[philipallstar]

> There were so many things that I saw growing up as relatively solid but I just happened to grow up in an era of European unity and American primacy

European unity works well in a world of mostly-stable populations. Having mass migrations from large, relatively empty countries, to pretty full ones, is going to make the full ones increasingly expensive to make housing for, to power, and to water.

[epolanski]

Where are the full ones?

Working age population is decreasing in Europe. It's only really major cities that suffer under development, and even among them it's just some, not the majority.

And despite all the bitching, even extra-EU immigrants are a huge resource for most European countries. In Italy e.g. extra-EU immigrants contribute to 14% of taxes and receive less than 2% of benefits, as many of them come here as young adults and leave before qualifying for pension anyway so the bulk of social services (school and healthcare) is essentially largely subsidized by immigrants.

In Germany extra-EU immigrants are on average net contributors to welfare state too.

Yes, many among them stay poor, don't integrate and tend to fall for minor, petty and some for violent crime.

What you hear little about are the insane dangers of organized crime like Italians and Albanians on the other hand, because they move hundreds of billions and are a drag to the economy in most of Europe.

[xenonite]

> In Germany extra-EU immigrants are on average net contributors to welfare state too.

Interesting. By what cost does this measure loss of freedom due to increased surveillance, decreased freedom of movement especially for women. Also increased cost and decreasing quality of police, law, education, or even street cleaning…

[azan_]

Extra-EU immigrants are not uniform group. E.g. in Denmark non-western migrants at some point are (weakly) positive net contributors to public finances, but MENAPT immigrants are on avg. net negative their entire life. https://www.economist.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=1424,quality=8...

[dmitrygr]

> In Germany extra-EU immigrants are on average net contributors to welfare state too.

All the data I find shows them contributing less than natives, and even MORE less if corrected for age. https://www.econstor.eu/handle/10419/232517

[epolanski]

https://euromod-web.jrc.ec.europa.eu/research/publications/d...

[pingou]

But this paper is not about extra EU migrants but all migrants. And even then if we control for age they say they are contributing less than natives.

I think it would be very odd that less educated people on average contribute more than natives, especially if they are at risk of being discriminated when looking for a job.

[throwaway2037]

    > In Italy e.g. extra-EU immigrants contribute to 14% of taxes and receive less than 2% of benefits

This is wild. Who are they and what kind of work are they doing? I would like to learn more about this phenom.

[bojan]

[flagged]

[throwaway85825]

Are the people supposed to eat rocks? Agriculture takes a lot of land but people need to eat.

If anything agriculture is going to require more land in order to be sustainable.

[bojan]

People do need to eat, but over 80% of the Dutch agricultural produce is being exported.

Also, good portion of it isn't even meant for human consumption. Think flowers or cattle feed.

This is not about feeding the population or about sustainability. It's simply about profit.

[autoexec]

If they're exporting crops that's about feeding somebody. People who would have to try to get their food elsewhere and have to worry about the standards/quality of those new sources. It's even perfectly fine for people to grow and sell flowers. There may be ways to make it more efficient, and maybe the government should be encouraging that so they can buy up some of the saved land, but I'd bet there are ecological consequences to paving over flower farms too.

[wqaatwt]

Well Switzerland is effectively in the EU (economically if not politically) so same standard mostly apply anyway.

[picofarad]

Are the cows pets?

[wqaatwt]

Economically it would make more sense to import food from France, Spain etc. it would reduce the cost of living for the overwhelming majority of people with limited negative economic impact.

[account42]

And even without agriculture, a country should be considered "full" long before each acre has been turned into a concrete hellhole.

[selfmodruntime]

well duh let's just import food from elsewhere (and completely ignore that foreign politic squabbles might crash this system)

[throwaway85825]

It's not like countries that import the majority of their calories have frequent food riots or anything.

[wqaatwt]

There is hardly any need to import food from anywhere besides the EU, though. Which would be rather low risk.

[philipallstar]

The Netherlands is completely tiny compared to many of the countries people are coming from, and the land is allocated. You can't replace the farms with suburbs throughout the country, and even if you did, then what? Is it allowed to be full then? Or should people still leave their much more land-rich origins to come anyway?

[shimman]

Does EU have the USA problem where most farmers are basically sharecroppers where they are mandated where they can buy their seed, buy their fertilizers, where they buy their chicks/sows/calfs, what equipment they can buy, how they can repair their equipment, where they can sell their crops, and at what specific prices all from a single undemocratic corporation?

In the USA it's basically corporations that run everything and drive the farmers into poverty where said corporations can then buy their land and rely on undocumented workers to keep the abuse going.

From the outside EU farmers seem to have better labor relations, but don't know.

[greggoB]

Swiss here, living in a small town quite close to farmers. I would expect if it was the case here, I would have heard about it, given my proximity. I'm aware of this "arrangement" in the US, never heard of it happening anywhere in the EU - I haven't done a comprehensive study though, maybe someone with more knowledge can say more.

[Chu4eeno]

Considering EU farmers tend to riot with their tractors in the capitals of countries which try to control them I doubt it.

AFAIK Norwegian farmers fear of things like this was what kept Norway out of EU even with two referendums (or at least one of the distinguishing factors).

[kaufmae]

most of the immigrants are highly educated professionals, big tech, pharma and meds. it‘s not the „empty“.

[oytis]

I think at least in Germany it's not true - among people coming to Germany there are more refugees of various kinds than professionals

[jubilanti]

Germany and Switzerland have taken dramatically different responses to the migrant crisis.

[qingcharles]

These things aren't mutually-exclusive, though.

