He didn’t have many fans in The Senate.
True, but such change will probably not be allowed due to liberal immigration policies. As the threat of these countries losing their national character increases, there will be more voices calling for stricter immigration policies, and being that these are ostensibly democracies, those policies will be imposed.
As for why people would flee, the most affected minority group due to mass Islamic immigration are Jews, who are leaving France in record numbers:
Next will be women, if what happened in Cologne and elsewhere keeps on happening.
I don’t feel that way about Muslims in general, I live in an area where we have a lot of Muslims and we have no problems. Some countries have more radicals than others. When bad things are in your face everyday day in and day out we tend to become cautious.
From the perspective of victims, it doesn’t matter what percentage of the group are good or bad. They are in danger and their lives have changed because of a policy that has increased the numbers of said group. And so they leave.
Yeah, and we here in the US have 200 some-odd years of a tradition of immigration to see this through, and we STILL have issues with immigrant groups (see Irish, Italians, Chinese and Mexicans).
Most European countries don’t really have the same experience- there have been immigrants, but for the most part, it’s been relatively small-scale, and usually from former colonial possessions as well.
So in a lot of ways, this *IS *the Europeans’ first rodeo, as far as the phenomenon of mass immigration and assimilation is concerned. They’re terrified that say… “French” culture might change and take on some Muslim characteristics. Is this really all that different than the degree of Italian immigrant influence on NY/NJ, or of Mexican immigrant influence on Texas, New Mexico, Nevada and California? Or, for that matter, of Indian immigrants on UK culture?
No, you specifically focused on Muslims in general not in the specific. Then, as an encore, you took those generalizations tied them directly to policies designed to drive a mass migration of people out of Europe.
And you did it all without a cite or a net - bravo.
You could have easily opted to raise concerns about increasing numbers of immigrants from patriarchal societies steeped in a religiously based conservatism. It’s a much more interesting question because it ties to an actually interesting concern about cross cultural immigration and the impact of that on western cultural institutions. There’s nothing Muslim specific about conservative views on women, religion and rule of law. What about the Hindu immigrant family where girls aren’t allowed out of the house to go to school dances or women are forced to have abortions based on gender sex selection?
Religion is a facile label to that allows people to select groups without giving the question the proper thought it requires.
And in many ways, it’s not. Previous mass migrations took place before concepts such as “nation-state”, “nationality” or “passport” had even been invented or while they were being invented (lots of mass movements within Europe in the 19th century), but so what. Those immigrants assimilated in some ways, brought new customs in others. We survived then, we’ll survive now without needing to run into the not-so-friendly arms of… where? :rolleyes: Where are we supposed to go, the middle of the Atlantic?
Atlantis could rise again. But no, despite being asked, the OP chooses not to address this aspect of his scenario.
Ahem.
With a size of 34 sq. miles, you’d need to house ~22.5 million per sq. mile. Difficult, sure - but I’m counting on European ingenuity to solve that minor detail. It will be the megalopolis to end all megalopolis, with apartment complexes reaching hundreds of stories into the sky! It shall be called New Babel or perhaps Babel-Ascension as the new generations of Europeans ascend to their destiny on Ascension!
I was arguing that for most the current nation-states, the phenomenon of mass immigration is relatively new, and that they’re pretty monolithic in terms of culture and ethnicity relative to the US, which has had multiple significant waves of immigration in recent history.
That makes them like pretty much every other native population in history. Ben Franklin complained about how Germans weren’t assimilating into American society back in the 1700’s.
Obviously you’ve been to Bury Park in Luton. How did you find it?
I feel sure that you’re not one of those supposedly liberal Americans that sit across the other side of the pond and lecture us on being nice to people from a totally alien culture.
It seems to me the Europeans are already all coming to Thailand.
Well, no, I lecture people in the U.S. about it. That said, what does your response have to do with my post?
Way back in post #3, I accepted the OP’s hypothetical: Muslims control Europe; sharia law is the law of the land; beheadings take place daily on the steps of Buckingham Palace; and so on.
I asked the OP one simple question: where are the people taking part in the mass migration going to go?
This is not true. Most of the ethnicities just so happen to be White, but that doesn’t mean European countries aren’t as multi-ethnic as the US. And their immigrant experience is just as varied as the US - and what difference does it make if the source is from former colonies rather than neighbours? You think the Caribbean or Bangladeshi experience in the UK is any less of an immigrant experience than a Mexican or Vietnamese in the US?
Also, Europe has a significant category of immigrant that the US doesn’t, which is internal migration, especially post-Soviet E->W migrants. Does that big pulse of migration not count?
The migration of post-Soviet E->W migrants is one of the reasons that we cannot take a greater share of genuine refugee’s into the U.K. Most of the post-Soviet E->W migrants are attracted to the U.K. because wage can be 4x the wage in their home country and also our welfare system that the EU insists that EU migrants should be entitled to even though they have not contributed into the system. The main problem is that there are many people living outside of Europe who are pontificating about a subject of which they have no practical knowledge, the theory does not always hold up in the stark light of day.
Somehow, I suspect you could substitute the US for the UK, and Mexicans for Poles, in most any immigration related screed, and it would be remarkably similar.
Our problem is that the international language is English add to that we have a welfare system that pays out more than can be paid in wages in several eastern European countries. one of the reasons for leaving the EU is to stop having to pay welfare to people coming here without a job lined up. What many people do not realise is that the EU forces us to eg. An Albanian man comes to the U.K. and leaves his wife and children back in Albania, we have to pay him child benefit which can amount to more than he can earn in Albania. Our welfare system was designed for people born in the U.K. NOT an open door policy on immigration.
Strictly speaking, not Albania since it isn’t an EU member. But as far as I’m aware, the net effect of immigration from elsewhere in the EU is fiscally positive, rather than a drain on the system. It cuts both ways - pull out, and we have to look after all those pensioners who have retired to the Mediterranean.
Fair enough Frank, that was probably unwarranted. Just the culmination of people from your side of The Pond telling us Europeans what to do.