Good job on completely twisting what I have said and moving the blame from Balkan mafia to refugees seeking safe harbour from the same idiots who killed so many innocent French people...

I've read about several studies recently all of which confirmed that immigration yields major economic benefits via contributions in both the low-skill and high-skill professions. In the long run the economic benefits exceed the welfare costs by far. I haven't kept all the articles but here's one of the reports I've found on the matter. I am of course aware that such high amounts of immigrants do also pose some risks, heck, a spokesperson of the German intelligence agency recently stated that approximately 10% of the refugees turn to crime, but the idea of an epidemic of parasitic immigrants who have no intentions to give back is an entirely baseless claim. It's quite funny that westerners are apparently faster to come to the conclusion that living on welfare forever is a decent option than the immigrants who are happy to take jobs that are beneath the "native" populations.

So in other words, instead of retraining the native populations to do more specialized and skilled labor, it is better to import a swarm of immigrants and hope more than a few of them are welding or machine specialists?

Numbers may say one thing but it leads to the question of "for whom is the economy growing?" and I say that because I hear a lot of claims in the US about legitimizing illegals from Mexico and Guatemala about economic growth but I have yet to see how that will benefit the middle and lower income classes of pre-existing US citizens. It sounds like people just want someone to cut grass for next to no pay and to take up all the retail jobs. It is the same flawed argument I hear when people tried to push for NAFTA and the TPP. NAFTA sent decent paying US jobs to Mexico thereby economically ruining towns and neighborhoods and the TPP will further screw over American workers.

I would prefer that countries just retrain their populations to become more productive skilled laborers than risk having more street gangsters, muggers, burglars, narcotics peddlers, and terrorists plaguing the cities and towns.

So what's your opinion on your government's decision to stop accepting refugees due to the Paris attacks? Do you disapprove? Would you protest against it perhaps?


Addendum: I just did a quick forum search for any mentions of Beirut terrorist attack. The only relevant results are from this topic. Over two hundred injured, almost half a hundred dead, but you wouldn't even know about them if not for another act of terrorism someplace closer. Oh, well, they weren't Europeans so yeah, why bother, right? :-/

Oh yeah, the "studies", ahem......Like our Belgian studies, It's funny how they take immigration as global data without debunking the numbers by migrants origins. In our case, the data are much in favor as we have big communities of Frenchs, Italians and Dutchs. For our north-african immigration, you should come here to get acquainted with the reality of the terrain and speak with them, it will tell you much more than "studies"....

i'm sorry, what?

We've just witnessed numerous times many of those people spending HUNDREDS of dollars (not thousands) just to buy explosives and blow themselves up, just to preach the "ALLAHU AKBAR" word.

To think that some of them would pay $3.000 just to arrive to Germany and then a few more hundred $ just to go and blow shit and people up is outrageous?
Well it happens!

I guess it must be the minority or something right?

After all we must take their word. They're all coming from Syria where their families were in danger from NATO and Russian forces...
No way they could ever lie just to get a free pass. No fucking way!

It is useless when all forms of immigration, from high-skilled professionals coming with a work visa, to a 60 years old low-skilled and illiterate goat herder coming as an asylum seeker, are lumped together in those studies. The head of Nokia (Rajeev Suri, an Indian) and some illiterate grandma from Somalia who got to Finland as an asylum seeker are both immigrants in Finland, but obviously their effect to Finnish economy are quite different.

It also depends what is the economy in the target country. For instance for Germany it made sense to import lots of Turkish workers to Germany decades ago, to work on many lower-end professions which needed labor force badly. For a country where the situation is not the same (say, modern Finland), the effect is negative.

There have been some studies here of the employment rate of different immigration groups by ethnicity, and e.g. Somalis and Iraqis still have quite high unemployment rates compared to most other groups.

At the same time though, accepting refugees shouldn't be based on how well they will be employed and whether they are good or bad for the economy, but how much they need protection (hence, I agree with the person who said welfare immigrants shouldn't be automatically labeled as refugees). However, now that EU is agreeing on asylum seeker quotas per country, somehow I fear the big countries like Germany and France pick the cream of the crop (the most skilled and younger asylum seekers) that can indeed benefit the economy, and leave the unskilled "dregs" that never cause anything but costs to the welfare system to smaller countries, including Finland.

Ahem. You do realize that those boats (or "walkers") are mostly coming from e.g. Turkey? It is hyperbole to claim their lives are still threatened in the refugee camps of Turkey, even if living in them must be shitty. Plus, when they arrive to Europe by walking, I have hard time believing their lives are still in peril by the ISIS when they arrive to Hungarian borders or whatever.

Also, most don't probably even realize how dangerous it may be to try to cross the mediterrarean sea. The only info they mostly have is from the human traffickers who claim it is completely safe.

Nope, I think it's how European countries should have handled the issue to begin with and it still blows my mind that they did not (although I totally don't see how they can make it work at this point and am not sure they could have done so in the first place - they surely could have handled it better, though). Note that I did not say that the massive influx of immigrants we're having all over Europe is generally a good thing and that I have no concerns whatsoever. I specifically had issues with infinite9's claim which implied that the vast majority of immigrants yield absolutely no benefits and will only exploit European welfare programs which is debunked by all earlier data on the economic effects of immigration I've seen.

Heck, if the West weren't governed by brainless cunts the refugee crisis would not have happened to begin with. The European refugee crisis only started after massive cuts in the funding of refugee aid which also only became necessary at this scale because the West grabbed a beer and watched the shit going down in Syria rather than solving or at least sensibly containing the problem while it was still possible. And yes, I think it's shitty how Europe has been handling the refugee crisis all along and Angela Merkel, the saint of the refugees, should go fuck herself.
It's not. The point is that even without a selective review process of immigrants the results tend to be positive and your 60 year old goat herders are not a problem in the big picture.
Starvation and sickness are a also threats to one's life, you know, and apparently that's what refugees have been facing in those camps since the budget cuts.

We didn't need those Turkish workers, they were forced upon us by the USA for a more intense integration of NATO. Our first failed attempt of integration so far (still on-going).

So why didn't you post a thread? No one's stopping you.

I am really sorry to hear what happened, please accept my sincerest condolences..

First of all, your blanket statement is just that, a blanket statement, not some undeniable fact. It depends on e.g. the target country's economy and what kind if immigrants they mostly entice.

Furthermore, that doesn't make lumping completely different kinds of immigration together any less silly. The processes for asylum seekers and e.g. work immigration can be completely separate from each other, like e.g. Australia and many other countries demonstrate, so why should they be lumped together? You can have your doors wide open for young professionals and Nobel prize winners, and shut for unskilled asylum seekers. You don't need to give refugee status for a 60 year old goat herder in order to entice skilled professionals, almost completely the opposite.

The only reason to lump different forms of immigration together is to trick people to believe that low-skilled asylum seekers are also good for the economy. Quite often they are not, unless you pick only the cream of the crop from them.

As I already explained before though, the effect to economy shouldn't be at least a primary reason to decide whether to accept an asylum seeker as a refugee, their true need for an asylum should be. At the same time, people like you shouldn't pretend they are automatically good for the economy.

Starvation and sickness are not considered as valid reasons for a refugee status. Read the definition here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugee

if it were indeed many of the refugees and immigrants we would be in a state of civil war. Maybe we can scale back the rhetorics a bit?
The only identified attacker so far is a french citizen, as far as I have heard.
It would be naive to think that this is some big bad evil from somewhere else that we can easily stop at the border.

Or take a look from another perspective and see the disturbingly large number of people from Europe who go to join the IS. Those are people from our society who grew up & lived here.