to capitalist
| nations? I mean, assume their communism is working properly
| and "everyone gets the same" for all resources. Its pretty
| much a given that that level of resources will be less than
| a capitalist nation. If we accept the axiom that each
| person wants to maximize their resources, then we should
| expect a natural outflow from the communist nation to the
| capitalist one. In order to limit that, any ruler would be
| incentivized to pain the capitalist world as the enemy or
| make it a crime to affiliate/sympathize with them. this
| naturally leads to conflict between nations.
| aniviacat wrote:
| > Its pretty much a given that that level of resources
| will be less than a capitalist nation.
|
| Why?
|
| > If we accept the axiom that each person wants to
| maximize their resources, then we should expect a natural
| outflow from the [poorer] nation to the [richer] one. In
| order to limit that, any ruler would be incentivized to
| pain the [rich] world as the enemy or make it a crime to
| affiliate/sympathize with them. this naturally leads to
| conflict between nations.
|
| (I replaced communist/capitalist with poor/rich since
| that's what your point is actually about.)
|
| Are you saying that the poor world is naturally the enemy
| of the rich world? That the rich world should utilize its
| power (e.g. using sanctions) to keep the poor world
| (which in your view is the enemy) weak?
| Aunche wrote:
| The US has been the the only major country sanctioning Cuba
| for a decade and a half, but the economy has only gotten
| worse. Sanctions may explain why they has lagged behind in
| tech. It doesn't explain why Cuba needs to import 70-80% of
| their food despite being a fertile tropical paradise.
|
| https://www.wfpusa.org/countries/cuba/#:~:text=Cuba%20impor
| t....
| cardanome wrote:
| > It doesn't explain why Cuba needs to import 70-80% of
| their food despite being a fertile tropical paradise.
|
| There have been famine and starvation before the
| communists took power. I don't think Cuba has ever been
| fully food self-sufficient. Not many countries are.
|
| Not to mention agriculture needs access to fertilizers
| which the sanctions make harder to get.
|
| The more important part from your source:
|
| > The largest island in the Caribbean, Cuba is one of the
| most successful in achieving the Millennium Development
| Goals (MDGs). Food-based social safety nets include a
| monthly food basket for the entire population, school
| feeding programs, and mother-and-child health care
| programs.
|
| This is a big achievement.
|
| Also it doesn't make sense to compare Cuba with the
| richest Western Countries. Communist revolutions tend to
| happen in the poorest countries of the world. Saying they
| are poor because of communism is confusing cause and
| effect.
|
| If we compare Cuba to her peers in Latin America,
| especially Haiti, then Cuba is doing vastly, vastly
| better. Cuba is doing really well on the human
| development index, providing free health care and decent
| education for all.
| krvajal wrote:
| what food basket are you talking about? that thing only
| exists in the news. in reality why dystopian reality you
| live in?
|
| Cuba better than Haiti??? You are reading to many fake
| news. Cubans are travelling to Haiti to buy food and
| medicine.
|
| Cuban healthcare good? You are joking right? If you need
| surgery have to bring your own equipment, including
| chirurgical globes and syringes. You have to either buy
| it in the black market or have a relative in a capitalist
| country to send it to you.
|
| Dont even get me started on education.
|
| Happy to provide you more details and break the bubble
| you are leaving in.
| cardanome wrote:
| I have lived in Cuba for one and a half years and have
| studied there. The education system is in same aspects
| superior than the one in my home country, Germany.
|
| I have visited schools and the education level of the
| vastly higher. The knowledge of the children greatly
| impressed me. In fact you could talk the average person
| on the street about complicated issues regarding history,
| philosophy and economy. Many where even multi-lingual.
|
| It is true that Cuba has trouble getting some medical
| equipment due to the sanctions but she also has a for a
| small island impressive pharmaceutical industry. There is
| a great medication for diabetics that would save many
| lives if it were allowed to be exported in the US. Not to
| mention having developed their own covid vaccine.
|
| You are probably living in a exile-Cuban bubble.
| nec4b wrote:
| Potemkin villages for the young foreign revolutionaries
| and misery for the locals.
| cardanome wrote:
| I was able to travel the whole country freely. I didn't
| stay in some touristy hotel, I lived among Cubans. There
| is literally no way my experience could have been
| controlled by the state.
|
| People were not afraid to talk critically about their
| government with me and did so often.
| Yawrehto wrote:
| >If we compare Cuba to her peers in Latin America,
| especially Haiti...
