[wolvoleo]

> for some godforsaken reason left-lib parties in europe think accepting infinity migrants forever is the most important thing to do

This is completely BS. Nobody wants to let in unlimited migrants. This is not a goal of anyone, including the left-most left. In fact on the left we are very aware that our welfare systems can't support unlimited people.

The left wing parties just wish to honour existing international treaties which we have signed to allow genuine asylum seekers. There's processes in places to determine whether they deserve this. The right just want to turn their boats back as they approach (pushback) which is literally illegal.

It's important to realise though that asylum seekers are not the root cause of most of our issues even though they are portrayed as such by the right in deflection from the real issues. For example here in Holland the biggest societal issue is the farmers who pollute too many nitrogen compounds and that causes housing projects to be put on hold. The number of asylum seekers has been steadily decreasing over the years.

But farmers make up a huge piece of the right wing so they'll never take ownership of the problem. Better to deflect on someone else.

[yolo3000]

Numbers are going down, but in my area there are now 4 buildings with asylum seekers. Started with a hotel, then an office building, then some newly built expensive houses that were first up for rent and now rented for asylum seekers, and now another office building. Honoring existing treaties out of principle can also be put on hold when the situation changes.

[sunshowers]

From what I can tell, a big part of the problem in Europe is that people seeking asylum are prohibited from making a living (due to widespread belief in the lump of labor fallacy) and so have to be dependent on welfare.

[wolvoleo]

Yes and when a government tries to do something about that (like Spain granting temporary permits so they can work and pay taxes) it angers the right even more.

[anonzzzies]

The issues here are the same as they have been forever in every country; Spanish people simply are not going to do the jobs the immigrants are doing. This is the same in every country I lived in or visited, including the US. In Spain, most my uneducated neighbours feel too high to even work in bars, let alone pick fruit, shovel shit, pick up garbage etc. So who is going to do that besides immigrants who are eager to do it; a few generations later, they will vote right and complain about immigrants and will say they are too good to shovel shit, of course.

[akimbostrawman]

>asylum are prohibited from making a living

This is exactly how we got here. We allowed them to work to make temporary asylum permanent migration.

[sunshowers]

Look, you can either let people make a living and manage their own lives while contributing to society, or you can not let them make a living and ensure they're housed and fed. You can't be angry at A and also be angry at B.

[akimbostrawman]

Nice framing. How about C: not letting in a flood of financial refugees with completly different cultural values in the first place or at least send them back at some point instead of giving them free citizenship and all its benefits as justification for them working here or not being able to work?

[wolvoleo]

Just admit then that it's not about jobs, housing or anything else but you just don't want to see brown faces in the street?

PS: Part of the issue with sending them back is that the countries they're from won't take them. They can't live at the airport like Tom Hanks either.

[wolvoleo]

If they are only asylum seekers, it means they are still in the validation process.

Unfortunately the hard-right has also defunded that process for many years, and have thus created this problem themselves. The agencies tasked with figuring out if asylum seekers have a legitimate claim are overwhelmed with all the work. This is purely a self-created problem (intended to gaslight the population in there being a huge 'immigrant problem').

[bluescrn]

> The left wing parties just wish to honour existing international treaties which we have signed to allow genuine asylum seekers.

But these are treaties are no longer fit for purpose, as can be seen by the boatloads of mostly young male economic migrants turning up in the UK to 'claim asylum'. People who've got thousands of euros to pay the small boats traffickers.

If they were refugees fleeing war or other dangers, you'd expect a lot more families - women, kids, the elderly - to be making the journey.

(Of course, legal migration to the UK is vastly higher than illegal arrivals. And this is the larger issue putting pressure on housing, healthcare, transport, and more. But the small boats are a glaring example of a broken system being exploited)

[graemep]

The UK's system for processing applications is:

1. highly inefficient: its slow and badly run. 2. seriously considers applications that clearly false - people from Canada and the EU do not need to claim asylum! Those numbers are tiny but it illustrates a winder spread problem. people who feel safe enough to return to the country they "fled" on holiday also clearly do not have a genuine claim. 3. It fails to provide a route for a lot of people who do have a genuine claim - e.g. religious minorities in the Middle East.

It is no longer true that the numbers of legal migrants are vastly higher because the government have decided that they need to cut the numbers of immigrants and the easiest way to do this is to cut legal immigration.

[wolvoleo]

Well, don't forget some of these wars are caused by us. The Western countries invaded Iraq under false pretenses so Dubya could make his Halliburton buddies happy. As a result and pure neglect to form a legit democratic government after the war a power vacuum ensued which caused the rise of ISIS which contributed to the war in Syria. Which directly caused the mass migration on foot from Syria.

In this way we do have responsibility towards them. The migration from Africa is a different issue but it is already possible to quickly reject asylum-seekers from known-safe countries.

> Of course, legal migration to the UK is vastly higher than illegal arrivals. And this is the larger issue putting pressure on housing, healthcare, transport, and more.

Well exactly but nobody is talking about that. Everyone is talking about the asylum seekers. Which are only a small part of the issue.

And the pressure on housing is very multifaceted. A lot of NIMBYism when it comes to new construction, and boomers who have invested in the housing market and don't want to see their investment evaporate by more supply on the housing market. So the parties backed by those with money are always obstructing new construction and other means to make housing cheaper. This is a much bigger problem when it comes to housing than those few apartments granted to asylum seekers.

[rangestransform]

Moral responsibility is not real responsibility that can be enforced at the point of a gun by anyone or any nation, and so this responsibility does not have to be assumed

[graemep]

> The Western countries invaded Iraq under false pretenses

True, but I would say the current refugees are not those who most need refuge. Religious minorities who are the most threatened by ISIS are under-represented.

> it is already possible to quickly reject asylum-seekers from known-safe countries.

It does not happen though. it happens in the end, but the system in ridiculously slow and inefficient.

> And the pressure on housing is very multifaceted. A lot of NIMBYism when it comes to new construction, and boomers who have invested in the housing market and don't want to see their investment evaporate by more supply on the housing market.

That is true.

[bluescrn]

Surely those who need refuge from the worst Islamic regimes are the women, not the men?

As for the housing market, yes, it'd still be in a bad state with zero migration. But at the moment, it seems that we can't build enough to keep up with the migration alone. And when we do manage to build loads of homes, we completely neglect most of the infrastructure needed to support them.

We haven't built a reservoir since the 90s. Transport is a real problem, with the roads overloaded and in bad condition while rail projects seem impossibly slow and costly (HS2 is probably the last one the UK will ever attempt?). And then there's the NHS, policing+prisons, education system, and so on.