[rayiner]

Society doesn’t break out into riots because of one incident. Merzouk is representative of an immigrant community that, from the perspective of the immigrants, isn’t being afforded sufficient rights and opportunities in France, and from the French perspective, isn’t trying to assimilate and is causing crime and unrest.

At the end of the day, the French have no obligation to change their society to accommodate newcomers; nor do the newcomers have any obligation to change their society to make themselves acceptable to the French. The problem is that trying to get these two groups of people to live alongside each other is a failed experiment.

[pessimizer]

This is a problem that dates from when France decided that Algeria was going to be a part of France. They don't just get to throw it away afterwards, no matter how much they would like to. It was a country that made the choice to intertwine its destiny with Algeria forever, and to its great profit.

[0xcafefood]

> It was a country that made the choice to intertwine its destiny with Algeria forever.

It might be more appropriate to say it was a government that made this choice. The French nation didn't get a say. Just like all other Western governments deciding to allow mass immigration, the people generally are opposed but never get a voice.

[kklimonda]

"The people" are fine with lowering age of retirement, and in general not that interested in rising enough new people to sustain economy and social policies of their countries. Granted, immigration policies in most of the western countries has been a disaster, but those did not arrive out of nowhere. It would be great to see discussions and planning on how to shape policies, but this would only hopefully change the reception of immigrants, and not the fact that they're there to stay.

[deepthunder]

Immigration is to keep the wages down. Also, third world immigration is preferred because those immigrants are more tolerant of crap wages, crap working conditions and crap existence lifestyle than domestic workers.

If the elites really wanted more people they could increase the incentives for domestics to have children.

[kklimonda]

Immigrants are indeed more willing to do the jobs that domestic workers are no longer interested in doing, but their effect on wages is minimal, mostly affecting lower class, mostly other immigrants. It's unclear if there is anything that can be done to incentivise people to have more children, to the extent that it makes a difference on the macro level. And this is kind of moot point anyway, most western countries that deal with lack of labor force don't have time to wait for children, if their citizens want to keep their level of support.

[tester89]

They chose to keep algeria during their democratic periods as well.

[0xcafefood]

You're implicitly making a claim that's something like: "If a government hosts elections, any decision made by that government reflects The Will of The Majority in the country it rules." That's not true at all.

Let's set aside the complexities of how governments are formed in a parliamentary system, and also ignore the subversion of representative government by lobbying. This is really simple: there was no vote on this in any western government. And in fact, political parties that explicitly oppose further mass immigration to Europe are gaining rapidly in popularity. But the governments actively subvert them. For example, there is talk of outright banning Alternative for Germany, a political party in Germany opposed to mass immigration.

[deepthunder]

This.

So called left-wing parties now only care about Identity politics. They have abandoned the working classes.

[alexvoda]

This take is reductionist and irresponsible.

[0xcafefood]

Even the most casual possible reading of history will give countless examples of governments acting against the wishes and best interest of their people, and instead acting in the best interest of the government. You can pretend otherwise, but that's choosing to be ignorant.

The same idea applies to the military-industrial complex in the US. Very few people are clamoring for further war. But neither major political party offers a legitimate alternative. There's no voting against it. Lobbying and direct monetary gain by the very top of society mean those in power want it, because they stand to gain personally, even if some recruit from a downtrodden town gets his legs blown off.

Likewise for mass immigration. The people in charge of major companies love reduced labor costs. And governments love increasing their tax base. They're the ones who get a say. Nobody else is even asked.

[mcpackieh]

That's probably what the governments of ostensibly democratic countries were thinking when they decided to change their demographic destiny without actually getting the consent of the people first. "The people who complain are reductionist and irresponsible."

[infamouscow]

Please explain EXACTLY what is being removed from the argument, that if added, would change the argument in a meaningful way. Or, if that's too much of an ask, how about ANYTHING?

Labeling something reductionist doesn't mean it's reductionist, nor magically make the argument go away like you desire.

What you're doing is a common propaganda technique used by tyrants and oppressive regimes to silence dissent with pseudo-intellectual discourse.

You should genuinely be embarrassed at this brain dead reply.

[imtringued]

This reminds me of a Polynesian island that is part of the French overseas territories. You chose this and you are now responsible for them. The French built an undersea cable specifically for this Island. I don't think the cable will ever pay itself back but that is the cost of the privilege of calling a territory yours. (The cost was around 100 million €, the GDP of Wallis And Futuna is 180 million €).

https://www.afd.fr/en/actualites/wallis-and-futuna-broadband...

