[Fuxy]

I found the quote “tourists go home, refugees welcome” quite funny.

So what their basically saying is they would rather kick out tourists that bring in and spend quite a lot of money effectively boosting the economy in favour of some refugees the government will have to spend a large amount of money on... and you wonder why the contry's economy is in such a bad shape when the citizens advocate shooting themselves in the foot.

[Daishiman]

So... it's not all about money. You can refuse to accept money from sources which are really not all that cracked up (because the margins in tourism are not great actually) and accept people for humanitarian reasons.

If you're not 14 or completely driven by greed you can understand the reasoning behind this.

[Fuxy]

Being a humanitarian is admirable but at the end of the day it's a luxury that may or may not pay off in the long run.

Just the same way you don't give your money to a beggar on the street when you can barely afford to survives yourself the employment of personal boundaries is important for humans and countries.

So given that Italy is not doing so well at the moment I kind of have to question their thinking reducing their revenue stream in favour if immigrants.

The assumption that all immigration is good immigration is not true.

[kranner]

Humanitarianism or other altruism doesn’t have to pay off at all. That is not a measure by which to evaluate it.

[Fuxy]

You're right it doesn't but everyone seems to assume it will which is quite baffling.

[kranner]

You seem to be looking at the economic payoff alone, whereas others are talking about the intrinsic payoff, i.e., that it is worthwhile to help refugees even if it's a net economic loss.

[Fuxy]

No I'm looking at the big picture and given the amount of refugees allowed in it is a major loss economically and culturally in the short term and quite likely in the long term as well.

The US did immigration right before only allowing in people when there was a need for workers and only allow predominantly cultures that would attempt to integrate and get along with the existing population.

The current policy allows unregulated areas (no go zones) to exist where the refugees make the laws; police are afraid to go in and they are not required to integrate into society plus their cultural and religious beliefs create a propensity for hostility against the locals/infidels.

Honestly it's a powder keg waiting to explode and given the rise of terrorist attacks in Europe it's getting there at a short and steady pace. It will take generations before their views will be moderate enough for them to be able to get along with the local population and the higher the amount of people and the longer they are kept in their echo chamber the longer it will take.

In the mean time we will see a rise in draconian Sharia law type laws since they will represent a considerable amount of the voting population just like in the UK. See Lauren Southern held under terrorism act for social experiment [1]

Mind you the UK allowed the change to be gradual and their local Muslim population is quite moderate over all yet this is still happening.

[1](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJt7oZSONiU)

Anybody see the irony of a weak white canadian girl held under a terrorism act for distributing a bunch of fliers with some text on it?

[forapurpose]

> you can barely afford to survives yourself

Italy is a modern, advanced, wealthy economy - I would guess they are more wealthy than any country in the history of the world before 1970. They can do far more than afford to survive, and they can help those in need. Current people in Italy benefit from a long history of 'humanitarianism' by their predecessors; it's not an exceptional behavior, it's the norm.

Human beings are more important than money. Also, those human beings will grow the economy in the future - in the near future. In the long run they also keep the demographics from getting exceptionally old.

> The assumption that all immigration is good immigration is not true.

I'm not sure what that means, nor did I hear anyone say it.

[Daishiman]

Tourism is a low value-added industry with little to provide beyond low quality service jobs. I mean, it's clear considering that Italy is one of the most visited countries in the world and yet things aren't so hot there.

On the other hand, why do you falsely assume that acceptance of refugees has to have no limits or conditions? I'm saying that you can achieve a level of practical balance for two different areas on unrelated motives.

[Fuxy]

Tourism is a low value-added industry or not it's not something they can afford to loose at the moment. It's not like all the citizens of Italy are highly skilled workers that would be working a better paying job if they lost their current low paying one.

Because it doesn't have a limit or conditions the overwhelming majority of assumed refugees are illegal immigrants brought over on the boats of NGO's. They haven't used the proper channels and haven't been checked what so ever in many cases it's not even possible to know their country of origin forget about anything else.

If they have completed the proper procedures and done all the paperwork for seeking asylum fair enough but that's not what's happening now they just show up.

[TangoTrotFox]

On the other hand, you also have to understand that humanitarianism must have limits. The resources of nations are not infinite and individuals that are unable to provide for themselves are a tremendous burden on society. And when you accept people that fail to integrate you risk imperiling the very policies that you hold to be worthwhile. For instance, Sweden will be a phenomenal test case. The Globe and Mail ran an interesting piece on their situation here [1]. 16% of Sweden is now made up of individuals that come from quite different ideological backgrounds in Africa and the Mideast. And those numbers continue to rapidly increase.

The ideal was that as these people are treated with decency and respect and given a life not unlike any other Swede might receive, they would be able to integrate and ultimately just becomes Swedes. But this ideal did not really turn out to be justified. So what will happen to Sweden as these individuals begin to be one of the most relevant voting blocs? It's not a rhetorical question, since I don't think anybody really knows the answer. This scale of migration with people of such sharply contrasting worldviews is something relatively novel in the modern developed world. However, in my opinion Sweden's experiment is more likely to end up being seen as a cautionary tale than a model of humanitarianism.

