
Designating the hamlet of Sumte as a sanctuary for hundreds of displaced people - bootload
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/apr/19/102-villagers-750-refugees-one-grand-experiment
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simonsarris
> 102 villagers, 750 refugees, one grand experiment

> Grit Richter, sitting in her modest mayoral office in Amt Neuhaus, gets a
> phone call from the interior ministry in Hanover. An administrator explains
> to her that Sumte will receive 1,000 asylum seekers starting at the end of
> the month, to be housed in the Apontas office complex. Richter isn’t sure
> she’s heard correctly. Yes, the administrator says, they know that Sumte is
> small. They also know that the complex is empty and disused. But the village
> has something that no other town in the area can boast: 21,000 square feet
> of dry shelter. Her options, she’s told, are to say “yes” or “yes”.

> Once the NPD activists are gone, Richter distributes cold facts: the EU is
> taking on 5,000 new migrants every day, and is expected to have received at
> least 3 million by the end of 2017. Germany will have 800,000 new migrants
> by the end of this year, and it appears that most will be allowed to stay.
> There are tough decisions to be made in every town in Germany and this much
> has been settled for them: the building complex in Sumte will be leased for
> one year to the Workers’ Samaritan Federation (ASB), a private charity that
> specialises in disaster relief.

Wait, what?

Migrants, or refugees?

Tough decisions, or her options are "yes" or "yes"?

> Dirk Hammer, the bicycle-maker, has told me they’re unhappy that they’ve
> been portrayed as racists, when the truth, he says, “is that we’re simply
> concerned”.

I think I have a lot more sympathy for the Germans than the migrants after
reading this article. What's the point of democracy if your idea of your home,
and your opinions on it, are totally overruled by some external force that
wants to run some experiments? The villagers don't get a say in what happens
to their home and then they are harangued for having an opinion on it.

~~~
olewhalehunter
It's not a democracy if a party can import voters.

~~~
wavefunction
Are we to understand that 'dangerous Islamist refugees' are going to vote for
liberal and progressive political parties once they arrive in the West?

Or perhaps the charge is that illegal immigrants are going to be swinging
elections they can't vote in?

~~~
thaumasiotes
> Are we to understand that 'dangerous Islamist refugees' are going to vote
> for liberal and progressive political parties once they arrive in the West?

As the political parties are currently configured, yes. Dangerous Islamist
refugees will vote for them for two reasons:

1\. "Liberal and progressive" parties are generally the parties of directly
giving out money to "the poor", which gets them votes from the demographics
receiving the money.

2\. "Liberal and progressive" parties in the West are currently overtly pro-
Islamic as a contrast to their hated rivals who are "Islamophobic".

What people often fail to consider (in my experience) is that as the liberal
and progressive parties draw more of their votes from this kind of group,
their party platform will change. Here is a highly stylized thought process
that I'd like to argue against, as applied to the USA:

1\. Mexicans, when they do bother to vote, vote Democratic by healthy margins.

2\. Therefore, more Mexicans over time means a larger vote share to the
Democrats over time.

3\. Therefore, more Mexicans in the US means Democrats will win more elections
and more Democratic priorities will come to pass.

(2), and therefore also (3), are false. The structure of the US political
system is that each party gets 50% of the votes. If demographics shift, it can
never happen that the parties stabilize at 60% vote share to the Democrats,
40% to the Republicans -- the party platforms will change until each party has
50% of the votes. Packing the electorate with Mexicans _will_ tip the scales
toward more wealth redistribution, a current Democratic priority. But it will
tip the scales _away_ from environmentalism, also a current Democratic
priority. Environmentalism is not a priority for Mexicans in the US.

All of which is to say that "dangerous Islamist refugees" will definitely vote
for the parties that are currently the "liberal and progressive" parties, but
those parties will become less liberal and progressive in the process.

~~~
jbpetersen
What is it about the US political system that forces things back towards a
evenly split equilibrium?

I don't agree with the typical "vendors on a beach" (move towards the center
until you each grab the half that's closer to you) metaphor since it seems to
discount the possibility of being so far away from people that they're
alienated to the point of non-participation. I could see it being cyclic
though between that and periods of recapturing alienated demographics.

~~~
thaumasiotes
I'm not sure I follow your thinking here. Someone alienated to the point of
non-participation, by definition, _doesn 't vote_. They can't be relevant to
measuring vote share.

The mere fact that parties are able to change their positions ensures that
they will. They want to live. Policy positions form an infinite-dimensional
space, unlike a conceptual one-dimensional beach; it will always be possible
to divide voters in half by some combination (actually, many different
combinations) of positions.

~~~
jbpetersen
To clarify I mean cases where someone who didn't vote in one election may
change their mind in the next if the right candidate shows up.

If you're slicing a higher-dimensional space and can only slice so far from a
point you start slicing from, then the problem gets even more interesting.

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bootload
_" The last arrivals are four Iranian men in their early 20s. One is awkwardly
overdressed in a powder-blue suit. They sit in the last pew and don’t talk to
anyone. Most Iranians are not long in Amt Neuhaus once they learn of the
diaspora in Hamburg."_

It is difficult to stop movement of individuals in a large country. What was
the reason for allowing the asylum seekers to leave the area?

~~~
groby_b
That Germany kind of has given up on the idea of concentration camps, and
people have the right to move around?

~~~
nine_k
Getting people to concentration camps was violent. Refugees do the reverse
thing: they try hard to get to refugee camps, at least initially. Likely
conditions in their home countries are much harsher.

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patrickg_zill
Check into who is making the money on housing the newly arrived...

