Europe-Middle East-Africa Refugee Crisis General Thread

[Sol]

I'd like to respond to one issue that was raised earlier in the thread, and which seems to me the crux of disagreement: The idea that countries (at least in not-settler colony sorts of places) should correspond to ethnicity. IMO, that idea is a poisonous vile thing that should be quashed. No country should concieve itself as a land explicitly for one people because no country, except perhaps Iceland (and Iceland has some settler colony aspects of its own) is a perfect nation state--everywhere there are minorities. This already makes conceiving of countries as solely for one ethnicity problematic.

When you add in refugees, it gets even more problematic. The fact that these people are suffering and fleeing from war and strife is obvious--but this idea of the perfect nation-state engenders resentment and stops the country from taking in those who are so obviously in need. That's why European (and Asian, and African, and American) countries should conceptualize themselves not as "Denmark=Land of Danes" but "Denmark=Land of people who live in Denmark."

[Sol]

I'd like to respond to one issue that was raised earlier in the thread, and which seems to me the crux of disagreement: The idea that countries (at least in not-settler colony sorts of places) should correspond to ethnicity. IMO, that idea is a poisonous vile thing that should be quashed. No country should concieve itself as a land explicitly for one people because no country, except perhaps Iceland (and Iceland has some settler colony aspects of its own) is a perfect nation state--everywhere there are minorities. This already makes conceiving of countries as solely for one ethnicity problematic.

When you add in refugees, it gets even more problematic. The fact that these people are suffering and fleeing from war and strife is obvious--but this idea of the perfect nation-state engenders resentment and stops the country from taking in those who are so obviously in need. That's why European (and Asian, and African, and American) countries should conceptualize themselves not as "Denmark=Land of Danes" but "Denmark=Land of people who live in Denmark."

Iceland is a very old settler colony..

You got several Pacific island nations being "perfect" nation states as well (and lots of countries historically coming very close as in 98%+). Perfection is, however, not what matters, but a solid majority. How much that is varies, but around 80% might be enough for most people. Go below that and the fundament starts to unravel. Nations can absorb and assimilate outsiders, so we are not talking about shared ancestry (real or imagined), but a shared cultural bond and language.

Sol, you can not change the whole world and make it fit into an American style multiculturalism. Absolving national home lands into some blur were all cultures are equal touches on the most primordial fears of people and make them hostile. We are talking about cultures with deep historical roots, that can not just be "reconceptualized" to fit some utilitarian goal.

It is not vile to have national homelands, it is the basic right of every people (include Kurds and other stateless people). You need a base where your culture has the prerogative and is the natural basis for human interaction. Having your own nation state to safeguard this is a right people have fought and died for. It is not something they will just give up.

If you belonged to a small people and not a dominant one, you would view this matter differently.

Americans are often extreme on this. I remember a discussion where a poster said Hawaiians were bette off then French Polynesians despite Hawaiians losing their land, language and culture. No Polynesian would view it like that.

The problem is that if you assert that all people are deserving of a state based on ethnicity, you run into the difficult problem of where to draw the line. Are the Gagauz deserving of a state of their own? The Sorbs? Val D'Aosta? Additionally, creating a perfect nation-state is genuinely impossible in large parts of the world--the Balkans being an excellent example, but this is true of most places.

[Sol]

See, sh*t like this is why Europe should aggressive attempt to resettle refugees from Turkey and Jordan, so that they aren't forced to literally go through the tundra to receive asylum.

[Sol]

The idea that countries should be a specific homeland for a particular group of people is wrong-headed, and when it's used to justify the persecution of those who are suffering mightily, it becomes evil. If European states decide not to take in asylum seekers because they wish to protect their "national identity," then they have literally chosen a way of conceptualizing the state which is abhorrent. If Slovakia says that they can't take in Syrian refugees because they wish to preserve their ethnic homogeneity, than they might as well deport the Hungarians as well-it's the same fundamental principle of ethnocentrism and violence.

[Sol]

The idea that countries should be a specific homeland for a particular group of people is wrong-headed, and when it's used to justify the persecution of those who are suffering mightily, it becomes evil. If European states decide not to take in asylum seekers because they wish to protect their "national identity," then they have literally chosen a way of conceptualizing the state which is abhorrent. If Slovakia says that they can't take in Syrian refugees because they wish to preserve their ethnic homogeneity, than they might as well deport the Hungarians as well-it's the same fundamental principle of ethnocentrism and violence.

They are "wrongheaded" and "abhorrent" according to your norms, but that is just an opinion. It is the basis for most European and many Asian countries. A country being a national homeland does not exclude historical minorities or limited immigration, it just precludes tilting the ethnic balance to the degree that the majority population lose control.

There is nothing evil in saying Slovakia exists to form a home for the Slovaks and it doesn't preclude minority rights or regional autonomy per se. The rights of a people are as fundamental as the rights of individuals. This becomes clearer when you think of small nations like Tongans, Greenlanders etc. Why shouldn't these people be allowed to have a country where their culture is the dominant one despite their small size? European nations are larger, but ethnic balances are fragile and can be distorted if migration is large and persistent. The element of uncertainty in this contributes to this. If it was just for 5 years or so the resistance to it would be negligent, but we know from experience we will likely never get rid of them again so it takes on the character of forced immigration, which is of course perceived as a threat and fundamentally undemocratic, since the people in the host country never got to approve a changed population, or whether they thought that was a good idea.

You want your own norms to be universal, but that is unrealistic. You should respect the basic foundation of other nations. History is filled with people that ended up losing control with the land of their ancestors. It might be difficult to understand if you belong to a large and numerous group, but that is not the case for many peoples in Europe. This always gets trivialized and ridiculed, but say California had been an ethnically defined country in 1965 and experienced the same immigration as IRL making an immigrant group a plurality and the former majority population a minority. With the population growth in the Middle East and Africa that is not an unrealistic development in Europe and therefore many say: we already have large minorities and might as well say no now to prevent the demographic change from getting out of hand.

It is simply not true that a country that refuse to take refugees - or refuse to settle them permanently - persecute them. They refuse to help them in a specific way (but is often willing to help them in other ways and places). That is exactly that, refusing help, the persecutors are the groups in their homeland that drove them to flee, not the people saying "you will have to go elsewhere". No one are obliged to share their country with people they don't want to share it with, just as you are not obliged to share your house with foreigners just because they are homeless. You are doing a good deed if you take them in, but not doing good deeds is not equal to persecution.

This idea, that somehow Denmark or Slovakia will become "overrun with Arabs" or whatever is incredible foolishness.

In any case, basing countries off of ethnicity is foolhardy, even setting aside the ethical dimension, because no country is a perfect nation-state, and it creates a dynamic where minorities are considered, or at least feel like, less than full citizens--with Slovakia being an excellent example thanks to the long-running tensions between Magyars and Slovaks in the country.

I'm not necessarily saying that all nationalism is bad. Nations can foster a sense of unity. But that unity needs to be a civic nationalism, as opposed to an ethnic nationalism.

[Sol]

Tragic and sad.

But this is exactly the stuff I tried to warn you about. This silly, reckless mass immigration policy "stresses" the native population unnecessarily and makes them agitated. That is why I favour the common sense policy of only letting in the number of migrants the system is designed for, while directing the surplus immigrants to their airport so they can board a plane that takes them home from where they came from (or nearby).

Why send them back to a war zone?