In reply to Ridge:
> I don't think the Tamils arrived in anything like the numbers Europe is currently expreriencing.
Agreed. But my point remains: we know how to deal with this. It's not the insurmountable problem which you fear. It does, however, require political will and some money. It might not be fair that our part of the world is suddenly ringed with a bunch of failed states, but it is most definitely our problem, whether we like it or not. The question is how to deal with it effectively and humanely.
> They're not particularly effective against large scale disorder.
Really? In previous posts you categorised Europeans as docile types who do what they're told, compared to our more feisty cousins in the Middle East. I see it the other way around. Europeans are enormously energetic, debating politics and society and how to make stuff work, whether it's for fun on UKC or seriously in the offices of companies, public bodies, NGOs, etc. We're always fiddling to improve our societies, and our leaders are always trying to work out what we want (at least in part). The Middle East, by contrast, has suffered decades of political and economic atrophy and it's this lack of responsiveness that makes people so utterly angry that they riot to get what they need. Similarly in less ordered countries like India (but to a lesser extent).
So fundamentally, we deal with large scale disorder by bringing people into the political process. When that fails, and there are riots, then we manage to deal with them fairly effectively it seems to me. But the strength of European societies means that's very much a final recourse.
The question should then become not "can we water-canon the angry Syrians?" but "will they be brought into the political and social fold?". Clearly, this one's up in the air. But indulge me in a thought-experiment. Let's say all the good upstanding citizens of UKC are made unemployed and decide to move to Lagos where all the jobs are (hey, it's a thought experiment!). How long before most of us are paying bribes and backhanders and generally behaving corruptly? Probably not so long. So, which is a more powerful determinant of behaviour - the individual and their background, or the society in which he/she finds themselves? Clearly it's not cut and dried - the existence of forced marriage, FGM and Tower Hamlets corruption attest to this, as does the website selling Marmite to ex-pats in the US (insert smiley here but you get my drift) - but I'm fairly confident that our social norms are more robust than many pessimists believe.
> Apart from a couple of world wars and a bit of ethnic cleansing round the edges.
Indeed, I stand corrected!
> I hope you're right, but given the large numbers of failures of various police forces across Europe on New Years Eve I suspect there is a deeper issue than a few lads getting lairy and an inept local police chief.
So, we're talking about Cologne and Oslo and where else? I'm not aware of more but if you have better information than I do, please share it. What "deeper issues" are we talking about here? To me, sexually predatory young men and a failure of policing are fairly deep issues already - and ones that absolutely need addressing urgently. Not because I want to cover my backside politically, but just because those kind of assaults of totally unacceptable.
> I'm not advocating shooting toddlers, calm down. Just illustrating how fragile social cohesion can be.
Ahh sorry, no smiley, naughty me. I believe it's less fragile than you , but that the major assaults on social cohesion come from elsewhere.
> I don't think that has gone as planned. The doctors and engineers haven't turned up in the expected numbers.
Figures to support this claim? I imagine it will take years to work out what new arrivals can do, how their qualifications stack up, what they end up being employed as - I'd be looking for studies on this in about 2020 before coming to a conclusion.
> Refugee populations, no. The current influx is not exclusively made up of refugees. There are a significant number who aren't fleeing anything, and there are significant problems with crime in Europe and Scandinavia as a result. I'm more concerned with current crime rates from economic migrants than previous refugees.
You're right, it isn't. This article breaks it down:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-34131911
So we see the top four countries for migrants in 2015 were Syria, Afghanistan, Kosovo and Iraq. Now I agree, people from countries such as Albania, the fifth on the list with around 55,000 migrants, probably don't have much of a claim and are piggybacking on the crisis to make money. I've no problem with sending them home if that's the case.
When you say "significant problems with crime" can you muster any facts to support this claim? Or is it just a supposition? I'm not saying you're wrong, merely that you're armed with a tool to help you search through much of the information in the world, so maybe you've used it to come to this conclusion...
> Anyway, I suspect we're not going to agree on this one.
You're scared. That's fine. But how about making a good case as to why you're scared, rather than making woo woo scary claims about crime and integration and needing helicopter gunships to keep the new arrivals in order?
Post edited at 11:13