[rayiner]

I agree with that. But there’s a limit to how persuasive that is to generations who didn’t make the original decision. I don’t think there’s an easy solution (or any solution).

[blatanbel]

Algeria has been independent from France for 60 years. They gained independence after a terror campaign with bombings of public places (cafes), beheadings, etc.

A few questions: - Why do we have to host any Algerian, considering they are now independent? - Are we allowed to kick them out the way they kicked us out of their country sixty year ago? If not, why not?

[0xcafefood]

> Are we allowed to kick them out the way they kicked us out of their country sixty year ago? If not, why not?

France is allowed to do this if it asserts the right to do so. The only question is: will it?

[ibejoeb]

I think you're spot on in the overall assessment.

> nor do the newcomers have any obligation to change their society to make themselves acceptable to the French

But this is non-obvious at the least, and it would surely be met with some argumentation that it's the opposite.

[senectus1]

>At the end of the day, the French have no obligation to change their society to accommodate newcomers;

oooh I'm not sure I agree with you here.

A similar scenario (though very much on the micro level) is "the birth of a child doesn't obligate either parent to accommodate the newcomer."

I'm not saying the french need to bend to their every whim, or that the immigrants dont need to adopt the local culture as well. Its a two way street. When you let immigrants in you acknowledge that you're letting change in.

[fwlr]

> When you let immigrants in you acknowledge that you're letting change in.

While I agree with you completely on this (though unfortunately we draw different conclusions from this agreed-on premise)… This is simply not what the message has been on immigrants since, I dunno, probably the 1960s or 1980s. The populace hasn’t always been given a choice whether to let immigrants in or not, but in the cases where they did have a choice, they were told immigrants would not change the character of the nation, only improve it. Sometimes this was called assimilation, but this message was delivered in other ways as well.

If the populace had been given an honest choice of “yes immigrants + yes change” or “no immigrants + no change”, your argument would carry more weight for me, but it’s my impression that instead they have been receiving a consistent and solid message that they can choose “yes immigrants + no change”, which is probably where the resistance to change is coming from. It’s not fair (and more prosaically, not effective) to rugpull those people and tell them actually, it was “yes immigrants + yes change” all along.

[rayiner]

"Garett Jones documents the cultural foundations of cross-country income differences, showing that immigrants import cultural attitudes from their homelands—toward saving, toward trust, and toward the role of government—that persist for decades, and likely for centuries, in their new national homes. Full assimilation in a generation or two, Jones reports, is a myth." (https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=35594)

[skissane]

> the cultural foundations of cross-country income differences, showing that immigrants import cultural attitudes from their homelands—toward saving, toward trust, and toward the role of government

Don't social class and education play a big role here too? University-educated professionals in country X very often have rather different attitudes from poor villagers in country X, so whether your immigrants from country X are mostly university-educated professionals vs mostly poor villagers may be much more significant than the mere fact that you are accepting immigrants from that country.

> Full assimilation in a generation or two, Jones reports, is a myth.

The two largest non-European immigrant groups in Australia are Chinese-Australians (over 5% of population) and Indian-Australians (over 3%). Among second-generation Chinese-Australians, 35% of married men and 48% of married women have a non-Chinese spouse; for the third and subsequent generations, the percentage rises to 69% for men and 73% for women. Similarly, for second-generation Indian-Australians, 56% of married men and 58% of married women have a non-Indian spouse. And those are figures from the 2006 census, [0] and I expect 2nd/3rd+ generation intermarriage rates have likely increased since then.

Isn't that an example of "assimilation" working? My friends in high school included a half-Chinese guy and a half-Indian guy, and I have half-Japanese second cousins – and I couldn't tell you what differences in culture exist between them and myself, I don't know whether there actually are any.

[0] https://tapri.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/v17n1_2khoob...

[hirako2000]

The concept is this: people come, and they assimilate.

The french culture remains irresistible, but social issues keep rising, immigrants are simply more impacted by those issues and the media makes sure to call out people's religion or ethnical "background"

Macron isn't Christian enough but France tolerates all religions, for good reasons. I would be OK for him to stay longer, but cutting off social media, and invading privacy is a blasphemy that should grant deporting him to Dubai, or any city state where he would fit in.

[vGPU]

The problem with the assimilation theory is that it only works in extremely small numbers.

As can be seen in every country in the world, as soon as you have more than a handful of immigrants coming in at once, they form enclaves and resist assimilation - indeed, it’s usually only their children or their grandchildren that do thanks to the influence of school and interaction with their peers.

[hirako2000]

New York City.

