Migrant watch (merged topic)

[biffvernon]

If you open up a loophole in the regulations people rush to jump through it.

If we hadn't made such a mess there wouldn't be a call for regulations, loopholes or jumping through. High time we cleared up the mess instead of making it worse.

'toon time.
http://www.cartoonkate.co.uk/threads-th ... s-cartoon/

[johnhemming2]

I am not sure there ever has been a time with no laws on migration at all anywhere in the world in the last 2,500 years.

[clv101]

I am not sure there ever has been a time with no laws on migration at all anywhere in the world in the last 2,500 years.

Depends on definitions. There are currently no laws on migration between Scotland and England, where once there was. There are enumerable regional pairs where people are now able to migrate freely where once they couldn't.

[johnhemming2]

What I mean is that somewhere in the world there have been some rules. It has not been something where people don't care at all.

[UndercoverElephant]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-35414432

Migrant crisis: Will Merkel be left out in the cold?

[snip]
That 3,000-4,000 figure could be politically ruinous for Mrs Merkel, for - at that rate - far from the steep cut promised for 2016 by the German government, this year's asylum seekers would far exceed last year's 1.1 million.

What's more, Germany finds itself in this situation at a time of year when Mediterranean storms and freezing Balkan weather are thought to be holding migration down - spring promises still higher numbers.

Faced with this crisis, the chancellor has found herself deserted by many erstwhile allies. The CSU, the Bavarian branch of her CDU ruling party, had been muttering discontentedly for months about the numbers of new arrivals but this has now moved into open revolt.

Last week both Mrs Merkel and her popular finance minister Wolfgang Schauble went down to a CSU conference being held in the tiny spa town of Wildbad Kreuth in an attempt to persuade them to give more time to a multilateral effort to reduce the flow of migrants across Europe. But we found delegates unconvinced.

"We have to reject immigrants," said Markus Blume, a CSU member in the Bavarian state parliament. As to when Germany would have to impose its own border controls Mr Blume said, "it's a question of days or weeks but not of months".

When I asked another delegate, Hans Reichart, head of the CSU youth wing, whether this wouldn't mean the end of Europe's border agreement he replied: "Yes, it is the end of Schengen, yes."

[snip]

Where this leaves Mrs Merkel is a moot point. One local official in Landshut told me, "she will be gone by summer". But many who have bet on her political demise before - for example during the Euro crisis - have been wrong-footed by her political skill and survival instinct.

Nevertheless there is a growing worry, even within her own party, that their leader has committed herself so fully to a policy of unrestricted asylum that it could finish her. "She has not left herself a way out," one CDU politician told me. "And this is starting to worry me."

Biff Vernon,

I would like very much to put this issue to bed so the atmosphere on this forum can return to something more pleasant. In the last twelve months the political landscape of Europe, with respect to the immigration crisis, and especially where the immigrants in question are Islamic, has shifted enormously. Twelve months ago, in the UK, in the liberal European Nordic and Benelux states, and especially in Germany, the prevailing view was still a watered-down version of your own position. The prevailing view was that our first concern was the migrants, and that somehow we had to find a way to help - and in Germany in particular the view was that unlimited numbers should be allowed in. The vast majority of continental Europeans saw Schengen as irreversible, and anybody seriously opposed to further immigration was viewed, at least in public, as a right wing nutjob.

How things have changed. Angela Merkel now stands completely isolated, a bit like Hitler in his bunker as the Allies closed in on Berlin, still refusing to accept that the war was over even as his closest advisors were telling him that it was indeed finished. The flow of refugees is not diminishing even though it is the coldest part of winter, and everybody knows what is likely to happen if the policies of last year are continued. A continuation of those policies will just encourage ever greater numbers to come to Europe, and nowhere, not even in Germany, is willing to accept any more of them, not least because of the disgraceful and primitive behaviour of large numbers of them, which the authorities are in serious trouble for foolishly attempting to hide. The Schengen agreement is on its last legs, and will soon be history. Borders are going to go back up all across Europe, there is going to be a massive strengthening of Europe's external borders and Germany will cease to accept new refugees. In other words, the position that only twelve months ago was viewed as far right lunacy is on the verge of becoming the only acceptable policy all over Europe.

You, and those large numbers of people that have been defending a similar position on this, have lost the argument. The policy of allowing unlimited immigration was always going to be unsustainable - that is exactly what we have been telling you for several years, Biff. And it has now reached the point where it can no longer be sustained and is going to come to an end.

I very much hope that the bitterness and bad feeling that has pervaded this board for so long can also come to an end, but that requires that you finally accept that the policy of unlimited immigration came to an end because it was unrealistic and unsustainable. If, alternatively, you persist in claiming the moral superiority of unrealistic and unsustainable policies even after they have so completely, publicly and irreversibly failed, the result will be even worse conflict on this forum.

It's over, Biff. Now can we please move on, and try to be friends again?

[Little John]

Jesus wept.....

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politic ... entry.html



Is Corbyn turning into Merkel?

I've got family in Australia - does that mean I should be allowed in there if I can't support myself?

Corbyn has lost my vote (and, quite probably, the votes of the vast majority of the working class of this country) if he persists with this lunacy.

[Little John]

I don't think it is right to require someone to concede he is wrong (which I believe he is) for people to be cordial towards him. He holds a view with the best of intentions.

