Why Do You Think European Countries Generally Dislike Immigrants?

[Zom]

People need a scapegoat. Naturally outsiders make a perfect scapegoat.

[MC4l]

Is that the immigrant's fault or the government's fault? In the United States, you get what you work for, which is probably why Americans are generally happier than Europeans and far more immigrant-friendly. Perhaps the European nanny-state is the problem and you Europeans should work towards changing that.

Don't turn this in a more and more "'murica! fuck yeah!" thread than it already is.

[mvaliz]

I'm so shocked that yet another stereotype is wildly inaccurate.

jk i'm not

...I think that's rather his point.

You're here stereotyping Europe about immigrants, and then you complain about being a texan that's stereotyped about immigrants.

You're kind-of a reverse, double reverse stereotype right now. I think I may need to design a diagram flow chart for this...

[Grizzly Willy]

Considering the amount of garbage I've seen regarding "evil" Muslims/illegal immigrants here in the states, I don't think a dislike of immigrants is unique to European nations. Are we forgetting the proposed witch hunt pushed by Michelle Bachman to weed out Muslims? The same idiot that won her reelection in November? Arizona's bizarre racial profiling laws have been brought up and yes, they do target people who look Hispanic. Don't try and act like we don't have issues.

[Jackmoves]

Good morning!

A few things on my mind, first of all you are making some broad generalizations.

In my country there is an on going and neverending debate about immigration, there is 8 political parties and they all have their own view and ideas on immigration. Some are for a more restrictive policy(in my country thats the Swedish democrates) and you got a party like Center party that is for totally OPEN borders. Most parties are somewhere in the middle, allow immigration but don't let half the world into our country, so most people are not against immigration, a lot of people would probably be against totally uncontrolled immigration though. I know I would, and I'm not a racist, I got a few friends of other ethnicity.

"Openly" racist parties are just as marginalized as fully sick communist parties. Basically they got no seats in parliament so no say on our immigration policy. The Swedish Democrates are not really racist, they are a bit on the xenophobic/nationalistic side of things though, they want to cut our foreign aid budget with a lot, they want to limit immigration severely, but they don't have any fascist ideas or anything that would be comparable to work camps etc rofl.

I think as long as the debate stays civil it's fine, you should be able to discuss things like this in an open sociaty, as long as it stays factual and don't turn into a fucking mess with broad generalizations being thrown left, right and center. There are problems with integration and unemployment and criminality in my country for example and it shouldn't be ignored. They need to find a solution.

Pretty much every economist that has done research on immigration here has come to the same conclussion that A. it's a net loss atm because of too high unemployment rates among immigrants and B. immigration can be very beneficial to our country, every % of decreased unemployment brings in a lot of cashmoney to the nation through taxes(duh ;P), and had we had the same employment rates among our immigrants as we do among ethnic swedes it would be a big boost to the economy, I've read 3 different reports, using 3 different methodologies by 3 well established economists and they all come to the same conclussion. (available on skattebetalarna.se for any swede who wants to read them - thats an independent site run to show taxpayers what and where our money goes).

So what does that give, well it shows that immigration is a good thing economically, but our economy is still in recovery and so is the rest of Europes, you can't create jobs out of thin air and if unemployment is too high it's a Net loss for the nation to accept immigrants.

People will bring up other things then the economy I'm sure but I(and most of the swedish population) don't mind immigrants, I've never really had a problem with them, but I do think immigration policy should be based on sound fiscal decisions though and I think it's important that we are able to discuss these things in a civilized way without going "racist!" or "aahhhh muslims/arabs!!".

I know some countries in Europe has had some shockers over the last few years though, my gf is half hungarian/half swede so I follow Hungary and what goes on there quite a lot and Jobbik(nationalistic party) is quite scary/crazy, 3rd biggest political party. Register jews for example? I mean come on, that is just creepy.

Yeah tahts my 2 cents as I enjoy my morning coffee!