[1] - https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/swedens-ugly-immigra...

[amanaplanacanal]

Just pointing out that 'piece' is an editorial, not a news article.

The US has had multiple waves of immigration from most of the world, over the last few centuries. And there has been similar pushback from nativists over and over again. If that long history is any indication, Sweden will be fine.

[TangoTrotFox]

What do you think would be a comparable migration in the US? I see three key distinguishing factors that make Sweden quite interesting as a test case:

1) The first is of course just sheer volume. Sweden has gone, in less than a single generation, from a mostly ethnically homogeneous nation to one where about 20% of the population is foreign born and that's only going to keep rising. The US is at record setting levels recently, with a foreign born population of less than 14%. And it's always been a rather diverse nation.

2) Relatively incompatible cultures. Large chunks of the migrants to Sweden are coming from backgrounds that hold very different cultural values on a wide range of fundamental issues. By contrast the vast majority of migrants to the US tend to hold quite similar cultural values.

3) Distorted migratory motivations. Throughout the US's history, migration has been about work -- in the past and present. People's motivation for coming here is to work. When the economy tanked in 2009, so did immigration. As it picks back up, so does immigration. Sweden, by contrast, is attracting people exclusively because they offer extremely generous benefits, particularly for refugees. They are attracting individuals that are only moving there because they can get more stuff from their government than they can from other nations. Ideally this could just be a liminal phase, but the current outcomes are far from promising. If people end up beginning to take the government handouts for granted, I think this would be a serious problem.

[ck425]

Point 2) here is important. Folk migrate to the US due to some variation of the American Dream. Therefore the migrants bring and reinforce part of American culture.

[fiblye]

The US was also in a different hemisphere while the rest of the world was ravaged by 2 massive wars that destroyed everything they had, letting the US take the reigns of the world economy for a very long time. Without WW1 and WW2 helping to make the US economy an absolute beast unlike anything the world has ever seen, things would be quite different.

[linksnapzz]

...for someone, presumably.

It'll merely no longer be recognizable as "Sweden" for people whose ancestors considered themselves "Swedes".

[bantunes]

Maybe the citizens find that, if they have to put up with someone, they prefer to put up with people escaping dire living conditions (that will, statistically, go on to strengthen their economy in the long term). What does that tell you about what citizens think of tourists?

I can tell you that loud AirBnB hosts or the foreigners using my country as a landfill for their money, pricing people out of the inner cities, are not welcome.

[Aunche]

Tourism dollars do a lot less for the local economy than one might expect. Tourist destinations like the Caribbean and Bali have some of the worst income disparity in the world. Tourism provides utility to the tourists, but nothing in return for the locals. Doctors and electricians get paid more to serve tourists than their home communities. Worst of all is that a lot of children are incentivized to sell things to tourists than to finish school.

[Dirlewanger]

Sounds like a great thing for the government to solve, to institute some sort of incentive to families to send their kids to school. Where are those funds coming from? Probably tourism, which makes up a majority of their tax revenue...and now we see how difficult the problem is.

[thinkingemote]

To understand it better, there is a similarity in the USA. In San Francisco there are similar signs saying "tech workers out, refugees welcome!"

[knieveltech]

What is good for the economy (short term) and what is good for people (long term) are frequently not the same things.

[Fuxy]

As far as I'm aware tourism is not a short term thing there will always be tourists coming and leaving this is an constant revenue steam in its own right.

So I don't get what you mean.

[cr1895]

>this is an constant revenue steam in its own right.

Indeed. Amsterdam, for example, is enriched by its diverse trinket shops selling "XXX" poof ball hats and crass t-shirts, and the options for stale pizza, cold waffles and Nutella crepes have never been so plentiful.

[galfarragem]

He means that locals will be kicked out from their homes - or if they are luckier/smarter - will be living as animals in a zoo.

Mass tourism is dystopic. Living in a touristic area is like living in Disneyland: everything is fake. Did you ever wonder why 'experienced' tourists (we like to call ourselves travellers) don't like touristic areas?

[knieveltech]

I am saying that using economic activity to gauge positive impact on society is utterly misguided. Consider: we are currently living in an age of robust economic growth and international trade, historic levels of income inequality, and are in the midst of a global mass extinction event with the very real possibility of climate change rendering human civilization in it's current form impossible.

[empath75]

> in favour of some refugees the government will have to spend a large amount of money on

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05507-0

Stop repeating this lie.

[draven]

From the article: "To assess nations’ economic well-being, the researchers measured average incomes over the years by dividing a country’s gross domestic product (GDP) by the size of its population."

How will that give you the average income?

[drb91]

Adding people to an economy grows the economy.

[csomar]

I don't think they mean it literally but it is rather an indirect "You are just as worse as the refugees if not worse".

[cr1895]

That is not what "refugees welcome" implies.