|
| Haiti has a complicating factor. After winning
| independence from France, France told Haiti to pay 'debt'
| back to France. In the end, it had to pay 112 million
| Francs, which is an amazing sum for a newly independent
| country, and I think that it's unique in history, a
| government demanding that exorbitant of a payment from a
| newly independent country. It took until 1947 for Haiti
| to finish paying, 122 years of payment. You can't get
| over that sort of thing easily.
|
| Wikipedia has a good article on it:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiti_Independence_Debt. In
| another article
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/External_debt_of_Haiti)
| it's said that Haiti's debt is mostly from that demand.
|
| That said, Cuba's life expectancy (Cuban GDP per capita:
| $7,486 or so, as of 2021) is equal to or greater than
| much wealthier countries, like Lithuania ($30,577), Oman
| ($46,574), Seychelles ($30,126), or Russia ($26,120). In
| 2020, its life expectancy surpassed the US! Cuba has
| consistently outperformed countries like Lithuania,
| Russia, and even the world in life expectancy (counting
| since 2000), all of which have much greater GDP per
| capita. See https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy
| and https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-
| vs-gdp-pe....
| derektank wrote:
| It wasn't the independence debt. Haiti was a poor country
| in the 40s and 50s but not exceptionally poor compared to
| other peer countries. What set Haiti up to be the basket
| case it is today was the decades of corruption and
| malgovernment that occurred under the dictatorial rule of
| the Duvalier family.
| thiagoharry wrote:
| > The US has been the the only major country sanctioning
| Cuba for a decade and a half
|
| Which is enough, as the US controls the emission of
| dollars, have monopolies over several technologies and,
| as it extends the sanctions even to the ships that trade
| in Cuba, disallowing them to enter in US, on practice it
| difficult trades between Cuba and any other country.
|
| > It doesn't explain why Cuba needs to import 70-80% of
| their food despite being a fertile tropical paradise.
|
| Modern agriculture depends on machines and fertilizers.
| And if you go without modern technology, climate change
| and shortages of water can be an even greater blow to
| your production. You will produce food, but will be
| susceptible to famine crisis, as were all countries
| before sufficient technological development.
|
| Moreover, Cuba is also not an agrarian country. The urban
| population is greater than the rural, like in any modern
| country. Remember that societies without much technology
| had to have a much greater part of population in rural
| areas instead of cities to be self-sufficient in food.
| altvali wrote:
| I'm not educated on the subject. Why can't Cuba import
| the fertilizer and build the machines? There are open
| source blueprints, like the Global Village Construction
| Set.
| hkt wrote:
| Foreign currency the US is Cuba's most logical export
| market. So, with a shortfall of dollars/etc, importing
| things is problematic. So Cuba's reliance on importing
| food - especially from the US - looks like a spiral:
| eating today taking precedence over planting etc.
|
| I don't know as much about this next part, but seeds are
| also harder to import. I'd hazard a guess at there not
| being much capacity in that market unless you're buying
| from Monsanto or the like, which seems not to be an
| option in Cuba as those (American) companies are not
| exempt from the embargo, unlike exporters of food and
| medical supplies.
| kgwgk wrote:
| It's funny how Monsanto is such an evil company [*] that
| it harms so many countries when it sells to them - and
| Cuba when it can't.
|
| [*] According to many people, I'm not talking about the
| parent comment.
| thiagoharry wrote:
| Cuba is an island with very little natural resources.
| Therefore, to build almost anything, it needs to buy it
| from other countries. The sanctions makes everything
| coming from outside much more expensive. And to buy
| things, they need money (dollar, or some other
| international currency). They can get it only in the few
| areas where they can be internationally competitive (as
| any imported product is much more expensive to them, they
| will not be competitive in most industries): tourism,
| offering medical services and selling cigars.
|
| As they have fewer baskets to place their eggs, they are
| much more succetible to crisis: a blow in one economical
| activity generates crisis that affects a lot all other
| areas. For example, one of the causes for the current
| crisis is the pandemics that dropped their tourism to
| zero for 2 years. Now they have much less to invest,
| affecting all economical activities.
| Aunche wrote:
| If they're capable of 1950s era urbanism, they're capable
| of 1950s era agricultural technology. They get enough
| dollars from tourism and exports to purchase make up for
| what they don't have just like any other small nation.
| The are perfectly capable of growing tobacco and sugar.
| The problem is that the profit from non-cash crops is
| either too low like staple carbohydrates, or too
| variable, like fruits and vegetables to incentive farmers
| in a socialist country.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| Cuba's attitude towards US sanctions is: "bring them on!"
|
| Even before Castro came to power, Che Guevara planned in
| enacting extreme tariffs to keep American money out. He
| used 19th century American tariffs to justify this.