> Multicultural. About 36% of the city's population is foreign-born, one of the highest among US cities. The eleven nations constituting the largest sources of modern immigration to New York City are the Dominican Republic, China, Jamaica, Guyana, Mexico, Ecuador, Brazil, Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago, Colombia, Russia and El Salvador.

I could reference other concrete examples, instead making sure to mention NYC as nobody would call this extremely small numbers, or caveat the fact those migrants were of "european origin" for the most part, or having to get some half racist simplistic response.

to justify some biased view of "all countries of world", at least make some attempt to back it up with some factual reference

New York isn't a country, a megacity with over 8 million people is rather well suited.

France. A country that saw large waves of migrations, which don't qualify as "small numbers". Not saying everyone is seamlessly blending in, but if your reference is what mainstream media makes of it, or a repeat of electorate seeking politicans, then travel a bit more, or go shake some hands with people you seem to think categorically different, you may see a bit of reality instead.

[vGPU]

NYC literally has NINE different “chinatowns”.

And Brighton beach is almost entirely Russian. And not only Russian, but those who refuse to assimilate to the point of being unable to speak english - wiki says 98% of them don’t use English as a primary language.

Now, what are the results of that?

> For a year, Siena College has been polling voters on crime and whether they feel it’s a problem in New York state. Last month, 92% of those polled said they believe it’s either a “very serious” or “somewhat serious” problem,

>>France

Hello? Have you seen the title of this thread? France has literally been in a state of riot for decades. Look at the number of riots in 1990-2000. Now, how many of them were because of or carried out by French natives?

Exactly.

Not to mention, the yellow vest riots never stopped. 5 years ongoing now. And two more riots in 2022.

Does this sound like a country full of happy people? No, sure doesn’t, does it? Sounds like a country where a bunch of people with radically different beliefs, ideologies, religions, and way of life were shoved into a room and told: Be Nice. Or Else.

What do you think will happen when the French say, Or Else, What?

[hirako2000]

There is no federal official language in the USA. In NYC? Chinese and Russian are part of its official languages, so new russian or Chinese speaking people who happen to migrate to NYC are language assimilated on arrival.

The result of that? I don't know, I've been there and find it very much multi cultural. Crimes?

Crimes in NYC have been on constantly decreasing trend since its peak in the 80s. To again be on the rise since the fallout of covid prevention measures.

wiki https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_New_York_City

If polls aren't inline with the trends, take it up with the mass media falsly portraying the situation.

I did see the title of this thread yes, have you? A head of state displaying once again his total lack of creativity.

France surely isn't a country full of happy people. It's interesting you mention the yellow vest riots/protests, they answer your own question on whether riots are carried out by french "natives" or religious and culturally incompatible scum.

I do agree certain waves of migrants were shoved into some suburbs, expected to factory work, which they did in the since the 70s in particular, making the other factory workers rather unhappy, and now there are almost no factory left and to remain nice or else... I do also wonder, or else what?

No matter what cultural background, religion, or mother tongue language a person is attached to, deprive that person of social walfare and you eventually get revolts: pubic march and collective expressions, and unfortunately also incivility and then rioting, even mass shooting or other "terrorist" desperate form of expressions.

[rayiner]

New York City is a poster child for the problems with immigration. It’s full of unassimilated ethnic enclaves. Shared norms and social trust are almost non-existent, replaced with hostility and individualism. Governance is basically impossible. You can’t have grass roots, Tocquevillian democracy in such a fractured society, so instead you have governance by elites and ethnic politics.

[hirako2000]

I did pick NYC as I mentioned in order to hopefully avoid subjective, simplistic and/or half racist responses. One had to be made.

It wouldn't be necessarily a racist response if made against situations in certain cities in France given the extent of assimilationism of that nation, but I call that comment racist given the critic of NYC. New York through its entire existence has been waves of migrants, multi cultural in its DNA, with shapes and influences that changed over time but some would say is exactly what made this city shine and get so admired internationally: a financial pole, with countless architecture prouesses, exceptional arts, culinary and service excellence.

Those "enclaves" have been there since its genesis. What we see when the model is just acculturation.

The unfounded statement that no country in the world can "assimilate" past a certain ratio of minorities is the viewpoint that societies must reflect one particular fantasy view of some homogeneous ethnical soup. In that case sure, Japan is heaven, Singapore offers a hell of a picture, and every other societies that adopted yet other models are a myth, politics have little to nothing to do with any resulting conflict, revolt and violence, just some cross culture hate and over 200 borders not firm enough for comfort.

[dctoedt]

You have a really dystopian view of NYC — have you spent much time there?

[LawTalkingGuy]

> the birth of a child doesn't obligate either parent to accommodate the newcomer.

