In which I tersely respond to talking points:
Spreading privileges should come through raising living standards around the world via free trade combined with economic aid for poverty alleviation. Not by massive population swops between continents.
Why free trade only for capital but not for labour?
Who says every African and Middle Eastern resident wants to migrate to Europe? But of course you believe in a mechanism for this:
In which case the usual arguments delivered by others, accusing you of an "eco-fascist," apply.
How? Through the vast sums of remittances sent in recent times - $400 to $500 billion - we have evidence that labour migration is a market mechanism for distributing wealth. Do you have anything better?
It's completely self-defeating anyway since an expansive welfare state only really works in largely homogeneous (and small) nations. So the more foreigners they bring in, the smaller support for the welfare state is going to be.
Why? Through which mechanism?
Also (and this applies to Latin American/African immigration more than Syria), if poor people from the third world are such an economic boon for developed countries, why are their countries of origin so poor that they have to flee?
...Bad political institutions? Surely you could have thought that one up.
The problem I have with economic arguments used by people in this thread is that they are not serious nor representative. Evidence is that people oppose immigration to the extent that they change their living environment and institutions (see
Card/Dustmann/Preston 2012,
Hainmueller 2014). In that sense the European sentiment right now is very similar to American white flight from major cities in the 50s to the 70s, except Europe's density means mobility is less feasible.
In my opinion only DavidB in this thread was honest about why he fears immigrants: fear of being stabbed by an Arab walking down the sidewalk. Others could learn from him.