|
| Cubas government is far more interested in maintaining
| control than opening up to trade.
|
| They are willing to advertise to tourists, which brings
| in cash without shaking things up.
|
| But they aren't willing to make the adaptations
| international trade requires.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| The US excluding otherwise Visa Waiver Program (VWP), aka
| ESTA, eligible citizens from using VWP if they have
| visited Cuba since since 2021 is probably bad news for
| Cuba.
|
| Bad news for citizens of these countries that would have
| visited Cuba if they also want to visit USA and don't
| want to bother with US visas:
|
| https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-
| visas/tourism-...
| sillywalk wrote:
| > The US has been the the only major country sanctioning
| Cuba for a decade and a half
|
| It's had an embargo against Cuba since 1962.
| fiachamp wrote:
| In Cuba, the only wealthy people are government
| bureaucrats. As always, communism becomes dictatorship
| and the people suffer most. Top down control of economy
| doesn't work. I went to numerous tobacco plantations in
| Cuba and they told me the government takes 90% of their
| harvest and they're allowed to keep and sell 10%. I
| stayed with an OBGyn who gets paid $80 USD/month. He
| built his house out of cinderblocks. That's how you get
| rewarded for your 'free' education. Anyone glorifying
| communism is a fucking idiot with no life experience.
| stef25 wrote:
| Ah yes, sanctions. That's what everyone said when I was in
| Venezuela toward the end of Chavez. Couldn't possibly be
| incompetence or corruption.
| philippejara wrote:
| The sanctions in Venezuela are/were very different from
| the ones in Cuba, there is a prohibition of trade from
| any US company and its subsidiaries with Cuba with the
| exception of food, not some specific sectors aimed at
| supposedly weakening the government.
|
| With that being said it could also be incompetence and/or
| corruption, but ignoring the embargo completely is just
| working to weaken your argument.
| pydry wrote:
| It wasnt sanctions but pretty much every extremely oil
| rich country that is fought over is a basket case, run by
| a vicious dictatorship or are the sole exception lucky
| enough to make it work - Norway.
|
| Like Cuba, Venezuela was a poverty stricken mess before
| the socialists took power.
| apwell23 wrote:
| they should try to become USAs bitch then. Leaders there
| would rather starve their population than give up their
| power.
| easytiger wrote:
| Go to Cuba, you'll see why that take is absolutely silly.
| ransom1538 wrote:
| OR. They lost a gamble. They picked Russia over the US and
| lost, big.
| pajko wrote:
| Khmmm...
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mongoose
| ransom1538 wrote:
| From your link:
|
| "It (Operation_Mongoose) was officially authorized on
| November 30, 1961 by U.S. President John F. Kennedy."
|
| JFK was shot in the head (most likely Oswald visited
| Mexico City and the Cuban and Soviet consulates). So...
| even more bad gambles by Cuba.
| daniel-s wrote:
| If Cuba were a free society instead of being run by
| communists they would have an economy that worked. This is
| the destruction caused by ~3/4 of a century of central
| economic planning and Marxist ideology.
| dennis_jeeves2 wrote:
| >Doesn't brain drain imply the smarter people are moving? I'm
| not sure that's what's happening here. >I think it's anyone
| who can get out.
|
| Anyone who can get out is one of the minor definitions of
| being smart.
| vimbtw wrote:
| The more important thing would seem to be what actually led to
| the immigration in the first place. In Cuba's case it seems
| like widespread corruption and wholesale mismanagement by the
| government. This particular case doesn't seem like an
| inevitable result of globalization but the natural reaction to
| a terrible government.
| mandelbrotwurst wrote:
| > what actually led to the immigration
|
| Great point, and just FYI: "emigration" here.
| pembrook wrote:
| What's happening in Cuba has no resemblance to what happens in
| Southern Europe.
|
| In Southern Europe, talent leaves for better job opportunities
| and higher salary. In Cuba, people are literally fleeing to
| achieve basic human rights and 21st century quality of life.
|
| I'm not sure if you've been to Cuba before, but having visited
| in the late 2010s, it's a caricature of life in a communist
| dictatorship.
|
| Internet wasn't allowed, except for in certain public parks at
| certain times of the day, only on phones with certain websites,
| and with dial-up speeds.
|
| The sum total of fresh food in grocery stores was 1 type of
| government ham, 1 type of government cheese, eggs, a few
| fruits, and that was basically it.
|
| I could go on. It's a beautiful island country, but please
| don't fall for the silly idea that US sanctions or european-
| style "brain drain" have anything to do with the reason Cubans
| are leaving.
