I don’t think the culture differences are going to be as big a deal as you think, partly because religiosity has declined a lot in many western nations since my parents were born (start of WW2), woman’s rights have substantially improved, LGB[0] issues have gone from “we are chemically castrating you” to “there are half a dozen openly gay and lesbian national leaders”, and some of these changes are already in motion in the rest of the world; and partly because the main cultural split in the world right now is between urban and rural within any nation, not between the nations.
[0] while medical tech has improved for trans issues, I can’t really say western culture is kinder to that group today as compared to 1950, nor do I know how trans issues are regarded in the Middle East.
Look at what happened to Sweden. Gangs, bombings, no-go areas, zero integration, all in the span of a few years. Look at what's happening in France. In fact, if you look anywhere where large migrations of non-culturally compatible populations have taken place, the result is always the same: mayhem.
“Gangs, bombings, no-go areas, zero integration” describes my childhood experience as a Brit reading the news about Northern Ireland in the 90s.
And yet, I was raised Catholic, same as the very people I was — unreasonably, in retrospect — afraid of.
And also, I now live in Berlin, capital of a country which took in roughly one million refugees very quickly not too long ago. Just as my childhood news was wildly unrepresentative yet technically correct, if the stories you refer to had been representative one would have expected the literal disintegration of the country I now live in before I moved here.
(I now work with one of those refugees. I find him very impressive! Proper fluency in three languages).
My interpretation is that the social problems around refugees is that they are refugees from poor places. Generally poor, young, uneducated and maybe traumatized.
Here in Canada the largely upper middle class Middle Eastern immigrants integrate and assimilate fairly well. On the other hand, ethnic groups from East and South Europe where we received many refugees in the 80s and 90s still have a bit of a reputation for organised crime, much as the Italians got tarred 50 years ago. Because yes, a lot of those refugees got involved with it. What else is some young Russian or Serb with no job skills and limited language skills supposed to do in the Canadian job market back then?
Bring in lots of poor uneducated people who don't speak the language and no amount of cultural compatibility will defuse the problems created.
The hard stuff is the stuff you don’t even know you need to ask about because everyone thinks it’s “common sense” without realising that’s just shorthand for “stuff I was taught without realising I was taught”.
Do you have any actual evidence or are we supposed to just trust all these right wing nationalist taking points? It's funny that I never hear actual swedes lamenting this, just foreigners that seem to think Sweden has become a war zone because they took in immigrants.
"The chances of men between the ages 15 and 29 in Sweden getting shot were ten times higher than their counterparts in Germany, a 2018 study found, according to The Economist."
"Eight in 10 shootings in Sweden were connected to organized crime, a study by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention said. That ratio was “significantly” higher compared to other countries in Europe, the Guardian reported."
"In 2018, Sweden had the highest gun deaths in Europe, surpassing Italy and eastern Europe, due to increased criminal gang activities, the Guardian said."
"Deaths involving guns tripled in that country between 2012 and 2020, Bloomberg said."
"Nearly 260 crimes in Sweden involved explosives in 2019, up 60% from a year earlier, Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention data showed."
Forbes, Guardian, Economist not your usual "right wing nationalist" sources.
Sweden had 47 gun deaths in 2020, with 10.3 million people, which is 4.6 deaths per million. Massachusetts, the US state with least firearm deaths per capita, had 34 per million as of 2019. US average is 136.
> Sadly the Middle East culture and religion is incompatible with the one in Europe.
Which Middle East culture and religion? Be specific. Are you talking about Israel? Saudi Arabia? Iran? Kurdistan? If you're going to condemn a whole ethnic/religion group at least pick just one, not a random grab bag of "brown people".
You don't need to be all that specific because while there is a huge diversity of cultures in the Middle East virtually all of them have serious disagreements and incompatibilities with legacy European cultures.
Curious, what you think these are? I am "European" and probably have such disagreements, it doesn't necessarily make me incompatible... diversity is great...I mean look at the advantages it's already brought (even if the f.. politicians enjoy "playing" with it) I'm personally for integration not assimilation ...
Sorry but that's just straight-up right-wing propaganda. Don't know if you're acting in bad faith or just repeating things you've read or heard somewhere, but statements like these are just disgusting to me as a Caucasian european who grew up with friends who have parents from the middle east.
