Warp wrote:
> gregjohn <pte### [at] yahoocom> wrote:
>> Could we see some citation for the 60%?
> 
>
http://www.mol.fi/mol/fi/99_pdf/fi/04_maahanmuutto/08_maahanmuuttotilastot/wulktyoll.pdf
> 
Ah that 60%.

For all groups with 50% or more that amounts to a whopping 1600 persons.
Most are, judging from the country of origin, fairly recent immigrants.
Are you sure you have an immigration problem?

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andrel <a_l### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> For all groups with 50% or more that amounts to a whopping 1600 persons.
> Most are, judging from the country of origin, fairly recent immigrants.
> Are you sure you have an immigration problem?

  Not yet. Not at a large scale anyways. However, Finland is going down the
same path as Sweden. Nobody has made any suggestion whatsoever how we could
do things differently than them and how we could avoid the same problems.
(While some people deny the existence of any problems with immigration in
Sweden and a few other European countries, I believe it's more or less a
common consensus that some problems do indeed exist. It's just that nobody
seems to care and everyone is just assuming that "we can avoid those problems
because we know about them", even though nobody has made even a single
suggestion on how to avoid them.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
> andrel <a_l### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
>> For all groups with 50% or more that amounts to a whopping 1600 persons.
>> Most are, judging from the country of origin, fairly recent immigrants.
>> Are you sure you have an immigration problem?
> 
>   Not yet. Not at a large scale anyways. 
Not at all, I'd say.
> However, Finland is going down the same path as Sweden.
Not familiar with Sweden but given such numbers I suggest you try to 
worry about something else. Unemployment is probably nearly fully 
explained by lack of relevant education. I don't suppose Finland 
recognizes Iraqi grades. So any PhD from Iraq is effectively totally 
uneducated, and can not talk, read or write Finish fluently, so he'll be 
in a segment of the market with a high unemployment rate.
> Nobody has made any suggestion whatsoever how we could
> do things differently than them and how we could avoid the same problems.
> (While some people deny the existence of any problems with immigration in
> Sweden and a few other European countries, I believe it's more or less a
> common consensus that some problems do indeed exist. 
The main problem is segregation, if you put them all in low quality 
suburbs, they start forming communities outside mainstream Finland when 
the number reaches some threshold. Then the next generation that was 
born and raised in Finland will start to revolt. No solutions available, 
you just have to hope that it does not get out of hand before generation 
3 or 4.
> It's just that nobody
> seems to care and everyone is just assuming that "we can avoid those problems
> because we know about them", even though nobody has made even a single
> suggestion on how to avoid them.)
> 
The main thing is making them feel at home and welcome. I don't see much 
of that in the tone of your posts.

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andrel <a_l### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> Not familiar with Sweden but given such numbers I suggest you try to 
> worry about something else. Unemployment is probably nearly fully 
> explained by lack of relevant education. I don't suppose Finland 
> recognizes Iraqi grades. So any PhD from Iraq is effectively totally 
> uneducated, and can not talk, read or write Finish fluently, so he'll be 
> in a segment of the market with a high unemployment rate.

  Somehow that paragraph expresses quite well the utopistic view of
immigrants coming from poorer countries: That most of them are well
educated and that they have emigrated to Europe for work, and the only
thing that is preventing them from getting a job is the language barrier
and bureaucracy (or racist discrimination).

  You asked for some reference to the 60% figure. Well, let me ask you for
some reference of that point of view you are expressing.

  It may not be a politically correct way of thinking, but it nevertheless
makes sense: If a person emigrates from a poor country to Europe, there's
a rather high probability that he doesn't have almost any kind of education
and the reason he is emigrating is because he wants to live in a richer
country with social welfare and free services. I know I would.
  Of course there are prominent excpetions, there always are, but we are
talking about averages here.

> The main problem is segregation, if you put them all in low quality 
> suburbs, they start forming communities outside mainstream Finland when 
> the number reaches some threshold.

  One of the main problems is indeed segregation. The main problem with
segregation is that it's self-inflicted. In many cases immigrants are
segregated because they want to be segregated. They want to live in their
own mini-communities, separated from the hosting community. They don't want
to integrate into the hosting culture. They want to preserve their own
culture and reject the hosting culture. The problem is aggravated by
multiculturalists who are encouraging them to do so (and who brainwash
them to believe that the majority of people in the hosting country are
racist and discriminatory).

  You just have to look at countries like Sweden and France to see this.
It is also slowly happening here.

> The main thing is making them feel at home and welcome. I don't see much 
> of that in the tone of your posts.

  You are misunderstanding. I don't have any problem with immigration.
What I have problems with is immigration policy. An immigration policy
which results in immigration problems. It's precisely the type of
immigration policy which causes segregation.

  There are countries with different immigration policy and where
immigration works much better. I think Canada is one good example.
Finland should learn from Canada, not from Sweden and France.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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One aspect of this discussion is a problem of libertarianism.
i) Not everything immoral has to be illegal.
ii) The problematic nature of making something illegal is not evidence that it's
moral enough for us to ignore it and get on with our lives.