|
| Authoritarian communist dictatorships are no joke.
| narag wrote:
| Whatever the reason, it's not so far fetched to assume the
| brightest are the first to leave. Or maybe the bravest, the
| most confident... I don't know. But better anyway.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| I've known some very recent Cuban immigrants. They have a lot
| in common with economic migrants.
|
| Plenty of folks get started working for the state industry or
| university. Then they hop on a plane to America via Canada
| and claim citizenship.
|
| I'm confident there are still traditional political refugees,
| but they coexist with "company men" wanting more pay.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| Frequently the country people are leaving also benefits. Many
| emigrants send money back to family. Some amount of emigrants
| moves back and bring what they learned with them. I've read the
| argument by Bryan Kaplan that this is a big factor why Puerto
| Rico is doing better than most of the island surrounding it.
|
| Of course Cuba being Cuba makes all these benefits harder or
| undesirable.
| glitchc wrote:
| That should put pressure on the deserted areas to increase
| compensation or offer better CoL in return for production.
| Similarly, it increases demand on housing and other services in
| global cities, putting pressure on the workers to move to
| greener pastures. Of course none of this works as intended due
| to outsized govt. intervention and corruption.
| animex wrote:
| Where do southern Europeans go? In Canada most go to the US.
| selimnairb wrote:
| Not a single mention in these comments of the US Embargo against
| Cuba. I'm sure Cuba has problems that are not directly because of
| the Embargo, but the Embargo makes dealing with all other
| problems much more difficult. Until the Embargo is lifted, I
| don't see why people expect good outcomes for Cubans.
| ngcazz wrote:
| Agree, although that expectation is a result of manufactured
| consent entirely consistent with imperialist logic - downplay
| the major factors (because you are their instigator) then blame
| the victim for their predicament.
| throwaway199956 wrote:
| What are the numbers for Haiti?
| drowntoge wrote:
| Ah, the good old "My racism is actually okay because facts"
| thread of Hacker News.
| mrthrowaway999 wrote:
| I see a lot of mentions here of the US embargo as if it's the
| only factor in why Cuba is so poor.
|
| Unfortunately, it appears to be mostly misinformation. Noah Smith
| lays out quite well why Cuba's poor state is mainly due to poor
| policy of the single party state:
| https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/why-cuba-is-having-an-economic...
|
| Additionally, just skimming the wiki page about Cuba's economy
| points out how false the embargo narrative is: Cubas top export
| partners are China, Spain, Netherlands, and Germany. Cuba's top
| import partners are: Spain, China, Italy, Canada, Brazil, and...
| The US.
|
| Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Cuba
|
| It's ironic that there's a comment here supporting the
| misinformation about the embargo that points out how this state
| of affairs lasts because of manufacturing consent while it itself
| appears to be a result of manufacturing consents in the theme of
| "America Bad"
| TedHerman wrote:
| Who are the most miserable, the citizens of Cuba or those of
| Haiti?
| munchler wrote:
| Haiti is currently a lawless hellscape, from what I understand.
| As bad as Cuba might be, I don't think it's in the same league.
| GreatLdisisp88 wrote:
| This kind of numbers are not auditted. Might as well a journalist
| fake the numbers while in washing room cubicle (happened before).
| So just take this reading litely.
| SaintSeiya wrote:
| I'm one of them, the Cuban dictatorship has gotten worse over
| years and more brutal, the cuban government is the enemy of its
| own people and asphyxiates any piece of freedom we have there. Is
| not the U.S or any other country but pure malice of the
| government that do not want to give up the power and sacrifices a
| whole country if necessary to remain there. The amount of
| ignorance (bought the dictatorship propaganda) and even malice of
| foreigners commenting about cuba here (because Cuba has been
| always the flag of the Left) is staggering.
| SaintSeiya wrote:
| And BTW is not the 10% only, is around the 20%, close to 2
| million cuban's has left in this last 2 years. Everyone is
| escaping that sinking ship. The government is fully militarized
| and even complaining about your kid's food can land you in jail
| for 10 years.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Do you have any advice for those with resources and desire to
| help Cubans leave?
| SaintSeiya wrote:
| Thanks, we need all the world visibility and support we can
| get.
| anonfordays wrote:
| Sadly, there are some problems that desire and money cannot
| fix.
| mahkeiro wrote:
| Given the low birth rate of cuba, it's going to create a
| havoc in the age pyramid. How can a country survive this kind
| of change?
| derelicta wrote:
| Understandable. The US Empire's brutal economic sanctions have
| been asphyxiating the Republic for so long, I really can't blame
| them.
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