[servo_sausage]

Every statistic regarding refugee attainment shows that it is; unless you are proposing to limit intake to only the skilled.

[oytis]

Technically true, but I don't think anyone tracks education levels of refugees.

[philipallstar]

They definitely aren't, but whomever they are they still requires houses, power and water.

[panick21_]

And literally all the limits on those things are artificial. Its the same right wing idiots that want this referendum that prevent smart transportation infrastructure in cities, that delay important transportation investments, that prevent bike infrastructure, that had the brilliant plan of buying cheap energy from France and Germany and so on.

[stymaar]

France is mostly empty by Europe's population density standard though, so even though it was likely not the intent of GP, it kind of works in that context.

[ahartmetz]

>France is mostly empty

Which is so weird! France has large amounts of good farmland, some of the most modern (and unified, unlike Germany) government in Europe for a long time etc... no obvious reason to have just half the population density of Germany.

[stymaar]

It's mostly a matter of when the demographic transition started: https://nitter.net/pic/media%2FGEDBLvOXUAANUlK.png%3Fname%3D...

France used to be “the China of Europe” (which is why we kept being at war with the whole continent at once). Had France followed their neighbors' demographic, it would be home to more than 200 million people today.

The demographic collapse of France in the 19th century, while Germany kept growing, alone explains the French defeat in 1870 (and then the two world wars).

More data on that piece of history, and a hypothesis to explain it, here: https://worksinprogress.co/issue/frances-baby-bust/

[mschuster91]

> no obvious reason to have just half the population density of Germany.

France was historically always focused on Paris, because that was where the Emperor was. If you were not a farmer, there was little reason to live anywhere but Paris or other large cities.

In contrast, Germany historically consisted of thousands of small fiefdoms that each held some sort of local importance and each held authority of some sort. The Kaiser was pretty far away and only mattered in practice when the Kaiserreich was involved in some sort of conflict.

[stymaar]

> France was historically always focused on Paris, because that was where the Emperor was.

So much misconception in such a short sentence…

First of all France only had an “Emperor” for a few decades (10 years for Napoléon 1er, 17 for Napoléon III).

Then, Paris wasn't even the King's main residence for a good part of French Monarchy (the Loire valley (hence the list of famous castles here) and Versailles both aren't Paris).

Centralization around Paris built up progressively, but it's really the French revolution (which came with the suppression of the old regional Parliaments) which made modern France the way it is. And the US is the only place where you can claim that 200 years of history counts as “always”.

As I said in a comment sibling to yours, this has nothing to do with political organization, it's a consequence of demography: French people just stopped having babies one century before other European countries (and two centuries before the rest of the world).

[throwaway2037]

    > French people just stopped having babies one century before other European countries

I'm not here to doubt this statement. Rather, I want to know: Why did this trend occur in France? I am curious to learn more.

[throw-the-towel]

Can you back up your claims? I don't have a dog in this fight, but do notice people ridiculing migrants as "doctors and engineers".

[tempay]

As with everything it's complicated but it's more true than not:

https://nccr-onthemove.ch/indicators/how-qualified-are-migra...

More importantly, education isn't everything. Half the economy runs on work that doesn't need higher education and that locals largely won't do: cleaning, care, hospitality, construction. The Spanish and Portuguese speaking workers doing those jobs are propping up a standard of living for everyone.

[throwaway85825]

Won't do or won't do for slave wages?

[tempay]

I can't comment outside of Geneva but it's hardly "slave wages":

* https://www.mission-geneve.dfae.admin.ch/en/manual-labour-mi...

* (scroll to the cost breakdown) https://batmaid.ch/en/about-us

[throwaway85825]

A better definition of slave wages is:

After food, shelter and necessities is there something left over? Lately consuner spending is increasingly debt indicating that its not break even.

[selfmodruntime]

citation needed

[dyauspitr]

That’s to the US. I believe in Europe it’s Arab hoipolloi

[marcus_holmes]

Makes me wonder about what's happening in those large, empty, countries and how cheap land would be there...

[teiferer]

> mass migrations

> pretty full ones

C'mon, why parrot this nonsense? There are no "mass migrations" and neither the European countries nor the US are "full". Yes the Europeans screwed up real integration across the board, but nobody is really working on fixing that. Easier to just claim to be full and the immigrants are causing higher crime rates so no more people in but oh demographics, please everybody make more babies!

[tpm]

Xenophobia is on the rise across the board with the rising unequality and an alliance between extreme-right elements of the society and the wealthy class that wants to use them to destroy democratic institutions and take over the power. Rationally with the ageing population we actually need managed mass migration but instead get managed mass hate and unmanaged migration.

[account42]

Replacing your own people with foreigners is never rational.

[duped]

Global freedom of movement was an inalienable right until European colonial powers noticed some of their colonies' peoples wanted to move to Europe.

Large scale global movement is indicative of failure to uplift the globe from violence, poverty, and climate change. It makes a lot more sense to me for the global powers who don't want mass migration to do something to fix its causes instead of retreating inward and succumbing to nativism.

[rayiner]

> Global freedom of movement was an inalienable right until European colonial powers noticed some of their colonies' peoples wanted to move to Europe.

What an absurd assertion. Where did you learn that? Read up about Roman border control and immigration policy, and what they required of immigrants into Roman territory.

[rangestransform]

We should not fulfill our imagined moral responsibility to the third world if it has real cost to the people already here

[wizzwizz4]

The second paragraph is a reasonable political position, but the first is blatantly ahistorical. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passport#Antecedents.

[selfmodruntime]

There was no global freedom of movement. Ever.