An ugly thought about immigrants (even misuse of statistics about them to foment
hatred) may be an immoral thing.  Surely, the idea of thought-crime, where the
state sets up certain kinds of thoughts to be penalized, is problematic, likely
an immoral state of conduct itself.


But take the example of a crowded theatre.  Parents are always telling their
children what to do-- don't talk too loud, don't put your muddy feet on the
seat, don't play with the hair of the person in front of you.  Wouldn't it be
crazy if every aisle were to have a (secret) police officer writing tickets
every time a kid was noisy, touched something, dirtied something?   Who would
doubt that there is a need for parents to exercise admonition-- in the case of
teenagers by themselves with no parents, perhaps the nearest and bravest
stranger has to fulfill that role.  At the same time, it is probably an
unwritten rule that theatre goers have to be ready to accept a finite amount of
noise and hair-pulling if babies are sitting behind them.  It's just a fact of
life, the cost of civilization that you gotta endure it once in a while.

Now back to adults.  Some adults do things and say things and purchase things
that, if they had some "adult supervision", they'd get admonished about. It's
like the brave adult next to the rowdy teenagers in the theatre.  But hey,
perhaps that's another cost of civilization, is some push-back and hassle, if
not something worse, when you remind your neighbor what civilized behavior is
like.

It's the difference between nihilo- and paleo-libertarianism.

Then we could add religion-based admonishment to the question, and make it
really interesting.

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Warp wrote:
> andrel <a_l### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
>> Not familiar with Sweden but given such numbers I suggest you try to 
>> worry about something else. Unemployment is probably nearly fully 
>> explained by lack of relevant education. I don't suppose Finland 
>> recognizes Iraqi grades. So any PhD from Iraq is effectively totally 
>> uneducated, and can not talk, read or write Finish fluently, so he'll be 
>> in a segment of the market with a high unemployment rate.
> 
>   Somehow that paragraph expresses quite well the utopistic view of
> immigrants coming from poorer countries: That most of them are well
> educated and that they have emigrated to Europe for work, and the only
> thing that is preventing them from getting a job is the language barrier
> and bureaucracy (or racist discrimination).

I think that among the immigrants there are a lot of asylum seekers, 
those that flee their country because they fear for their lives there.

judging from your numbers I guess that your biggest problem is or was 
with the russians not with middle and far east asylum seekers.

>   You asked for some reference to the 60% figure. 
no I didn't.
> Well, let me ask you for some reference of that point of view you are 
 > expressing.
books and newspaper sources in the Netherlands plus some talking to 
foreigners. Does that answer your question?
> 
>   It may not be a politically correct way of thinking, but it nevertheless
> makes sense: If a person emigrates from a poor country to Europe, there's
> a rather high probability that he doesn't have almost any kind of education
> and the reason he is emigrating is because he wants to live in a richer
> country with social welfare and free services. I know I would.
In most cases only the better educated have any change of a successful 
entry in europe.
>   Of course there are prominent excpetions, there always are, but we are
> talking about averages here.
> 
>> The main problem is segregation, if you put them all in low quality 
>> suburbs, they start forming communities outside mainstream Finland when 
>> the number reaches some threshold.
> 
>   One of the main problems is indeed segregation. The main problem with
> segregation is that it's self-inflicted. In many cases immigrants are
> segregated because they want to be segregated. They want to live in their
> own mini-communities, separated from the hosting community. They don't want
> to integrate into the hosting culture. They want to preserve their own
> culture and reject the hosting culture. 
Most groups first try to integrate when the numbers are low. When they 
feel they are considered a lower type of people and the numbers increase 
they turn into themselves. What you describe are 20+ year old immigrant 
communities. (there is a brilliant standup routine by Najib Amhali (a 
dutchman from Moroccan descent) talking about entertaining a group of 
dutch expats somewhere in Africa. Unfortunately only in Dutch).

> The problem is aggravated by
> multiculturalists who are encouraging them to do so (and who brainwash
> them to believe that the majority of people in the hosting country are
> racist and discriminatory).
> 
>   You just have to look at countries like Sweden and France to see this.
> It is also slowly happening here.
> 
>> The main thing is making them feel at home and welcome. I don't see much 
>> of that in the tone of your posts.
> 
>   You are misunderstanding. 
No, your tone and your subject choice may be interpreted as aggressive 
towards immigrants. I know that if I were an immigrant I would be 
annoyed by it. That is irrespective of your intentions.

> I don't have any problem with immigration.
> What I have problems with is immigration policy. An immigration policy
> which results in immigration problems. It's precisely the type of
> immigration policy which causes segregation.
> 
>   There are countries with different immigration policy and where
> immigration works much better. I think Canada is one good example.
> Finland should learn from Canada, not from Sweden and France.
>

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4774fce3@news.povray.org...

>  You just have to look at countries like Sweden and France to see this.

Well, I can't talk for Sweden but France has been an immigration land for a 
couple of milleniums, so it's not like the phenomenon is new, let alone 
worth worrying about in the long term. 20% of the population (including our 
hungarian/greek/jewish president) has at least a foreign grandparent. The 
French even managed to absorb the Vikings
http://www.viking.no/e/france/chronology.html, who were possibly the most 
annoying kind of unwanted, violent-prone immigrant ever. They sure raised a 
lot of hell, until they married local women of course.

