Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Gareth321 1357 days ago
I am generally in favour of tightening migration laws in general around Europe, but even I can admit that this isn't accurate. Many European countries are wonderful places to live and raise families. Canada and the U.S. absolutely compete with the U.K., Nordic countries, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and even France and Germany, on skilled workers. The U.S. offers the best wages, and people motivated primarily by wages will try the U.S. first. But there are lots of people who either don't make the H1B cut, don't want to be beholden to political whims during the arduous trek to citizenship (which can take a decade or more, with multiple gates), or (and this one is a big one), are turned off by U.S. education, violence, crime, health outcomes, lack of social safety nets, and politics.

All that said, Europe is going to have to become much tougher on refugees in the coming decades. I foresee a re-negotiation of the various refugee conventions written at a very different time in history.

1 comments

Why isn't this accurate? I never said Europe is not a great place. I said that the statistical majority of immigrants moving here are mostly low skilled refugees in the tens of thousands a month, rather than the much needed doctors, nurses, teachers and various workers and engineers wich are very few of the total immigration population.
While that may be true today, that's where future doctors, nurses, teachers, and various workers and engineers come from.

Young people + a functioning and accessible education system is what produces highly skilled workers.

In an ideal world maybe. In the real word, what you hope for was definitely not the result of Europe's uncontrolled immigration policies. If you want future doctors, nurses, etc, you need to to select for those through a points based immigration system like the US, Canada, Australia, etc. are doing instead of letting all the chancers in who are willing to pay smugglers and cheat the asylum system and hope they'll then want to play by the rules and become doctors and nurses.

Last week I saw a report with Middle Eastern migrants stuck in Serbia wanting to cross into the EU (Germany and Austria specifically). They interviewed one migrant from Iraq with his wife and five small kids, let's call him "Bob", and the reporter asked Bob why he's trying to get to the EU. He said it's because there's no future in Iraq. Well Bob, let me ask you this, if you knew there's no future in Iraq, why did you decided to have five kids then? Surely if you live in poverty, then birth control is a better idea no? Or oral/anal/pulling out, if that's not available. But instead, the EU(German/Austrian) taxpayer will have to pay to house a man with no knowledge of birth control or sense of personal responsibility, who's only professional skill is busting nuts, and his numerous family.

A mixed-race friend of mine volunteers in a refugee center here since he speaks several languages and he's pissed that migrants just laugh at us, saying "Europeans are so stupid they pay us for everything then give us more money which we just send back home".

This kind of immigration does not breed the results you're hoping for since it mostly encourages the ones willing to cheat to get free stuff rather that to contribute to the host nation.

The rich countries with restrictive immigration policies and high barrier of entry (US, Canada, Australia, New-Zeeland, Switzerland), attract the highly skilled and most productive immigrants that will add the most amount of value back into the economy. EU mostly attracts welfare shoppers.

You seem very angry about welfare and immigration of people without skills. We have very different opinions about what makes a country strong.

I'd point out that in all your replies in this subtree, you're essentially making the same point.

And if you're making the same point, you're not really thinking about what you're replying to: you could be replying to a wall for all intents and purposes.