German & Austrian voters support Swiss-style immigration quotas for EU-residents

[Franzl]

I strongly oppose any further direct democratic elements.

[Franzl]

I fail to see how the two issues are in any way related. There's no need to have a high opinion of voters' intelligence or to believe that they would enact good laws to support mandatory voting. Supporting direct democracy, however, requires at least some degree of the above considerations.

Have to agree with deadman here. It's not necessarilly logically inconsistent (if one looks at democracy the way you do), but I think it's reasonable to oppose direct democracy and mandatory voting for the same reason.

[Franzl]

You can't "force" people to be less apathetic. You act like making people show up to vote will suddenly cause them to inform themselves when they often have no interest in it all. You can't force people to care.

[Franzl]

At the same time, German and Austrian voters expressing support for a racist idea isn't exactly a novelty.

I'm willing to bet a majority in most countries would express support for this idea.

(I'm against it...but at the same time, it's not exactly a "racist" concept.)

[Franzl]

Also: If I remember correctly, even the country you live in (Canada) has immigration quotas and handpicks skilled workers. So, it must be racist too, right ?

Europe has Schengen, Canada doesn't.

We can argue about whether it's good or bad policy, but your claim is "supporting immigration quotas" is racist because there's such a thing as Schengen, but the same policy is not racist if there's no such agreement? Did I get that right?

[Franzl]

Also: If I remember correctly, even the country you live in (Canada) has immigration quotas and handpicks skilled workers. So, it must be racist too, right ?

Europe has Schengen, Canada doesn't.

We can argue about whether it's good or bad policy, but your claim is "supporting immigration quotas" is racist because there's such a thing as Schengen, but the same policy is not racist if there's no such agreement? Did I get that right?

My claim is than the proposed change is driven by racism. Not the policy in itself, but the action, because of the likely reason behind it.

Well, besides the fact that there is no "proposed change", as this is merely a pollster who asked this question in an opinion poll, I think we must have seperate definitions of "race", and as a result, "racism".