I'm an atheist, some of my friends are muslim, yet we don't struggle to be friends because of that.
You are probably talking about very conservative people who like to hang gay people and all of that funny stuff, but just making a blank statement that this is true for all of the middle east is very wrong.
EDIT: Was never down-voted so fast on HN, is the majority of HN really so negative towards people from the middle east?
>EDIT: Was never down-voted so fast on HN, is the majority of HN really so negative towards people from the middle east?
I'm surprised myself, generally HN is pretty reasonable and fair about allowing different view points. International conflict seems to bring out the xenophobes and overly political actors. I say this as a Muslim who grew up with many close atheist friends, who has seen this pattern many times over the past few decades.
When things like reading a headline "UNICEF Chief: Taliban Committed to Let Girls Back to School" or the recent history of progress for women in Saudi Arabia is women being allowed to drive... it's not extremist propaganda to say that importing populations from the middle east will have huge cultural implications for western nations.
It is inappropriate to apply the generalization to one person, because there is much diversity among people. When you talk about a population though, it isn't propaganda to say that there are huge cultural problems with views which are fundamentally problematic if you try to import sizable portions into a modern western country.
One of the reasons you get strong right-wing reactionaries is people who are trying to be progressive turning a blind eye to the actual cultural issues instead of acknowledging and trying to mitigate and minimize them.
There are certainly lovely people from the middle east, I have had the pleasure of knowing a few who were from or had roots in that part of the world. There is a basic difference between (wrongly) saying "this is where you're from and what you look like so you must be like this" and (rightly) "taking in a million refugees from here will have these sorts of problems".
I would counter your comment by saying that it is pretty unjust to judge the whole population by taking the worst examples as a metric.
Taliban and the Saudi Arabian government are very conservative and I don't like them either, yes. But I would not take these two as a description for "People from the middle east".
I agree a bit with "people who are trying to be progressive turning a blind eye to the actual cultural issues", but I still think that the comment I responded to is wrong, and your explanation does not really change my mind.
Of course there are issues. A person who hates other sexualities, doesn't like women being independent and wants to spread their religion no matter what is a tough challenge for progressive cultures, but then I guess Europe should not accept very conservative people from other places either ;D
As an example, I don't know why a very conservative, traditionalist and religious person from Texas should be more compatible with Europe than someone from Saudi Arabia(half joking).
Add to that, that Europe != Europe. Were I gay, I would not want to live in Hungary or Poland, either.
Indeed it's not the whole population, not every individual in it. There are though, bulk properties of large groups of people (which also vary by location, citizens of Tehran would differ a lot from Pakistani villagers) and those bulk properties should be acknowledged and of concern.
What I'm pointing out in the parent comment is that if those are the kinds of things that constitute social progress in your part of the world, it's pretty clear that your median or typical cultural attitudes have a pretty damn big distance from that of modern western european nations.
There are plenty of native people in my country who would agree with some of these middle eastern people you mean when asked about gay people, women working and having power etc.
I am of course not including actual terrorists or people who want to kill others in my comment, but I think it should be understandable what I mean.
So, yes, very conservative people from the middle eastare a tough challenge, but for me that does not justify saying that they're incompatible and should rather stay in their countries.
First-generation migrants are a tough challenge, depending on who they are. But with time and care, this will be manageable. Not all of them, but again, this should not be as big of an issue as to say that they should stay away.
Were I gay or jewish, I would feel way safer holding hands with another man in Budapest or Warsaw than in a muslim quarter of any large Western European cities.
Sure. It's legal. They also want to ban homo-/transsexuality from childrens books and media, but yeah, totally legal.
It's a sin in Islam, true. You were talking about muslim quarters in european cities, where as far as I know, the law from the country this quarter is in applies, and not the shariah or whatever you may think goes on there.
I think we can agree that people who mistreat others based on their religion are just assholes in general, doesn't matter if they're extremist muslims, christians, atheists etc.
Sadly the Middle East culture and religion is incompatible with the one in Europe.
So if this scenario should play out, we will see middle east conditions with unrest everywhere.
Better to let the migration go to compatible countries such as Turkey.