The newcomers were accommodated, just not feted. They have rights, but those don't override the rights of other French citizens and residents.

> When you let immigrants in you acknowledge that you're letting change in.

Sure, if the immigrant has new food, or music, or religion, etc, then they'll provide new choices to their society. Society is under no obligation to take those new choices, and not doing so isn't harming the newcomer.

And this is in the context of maintaining a functioning society. Driving through crosswalks at high speed isn't one of the available choices for anyone.

[senectus1]

you know they get to vote right?

Which means they get to choose who represents them when laws are being made...

[cm2187]

I don't think the people has been asked to vote on mass migration. The political elite decided it was good or inevitable and are focusing their energy on making the French live with it.

[danShumway]

I'm not going to get into a policy debate about what HN will and won't moderate, but this is so completely obviously a pro-segregationist dog-whistle just masked behind immigration instead of race.

"The cultures are just too different to mix, that's the root of all of the trouble" should sound instantly familiar to anyone who's ever read a history book. At the end of the day, if this is the debate we all want to have, fine, we can repeat that entire historical debate for the Nth time. But we should be clear what is being debated.

[rayiner]

I’m fascinated by how Americans are completely unable to distinguish between race and culture. It must be the poor American education system everyone talks about.

There’s obviously more to “history” than America’s experience with black people. My home country of Bangladesh exists because two different cultural groups didn’t want to share a country, and the separation worked out great. And of course even in the context of black people in America, lots of people are sour on integration. Listen to the podcast “Nice White Parents.” A consistent theme is how white parents want integrated schools, while what black parents want is for their mostly-black neighborhood school to be as good as the white kids’ school. Or read this article by a black New York Times columnist about the joy of leaving New York for Atlanta: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/08/opinion/georgia-black-pol....

As an immigrant myself, it sucks to raise your kids in somebody else’s culture. At least in America we have pluralism, where the cultural groups mostly agree to leave each other alone. I’d never want to live in France if it meant raising my kid to be French.

[onetimeusename]

> I’m fascinated by how Americans are completely unable to distinguish between race and culture.

Culture has a historical basis. The NYT funded the 1619 Project which asserts that all white American history can be attributed to enslavement of Black people. Also, since the people who run the NYT likely promote the idea that we should reject the influence of Old Dead White Men because they do not appeal to non-white audiences, don't be surprised if anyone assumes that race and culture are closely related. I certainly do because they may well have a point. I don't see any reason to believe people with no ties to this country will care about its history or culture or future except for their own ends.

A number of people have vocalized the viewpoint that culture is incomplete without race essentialism such as Indian Hindu Nationalists who are erasing Mughal empire history from their curriculum or ethnic groups in California who passed a bill to require ethnic studies that focuses on Black, Latino, and Asian studies. In the former case it would be difficult to argue that Hindutva was merely just cultural. So race and culture being closely related seems like a commonly held belief globally.

[onetimeusename]

What makes you think the NYT speaks on behalf of white people?

https://www.nytco.com/board-of-directors/

[selimthegrim]

Did the separation work out great for the Biharis? Should the Bengalis in Orangi, Karachi be given one way tickets to the Indian border?

[danShumway]

It's not that Americans are unable to distinguish between race and culture, it's that we recognize a long history of culture being used as an argument for segregation.

The race/culture distinction between modern nationalism and racism is just a historically-revisionist excuse. In actuality segregation was heavily reliant on cultural arguments, and the arguments you're raising here now are almost verbatim the arguments raised by segregationists (literally down to "only white people want this"[0]). You might not like to hear that, but it's simply true. Here's George Wallace on the subject[1]:

> White and colored have lived together in the South for generations in peace and equanimity. They each prefer their own pattern of society, their own churches and their own schools – which history and experience have proven are best for both races. (As stated before, outside agitators have created any major friction occurring between the races.) This is true and applies to other areas as well. People who move to the south from sections where there is not a large negro population soon realize and are most outspoken in favor of our customs once they learn for themselves that our design for living is best for all concerned.

Pro-segregation arguments were heavily reliant on culture as a justification for separation. Segregationists argued that separating White and Black culture threatened the "peace" between these supposedly incompatible societies, and they were quick to argue that segregation actually benefited Black citizens and that many of them preferred "separate but equal" access to resources. Black communities had their own churches and schools, they argued, and it was unjust to both White and Black culture to force those rich but very separate traditions to intermingle.

If Wallace was alive today and gave this same speech about immigration, I think you'd be defending it.