In fact, every population who was said at one time to be unable or unwilling 
to "integrate into the hosting culture" did so eventually. Italian 
immigrants, from the 19th century up to the mid 20th, were the subject of 
considerable debate and hostility, including mass murder. Who cares now? 
Immigrants arrive, life is a bitch for everyone for a few generations, good 
old sex ends up erasing the cultural hang-ups and finally (figurative) 
heterosis takes over.

So, if you are worried about immigration where you live, marry an immigrant, 
that should do wonders :D

G.

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On Fri, 28 Dec 2007 16:17:58 +0100, "Gilles Tran" <gitran_nospam_@wanadoo.fr>
wrote:

>The French even managed to absorb the Vikings
>http://www.viking.no/e/france/chronology.html, who were possibly the most 
>annoying kind of unwanted, violent-prone immigrant ever. They sure raised a 
>lot of hell, until they married local women of course.

Wait a minute! True the Vikings were bad but what about the Angles and the
Saxons? We are still hearing them moan about the last lot of immigrants. And
they tried a closed door policy in the 13 th century. But I think that they ran
out of money :)


Regards
	Stephen

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andrel <a_l### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> >   You asked for some reference to the 60% figure. 
> no I didn't.

  I got confused.

> > Well, let me ask you for some reference of that point of view you are 
>  > expressing.
> books and newspaper sources in the Netherlands plus some talking to 
> foreigners. Does that answer your question?

  If newspapers in Netherlands have the same policies as in Sweden, hardly.

> In most cases only the better educated have any change of a successful 
> entry in europe.

  I wish that was the case. It certainly doesn't seem so.

> Most groups first try to integrate when the numbers are low. When they 
> feel they are considered a lower type of people and the numbers increase 
> they turn into themselves.

  IMO that feeling is mostly a self-perpetuating myth. As new immigrants
arrive, they are told this myth and they believe it, and they start hating
the hosting culture right from the beginning. Also the children born to
the immigrants are told this myth and they grow up hating the hosting
culture. (For example in Sweden this phenomenon has gone so far that there's
a general attitude among immigrant youth that they must destroy swedes.)

  Sure, there *are* racists, but saying that the general population is
racist is like saying the general population are murderers and thieves
because there are *some* people who are murderers or thieves.

  Keeping up this myth is not going to solve immigration problems.
The irony is that passing more and more laws criminalizing slighter and
slighter cases of "racism" is only perpetuating the myth ("why would
they pass these laws if there was no widespread problem of racism?").

  And the sad thing is that these laws are not the same for everyone.
There's no racist element in a black man committing an act of violence
towards a white man. However, there always is a racist element in a white
man committing an act of violence towards a black man.

> >   You are misunderstanding. 
> No, your tone and your subject choice may be interpreted as aggressive 
> towards immigrants. I know that if I were an immigrant I would be 
> annoyed by it. That is irrespective of your intentions.

  Yes, if a message can be interpreted in more than one way, the most
negative interpretation should always be assumed. That's the right
attitude which will bring friendship and peace to the world.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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The awareness that racism is irrational and destructive is something that is
achieved by an individual sentient consciousness.  It cannot be legislated into
existence as a property of a society.  The number of ignorant, frightened and
insecure people who are going to say to themselves: "You know, now that a large
bureaucracy has passed a rule, I guess I'll just have to change my ways," is
none at all.  Passing legislation telling racists not to be racists is like my
posting a note on my refrigerator asking my cat to please not eat the tuna
casserole I've left out on the table.  Even if the note states quite clearly
that the consequences are likely to include being thumped with a newspaper and
being called "Bad Kitty", the capacity of document to reverse the creature's
basic instincts is certain to remain negligible.

Scary? No more so than the reality of the human condition in general. Were we
really waiting for government regulation to become the impetus for a more
rational and benevolent world? If one believes that the rights which one has
are determined by which rights governments do and do not see fit to grant, one
is already lost.

It makes no more sense to say "We'll organize a socio-political movement to keep
ham-fisted bureaucracies from acting like ham-fisted bureaucracies," than it
does to say, "We'll pass a law to keep racists from acting like racists."

One can decide to work to overcome racism within oneself and encourage other
individuals who have achieved the requisite level of intellectual development
to do the same.  The mountain of evidence against the proposition: "Human
beings, generally, are good and kind, but we need to laws and penalties to
regulate the behavior of a few bad apples," is SO overwhelming that it is
amazing that even the most fantasy-prone of thinkers can remain attached to it.
 Yet, I hear some version of it being passed off as an axiom on a nearly daily
basis.  Rationality has never been a majority position in the entire history of
the human species and has extremely little prospect of becoming such in the
foreseeable future.  Asking "What can I do to oppose racism?" is a question
that I would strongly urge every thinking person to ask himself or herself.
Asking "What should SOCIETY do to oppose racism?" is pointless and just plain
silly.

Best Regards,
Mike C.

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