I agree with that in principle. However, in practice, there are basically two kinds of liberal. Those like Corbyn who, as far as I can tell does not take a holier than thou position of sanctimonious moral superiority with people who might differ with him on, say, matters of immigration. Then there are others, of which we are all too familiar with on here, who do take such a supercilious, sanctimonious position. They deserve no such considerations.

Nevertheless, the outcome is the same if people like Corbyn get their way and I would sooner tactically vote for an anti immigration party, whose platform I was otherwise implacably opposed to in all other respects, in order to stop this lunacy. I suspect I am far from alone in that.

[johnhemming2]

I suppose I take the view that the strength of rational argument should be used to persuade people as to the truth rather than being rude and aggressive to people I disagree with with a view to forcing them to be silent.

[UndercoverElephant]

I don't think it is right to require someone to concede he is wrong (which I believe he is) for people to be cordial towards him. He holds a view with the best of intentions.

I don't mind people disagreeing with me.

What I mind is when they portray the disagreement as being ethical when the reality is that the disagreement is about realism, and the lack of it. Biff consistently implies or states that the reason his views differ to those of the majority of people on this forum is that he is morally superior to them. But for this to be true there has to be a genuine moral choice on offer. In other words, Biff implies that all the people who disagree with him are closet Jonny2Mads - they are closet xenophobic racists, and that is the reason why they oppose immigration. But we aren't. Most of the people here have consistently argued that as much as we'd like to be able to accept an unlimited number of refugees/migrants, this simply isn't possible because it is unsustainable. It is unsustainable because an open-door policy will simply encourage ever increasing numbers of people to come - it actually makes the crisis worse. It is like trying to to deal with the problem of a rising flood by adding more water to it, in a situation where the potential amount of water is infinite.

Biff's claimed moral superiority is nothing of the sort. It's actually a failure of realism, which is a very different thing, because it is a form of moral cowardice - a failure to take a morally difficult but necessary decision, especially one which involves admitting you were wrong about something important.

That is why there has been so much bad feeling, which has led to so much personal abuse. Biff has been effectively accusing the majority of people on this board of being morally inferior when in fact alll we are doing is facing up to realities about the future that Biff was either could not or would not face up to. That predicted future is now becoming the present reality, so I see no reason why Biff should continue to deny that reality.

It is no longer a question of whether or not Schengen should survive or we should accept unlimited immigration. Schengen and the policy of unlimited immigration are both DEAD and waiting to be buried. All I am asking is that they be allowed to Rest In Peace. What is the point in continuing to argue about it?

[UndercoverElephant]

Nevertheless, the outcome is the same if people like Corbyn get their way and I would sooner tactically vote for an anti immigration party, whose platform I was otherwise implacably opposed to in all other respects, in order to stop this lunacy. I suspect I am far from alone in that.

So would I, and it really is important for people like Corbyn and Biff Vernon to listen to this and understand it. Their lack of realism has the very real potential consequence of delivering power to far right groups, even though many of the people voting for them disagree with most of their policies!

[johnhemming2]

What I mind is when they portray the disagreement as being ethical when the reality is that the disagreement is about realism, and the lack of it.

I suppose I am used to people claiming the moral high ground when arguing against me. As I see it there are practical limits to what politics can do and it is wrong to argue otherwise. This is speaking as someone who has been in elected office nationally and in local government. Hence I know how things work and what the limits are.

The Greeks have killed Schengen.

[Little John]

What I mind is when they portray the disagreement as being ethical when the reality is that the disagreement is about realism, and the lack of it.

I suppose I am used to people claiming the moral high ground when arguing against me. As I see it there are practical limits to what politics can do and it is wrong to argue otherwise. This is speaking as someone who has been in elected office nationally and in local government. Hence I know how things work and what the limits are.

The Greeks have killed Schengen.

The Greeks have not killed Schengen. The annihilation of Greek democracy and of the Greek economy, in turn reducing their capacity to properly police their borders, has killed Schengen. It would appear the Greeks are about to be used as a scapegoat for the failings of the EU once again.

[johnhemming2]

From a purely practical perspective you could not expect the Germans to give the Greeks a shed load of cash just because they appointed an idiot as Finance Minister.

[UndercoverElephant]

What I mind is when they portray the disagreement as being ethical when the reality is that the disagreement is about realism, and the lack of it.

I suppose I am used to people claiming the moral high ground when arguing against me.

So am I, and often there is a genuine moral question, and sometimes it is very hard to know what is right. But sometimes morality has nothing to do with it, and if policy X is unsustainable then it doesn't make any difference whether you think it is right or wrong. Unsustainable means it must go, because it will go.

As I see it there are practical limits to what politics can do and it is wrong to argue otherwise.

Another way of saying the same thing. No politics can turn something unsustainable into something sustainable.

The Greeks have killed Schengen.

We could argue about who killed it, but I don't think there's much point. Whoever killed it, it's dead.

[biffvernon]

Ai Weiwei has decided to close his exhibition ”Ruptures” at Faurschou Foundation Copenhagen, Denmark. This decision follows the Danish parliament’s approval of the law proposal that allows seizing valuables and delaying family reunions for asylum seekers.
Jens Faurschou backs the artist’s decision and regrets that the Danish parliament choses to be in the forefront of symbolic and inhuman politics of todays biggest humanitarian crisis in Europe and the Middle East, instead of being in the forefront of a respectful European solution to solve the acute humanitarian crisis.

https://www.facebook.com/Ai-Weiwei-Camp ... 073966084/
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign ... seeker-law