Europe: Close the Borders

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I'm not sure how to start, other than to point out that the combination of 'Breivik had a point' and 'immigration is killing the European Left' is... well, actually I think you ought to be ashamed of yourself for that.

Moving on, I see that we have yet another example of Hard Headed Realism Saying Things That Must Be Said. As is usually the case when you (or, indeed, anyone else) goes into that mode, you do not have a clue about the subject on which you hold forth most manfully.

1. 'Immigration' is really not the issue, save as a euphemism. Let's say that 'Europe' (however defined) 'closed the borders' (however defined). The families who have moved to European countries over the past six decades would... er... still be here, wouldn't they? And it's the presence of darker skin tones, different names and so on that upsets the die-hard racists and (or so you seem to be arguing; it's certainly not a view that I share) are causing the 'problem' and not the abstract facts of immigration (not that most people - and no racists - know much of anyway) or masturbatory bullsh!t about our 'common cultural heritage'. So, then what? You think that these people - these fascists and their fellow travelers and useful idiots - would, at the moment of victory, stop? That they would ebb away and things would return to whatever you consider to be 'normal'? I strongly suspect that our old friend 'repatriation' would suddenly re-emerge on the agenda. Congrat-u-fycking-lations to Hard Headed Realism.

2. There is no project of 'multi-culturalism' and never has been. Only pragmatic (and often tin-eared and wrongheaded; yes, I acknowledge that) responses to the reality of social change. Mostly 'multi-culturalism' only exists as something for people to complain about. Given this, how, exactly, can we abandon it? Support the repeal of anti-discrimination legislation (mostly written by politicians from our side in the first place), perhaps? Nothing else comes to mind I'm afraid (because we do all that pearl-clutching stuff about 'common values' already), so it's acquiesce to racism or nothing. And do you think that would satisfy the fascists? Hah.

3. Your understanding of the electoral appeal (and so of the present electoral problems) of the various social democratic parties is... mmm... less than great.

Etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc...

And now for an interesting fact. You are, essentially, advocating that the various social democratic (and presumably hard left, where significant) parties of Europe adopt the same approach to these issues as the PCF did under Georges Marchais in the 1980s. Can I just point out that that did not end well?

I should make it clear that I'm not dismissing the importance of immigration and it's long-term consequences as political issues and, yes, as political problems. How do we deal with the problem of integration (which is always a two-way process), the problems caused by different attitudes to certain things, the problems caused by the unfortunate fact that the social standing and economic security of significant parts of the working class (and much of the traditional lower-middle class, actually) has deteriorated sharply over the past three decades (and so which dovetails much of this, meaning that there's often a perception of immigration-as-the-cause even if that's not really true; immigrants weren't to blame for the housing crisis in Becontree, but were blamed anyway), what to do about people that want to kill immigrants (and us), and so on and so forth. All legitimate topics for debate. Pity that you decided to be a controversialist instead.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I agree that immigration is not the issue. It should be obvious that I have no problem with immigration; I am rather apathetic about the subject, although I agree that for those who are interested, there are a diverse and complex set of policy challenges to discuss.  No, I do not support the repeal of anti-discrimination legislation. Yes, I believe that my proposals are aimed at protecting the darker skinned immigrants who have already come to Europe. The weaker the far right is, the more likely their rights and safety can be protected.

1. You admit that 'immigration is not the issue' yet your main argument is/was 'close the borders', and your post made repeated references to immigration as the issue. Right.

2. Of course you don't support the repeal of anti-discrimination laws. But here's the thing; there is literally no other way for the mainstream left to abandon 'multi-culturalism' and adopt the 'populism' that you think would be such a clever idea. Certainly nothing that any serious racists would take at all seriously (not that even what you argue for would be enough, of course). I would rather that we didn't attempt to emulate the brilliant success of Georges Marchais, and not just on moral grounds.

3. If you think that minority groups would be protected by the banning of immigration... I really don't know what to say.

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Why must there be a single cause and why must this cause be seen as the key to understanding all aspects of the problem?

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Am I? I don't think I'm really thinking in terms of numbers at all.

If 'Europe' were somehow able to 'close the borders' (which wouldn't be possible even if you wanted to, actually. Not without adopting murder as E.U/government policy), then the pressure from the people that you seem to think that we ought to surrender to would not go away. They would have been vindicated, they would be victorious, they would most likely control public discourse on the issue. Why would they stop at the banning of immigration when the issue for them isn't really immigration but the presence of names, faces and customs that they don't like? If not 'repatriation', then discrimination.

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Pretty sure that that's not exactly true.

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What do you base these assertions on?

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Why must there be a single cause? Why, even if there was just a single cause, must we surrender to the fascists on the only issue that matters to them? Your arguments don't make sense.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Europe can't handle (well, have enormous trouble handling, at least) immigration for a couple of reasons. One is that a lot of us have set up institutions in the labour market that makes it very hard to get a job with low productivity. Immigrants have lower productivity on average because they lack culture-specific human capital. When they don't get jobs they lag further behind. Then all of that stuff gets passed down generations (horrifically enough) due to a myriad of reasons.

There's also the fact that - in Britain at least - a lot of the jobs they moved here to do have now gone. The reason why there are so many families from Kashmir in the West Riding and parts of Lancashire is because they were wanted to do the nastier jobs in the textile industry, the reason why so many immigrants (from just about everywhere ) moved to Birmingham was because of the motor and engineering industries and so on. Yeah, well, good luck with that these days. In 2001 the employment rate in Aston (inner city district - former inner city manufacturing district - in Birmingham with a huge 'immigrant' population) was 40%. This sort of thing is a serious problem; but I would argue that it is no longer (if it ever was) a sub-problem of immigration.