[0]: That you link to Charles M. Blow is particularly funny here given that in that very article he argues against strict separation based on culture or race -- effectively arguing not for isolationism for Black communities but for deliberate self-motivated integration back into the communities that they originally fled from in order to recapture political power within a white-dominated culture. Charles Blow is also, incidentally, a strong critic of nationalism/anti-immigration (https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/24/opinion/charles-blow-bigg...), so I strongly doubt he'd agree with your supposed distinction between cultural and racial segregation.

[1]: https://www.gilderlehrman.org/sites/default/files/inline-pdf...

[rayiner]

> It's not that Americans are unable to distinguish between race and culture, it's that we recognize a long history of culture being used as an argument for segregation.

You’re invoking a logical fallacy. Just because a rationale is invoked pretextually in one context, doesn’t mean it’s not valid in a different context. And the difference in context is critical. “Segregation” was about keeping people apart (and disadvantaged) in their own country. That concept has no bearing on voluntary immigration between countries.

You’re missing the critical part of Blow’s article. He proposes: “That [black people] return to the states where they had been at or near the majority after the Civil War, and to the states where Black people currently constitute large percentages of the population. In effect, Black people could colonize the states they would have controlled if they had not fled them.”

Blow is proposing that black people leave the northern states where they constitute a minority and return to southern states where they constitute a majority or near majority. There’s nothing integrationist about that proposal—the central premise is that being a minority in someone else’s community sucks and it’s better to live in a community where the majority is people like yourself.

[danShumway]

If something walks like a duck and quacks like a duck and looks like a duck and has historically been used in its verbatim form to justify racism and the people who historically used it to justify racism themselves made the argument "you are conflating racism and culture, we're not racist stop conflating these two concepts" -- I think in that scenario it's very much worth looking at whether they might not actually be literally the same argument.

> “Segregation” was about keeping people apart (and disadvantaged) in their own country. That concept has no bearing on voluntary immigration between countries.

The distinction you raise here is arbitrary and mischaracterizes the historical debate. Segregationists argued that segregation was not about disadvantaging the Black community. Wallace argued that he had done more for the Black community than anyone else in the South and was directly investing resources into building up the Black community. Wallace very vocally objected to people conflating "segregationism" and "racism." He argued that he was not racist, and that his policies were intended to benefit the Black community. After all, he argued, why would non-white people even want to go to schools and churches where they would be a minority?

In addition, the argument for separation of culture based on the lines between countries almost directly mirrors the arguments made by Southerners about the distinction between culture based on the lines between States. The only difference is scale, evidenced by the fact that many of those same people so quickly and easily made the same arguments about countries. The South argued that segregation was a way to preserve the autonomy and community of a State. Their argument was always centered around political/government/geographic separation.

This is a perspective that is largely lost today because we are more connected in the modern US than we used to be and state divisions feel more arbitrary. But a segregationist would have instantly recognized your argument about the culture of a country and would have instantly said, "yes, that's what I'm talking about. The South and the North are united, but we're still basically different governments, we have nothing to do with each other. We just happen to be under the same federal umbrella, that doesn't mean we're a shared culture."

So I don't think I'm making a logical fallacy at all. This is not me saying "oh, Hitler liked dogs too." This is me pointing out that your argument is a copy-paste of segregationist speakers with "race" swapped out for "immigrants", and that every single defense you have raised of your position looks like it came out of a segregationist pamphlet.

----

> the central premise is that being a minority in someone else’s community sucks and it’s better to live in a community where the majority is people like yourself.

This is an inaccurate characterization of Blow's central premise, evidenced by the fact that Blow is pro-immigration. Obviously he doesn't agree with you, or he would agree with you. :)

Blow is making an argument about political power, yes. He is not making an argument about the intrinsic benefits of cultural divisions and he is certainly not making an argument about the benefits of homogeneity; he is making an argument about the use of political power to combat systemic oppression. Blow specifically calls out in his article that he is not arguing against mixed society, he is purely interested in getting population numbers to the point where Black communities can enact legislation to combat structural racism. It's also worth noting that Blow's argument is not "live and let live", it's specifically to overwhelm white power structures and enact state-wide legislative policies that would affect majority-white communities as well.

Blow is not trying to form a separate Black society. He is trying to enact structural changes across the entire United States.

It's honestly pretty gross to put his arguments in the same camp as an ideology that skirts uncomfortably close to great replacement theory on the regular. And I can't stress this enough, it's objectively wrong to equate them, given that Blow himself does not agree with you on immigration policy.

[selimthegrim]

He is conflating this with 1971 - there isn’t an army with a religious assimilationist ideology that looks down on you for your script, your language and your skin color here.