[zorkuus]

a lot of people would probably be against totally uncontrolled immigration though. I know I would, and I'm not a racist

It is sad that there actually are people who think that would make you a racist.

[Deleted]

It is sad that there actually are people who think that would make you a racist.

The immigration debate in Sweden has become extremely polarized.

When the Sweden Democrats first took aim at entering our parliament pretty much all of the other seven parties in parliament said "WE WILL NOT COOPERATE WITH THEM IN ANY WAY".

Even now the greens (Miljöpartiet) have had some of their MPs vote against things the SD MPs voted for, not because they were against them but out of "principle", because they don't want to agree with SD on anything.

To me this is just childish behavior. Even worse is that some people seem to take a similar attitude towards immigration, SD want to limit immigration? OPEN THE BORDERS! LET EVERYONE IN! THAT'LL SHOW THOSE RACIST BASTARDS!

(Please note: I've never voted for SD and I disagree with a lot of their rhetoric but I find it hard to have any respect for a lot of the others in the Swedish political arena after seeing how they've handled the immigration issue lately)

[Deleted]

I don't dislike immigrants who can behave, adapt to how my country works, and gets a job / education.
When an immigrant comes to my country, I'd at least expect them to adapt to our culture, and how we do things here, and obey the law.
Getting a job can be hard here, but at least they can educate themselves in the meantime. They will even get money for educating themselves here through SU (State Educational Support in english).

Those immigrants, I welcome you with open arms.

I do however dislike immigrants who comes to my country, starts off by doing stupid criminal shit, selling drugs, beating people up, for then to blame the government and the society for their crimes.
In Denmark, this happens quite alot. And it's later proven they never actually tried to get any form of help (And we offer them plenty, come on, we even got free education here). I once lived across one, and he never left the house, never called any school to get enlisted. No, he expected them to call HIM. He excepted he'd get everything served on a fucking plate.

Those immigrants, should get kicked out.

[Underverse]

Probably because they form their own groups and don't assimilate. A lot of muslim groups, for example. Some of them have even expressed openly the aim to bring an islamic jihad to europe and cut out areas of land for themselves through means of immigration.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hizb_ut-Tahrir

[Alvito]

Uhm...

they don't dislike immigrants. Have you ever been to Texas/California/Arizona/New Mexico? I've been to every one of them except for N.M.

You must have quickly driven through or flown over the norther parts of the state. If a state or in the case of this thread a country has several things provided for its ppl and others that don't chip in take advantage of them then ppl have issues with that. It isn't some mystery here. It is just a large scale of somebody walking into your house for a few seconds grabbing something to drink cleaning up and moving on. Would you be ok with that? That is how ppl even more so ppl right on borders feel about immigrants and even more so for illegal ones.

---------- Post added 2013-01-14 at 01:18 AM ----------

...I think that's rather his point.

You're here stereotyping Europe about immigrants, and then you complain about being a texan that's stereotyped about immigrants.

You're kind-of a reverse, double reverse stereotype right now. I think I may need to design a diagram flow chart for this...

Maybe we can get John Madden in here to help us follow that.

[Mandible]

People are going to be pissed off at a certain group if they feel, or even get the idea that they are "trespassing" on their ground. Which includes, but obviously not limited to thinking they are just there to abuse the system or doesn´t learn about the culture / language fast enough. Unfortunately most of the stories you get through the media (or so it seems) is negative stories regarding refugees not immigrants who you are to expect have the means to take care of themself - ofc this doesn´t stop the idiotic goverment from disallowing people staying even when able to take care of themself.

But to add something to the case (or some might have mentioned it ) - the rules from EU have a tendency to make it quite alot harder to send people back after comitting crime. Fx. got a family here in Denmark who is seriously abusing the system, but they can´t be send back. I´m quite certain other countries within the EU got similar issues.

[Deleted]

- Compared to the the European Union (free travel and working). One of the big reasons why Switzerland will probably never join btw.