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No real disagreement there, though I'd note that the U.S isn't quite so good at dealing with immigration as American liberals like to point out; it deals with certain groups very well, far better than we do, yes. But (despite his name) Joe Arpaio is not a fictional character.

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Sure, it's an issue; one of many. But the solution is not to adopt a hard-right stance on either immigration or 'immigration'. Not just because doing so would be wrong, but because, frankly, who would believe us anyway?

Also Georges Marchais.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Regarding your first paragraph, yeah, but, as you say, that's not an immigration problem. That's a working class problem (specifically a working class male problem). Incidentally, it's probably an even more important explanation for the rise of the "far-right" movement in Europe. In Sweden those immigrants were largely from Yugoslavia. But I'd say the problem you're describing is hitting "original natives" about as hard as those old immigrants.

It is absolutely not an immigration problem but it is one of the biggest problems regarding what is often euphemistically described as 'the immigration problem'. You aren't going get the cosy, well-integrated communities that most people in politics say that they want unless you deal with that problem. Which, of course, is not a problem of immigration at all.

Yeah, that's probably the case (especially if you throw in various other issues - lower middle class support for far-right parties is hardly insignificant - as well), which isn't surprising as for the most part the phenomenon is one of protest voting (with racist attitudes being more the thing that makes the far-right option palatable; though I generalise to a gross and excessive extent).

Depends what you're looking at, really. Sticking with Britain again, across the whole country that's certainly true (in part because in the places that have suffered the most over the past third-of-a-century - the coalfields and maritime industrial areas - have always been, and still are, very white), but in the areas I mentioned specifically it's more complicated. The 'immigrants' have probably been hit harder, but then they were always lower down so perhaps it just looks that way, though... again... maybe not everywhere. Because things get even more complicated when you remember that in (for example) Birmingham, a lot of working class white families were living in slums until the 60s.

This is verging on a digression.

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What Beet has proposed in this thread is certainly a hard-right position.

As for that being the current position of the left (however defined), that may well be so (though as this thread was originally about party politics and so on, you shouldn't ignore the tendency to use supposedly 'strong' language on the subject and to talk about the need for common cultural whatevers. Not that anyone buys it). But, of course, the current position of the mainstream right can also be caricatured in that way - as one of sticking its head in the sand and occasionally bleating about multi-culturalism without ever bothering to define it or what was once defined as 'pretending to discourage immigration' - although (of course) it's actually a vote winner, some of the time, which makes it different in one very important way.

The fundamental problem is that there is no single solution because we aren't actually talking about a single problem. One big issue, for example, is the fact that relations between the police and minority groups are usually beyond terrible. Generally there's nothing even remotely resembling trust there. That has all kinds of implications to the other issues raised in this thread, (in obvious ways, yes, but also by occasional overcompensation) but there's no easy solution to it.

Maybe a comment on the regrettable state of public discourse on these general issues would be a good idea. Though it's kind of a given, isn't it? A majority of newspapers sold in Britain regularly contain deeply inflammatory articles on the subject and I'm fairly sure that's true of some other countries (I do like to think that our press is worse than any other on that kind of thing - in order to stay sane).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It's ridiculous that a lot of immigrants don't work in Europe (if true). Isn't the point of immigration to find greater opportunities (read: better jobs) in other lands?

What do you mean by 'immigrants'? Most post-war/post-decolonisation/etc immigrants did move to whatever country for work and usually found it. That was forty, fifty years ago in most countries, back during the long lost 'Golden Age of Capitalism'. Most of those jobs have gone, which is why these communities have such high unemployment rates. Most members of these communities have difficulties finding new work because they are generally unskilled and usually have few decent qualifications. There are also issues with labour market regulations and so on in some countries and various nightmarish housing and transport problems in others. This is not a problem of immigration, except indirectly, but is a massive contributor to various... er... problems of 'community cohesion'... yes... that seems like a functional euphemism.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

There's been a lot of recent immigration to Britain, just not from the places that culture-warriors like to fret about. One group in particular have contributed greatly to an increase in the amount and variety of picked vegetables available in supermarkets.

As for new immigrants immediately ending up on some kind of state support; usually (as Lewis has pointed out) we're talking about groups that emigrated for other reasons. So in Britain there was all that hysterical bollocks about 'bogus asylum seekers' (actual media term) about a decade ago and so on. There are usually all sorts of restrictions on where they can live, what sort of work (if any) they can do and so on.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

How are all those Eastern Europeans fitting in, in Britain? They were everywhere in London when I was there 3 years ago, and apparently favored immigrants per government policy.

A lot of them come and go, because of the lack of restrictions (interesting parallel with West Indian - especially - immigrants in the 60s; a tightening up of restrictions actually led to more people coming - and staying - here as families came over to 'beat the ban'), though a lot have settled it seems (we'll presumably get a better idea of how many when they get round to counting the census returns). As noted above, they've contributed to an increase in the amount and range of pickled vegetables on sale in supermarkets. There have been problems in a couple of areas (notably Boston. There were also issues in Wrexham initially - the BNP did well in the town in the 2007 Assembly Election for example - but things seem to have settled somewhat), but less than with other groups in the past because... well... yeah. It's obvious why.