You're funny.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Agreement
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franc_suisse

Switzerland hasn't joined because they're neutral. They're thinking more and more about doing it because they realize that their economy is intimately linked to the EU, and that joining in would give them a voice and let them have influence on the decisions.

[zorkuus]

The immigration debate in Sweden has become extremely polarized.

When the Sweden Democrats first took aim at entering our parliament pretty much all of the other seven parties in parliament said "WE WILL NOT COOPERATE WITH THEM IN ANY WAY".

Even now the greens (Miljöpartiet) have had some of their MPs vote against things the SD MPs voted for, not because they were against them but out of "principle", because they don't want to agree with SD on anything.

To me this is just childish behavior. Even worse is that some people seem to take a similar attitude towards immigration, SD want to limit immigration? OPEN THE BORDERS! LET EVERYONE IN! THAT'LL SHOW THOSE RACIST BASTARDS!

(Please note: I've never voted for SD and I disagree with a lot of their rhetoric but I find it hard to have any respect for a lot of the others in the Swedish political arena after seeing how they've handled the immigration issue lately)

A lot of these people are also scared shitless even at the thought someone might call them racists, so they go out their way to do anything to not be viewed as such.

[Deleted]

Lack of public information on the subject. The only ones that speak of immigration in politics are anti-immigration, so they can spew out as much crap as they want, even if official statistics says completley otherwise. Poor integration into society is a bieffect of the ignoring of this subject.

[Deleted]

Lack of public information on the subject. The only ones that speak of immigration in politics are anti-immigration, so they can spew out as much crap as they want, even if official statistics says completley otherwise. Poor integration into society is a bieffect of the ignoring of this subject.

So poor integration is caused by those who are anti-immigration because they don't like the poor integration?

[Djuntas]

Cause everything we know, atleast from Denmark, is that immigrants are making alot more crime than danish citizens. Last 10 years criminal activites have dropped alot by danish people, and immigrants have risen alot. Especially muslism and eastern europeans are the worst by far.

Edit: I'm open-minded in general to immigrants trough, sadly some parts of the stream have a big negativity inn our country. I know many people come to our land that are honest, good people, but that useally aint enough for me to not think that we could be with out em.

[Deleted]

So poor integration is caused by those who are anti-immigration because they don't like the poor integration?

Where did I say that? Ignoring immigration is bad, and that leads to poor integration obviously. That's the only reason I support anti-immigration parties, because they're actually bringing up the subject at all.

[Deleted]

Where did I say that? Ignoring immigration is bad, and that leads to poor integration obviously. That's the only reason I support anti-immigration parties, because they're actually bringing up the subject at all.

Sorry, misread your post.

My personal opinion is that we shouldn't just stop immigration btw. However, unless we can actually deal with integration issues we shouldn't just keep letting more people in. If this means temporarily limiting or even stopping most immigration then so be it. Sadly some people seem to have the opinion that sure, the system has almost fallen apart in the past but eventually we sorted things out so there's no reason to change anything, besides, to imply that the system is in any way broken would be (dun-dun-dun) RACIST(!!!1one)

[Deleted]

I don't care if you come to my country to live, as long as you work and don't just come here to take social welfare because its better than what you get in your own country. Of course many people will use them as the scape goat for everything wrong in the country but whatever about those dopes, that's not to say that there isn't plenty who immigrate for the wrong reasons.
I immigrated to autralia a few years ago, I came back because I found it very hard to get a job over there despite what people were saying. Certain skills = easy job.. not all. But I didn't stay there trying to live off the government etc, I felt if I couldn't pull my weight I had no right to live off other people.
Countries that joined the eu left themselves wide open for issues with the overkill on immigrants.

And the main plus for immigration.. brings some fine woman into the country

[Tokru]

I would have voted 2-4 because all of them are equally true. But I couldn't. So I voted for assimilation.