US Politics Mega-thread - Page 2532

On November 19 2015 10:42 bo1b wrote:

Did the Jewish refugees at that point have a long storied history of blowing things up, remaining on welfare, and in general not integrating into society?

I think it's a fairly terrible comparison to make. Just like I think pointing at the WBC as the worst of Christianity and then utilising them as if saying Christians have bad points as well. Kind of defeats the purpose when the worst that is apparently on offer is some people who like to picket fences and don't like homosexuals.

On November 19 2015 10:54 Plansix wrote:

No, they had a number of different stereotypes applied to them made by bigots out of fear and ignorance. Just like the refugees today.

On November 19 2015 10:26 xDaunt wrote:

Democrats are going to spit themselves politically if they continue to ridicule the very legitimate concerns raised by republicans with regards to the refugee issue.

On November 19 2015 10:42 bo1b wrote:

Did the Jewish refugees at that point have a long storied history of blowing things up, remaining on welfare, and in general not integrating into society?

I think it's a fairly terrible comparison to make. Just like I think pointing at the WBC as the worst of Christianity and then utilising them as if saying Christians have bad points as well. Kind of defeats the purpose when the worst that is apparently on offer is some people who like to picket fences and don't like homosexuals.

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere called on Germans to avoid succumbing to a blanket suspicion of the hundreds of thousands of migrants arriving in the country, saying an unbelievable number of rumors were being spread on the Internet.

But police union chief Rainer Wendt said he believed that authorities in Germany's federal states, which are responsible for housing asylum seekers, were playing down the problem of assaults on women in the shelters.

"It is understandable that there is the desire to calm things down politically," Wendt told Reuters. But he, along with women's groups, believed that ignoring the problem would be counterproductive. "There is a lot of glossing over going on. But this doesn't represent reality," he said.
...
But Wendt said the police were reporting cases to the state governments, which have their own interior ministers. These people should take note, he said: "The interior ministers would be well advised to have a look at their own reports to know what actually happens on our streets at night and in the shelters."

Wendt said that a high number of cases went unreported as women rarely dared to file complaints with police or public prosecutors.

This is a general problem with sex crime, regardless of the community where it is committed, due to the victims' feelings of fear and shame.

However, Barbara Helfrich of the charity Paritaetischer Bund in the central state of Hesse, said some women had come forward. "We have several trustworthy reports on sexual violence and assaults from victims, as well as advisory groups and NGOs," she told Reuters.

In a recent open letter, several charities alleged crimes had been committed a city shelter in the state. "There are several cases of rape and sexual assault and increasingly even reports on forced prostitution," the joint letter said, adding that these were not isolated incidents.

With men accounting for about 70 percent of asylum seekers, other groups across the country have demanded gender-segregated accommodation and safe zones for women.

On November 19 2015 10:36 Nyxisto wrote:
or maybe we don't take up only women and children because human rights apply to men too? Is this a serious proposal? If you want to help women and children organize legal channels through which they can get here. Refugees are mostly male because the trip is dangerous and they can use family re-unification laws, it isn't rocket science.

On November 19 2015 11:07 bo1b wrote:

Right so they didn't blow people up, remain an enormous money sink, remain unable to speak the native language for years, immediately push the crime rate through the roof.

The only argument that can be made for allowing mass immigration is that of a humanitarian perspective, but to just gloss over the very real negatives associated for more then 15 years with a ton of statistics backing it up is a little on the nose.

On November 19 2015 11:22 Plansix wrote:

There is little evidence that they are a drain on the economy or state. We already have a robust immigrant population and works on our soil and they are not a drain either. And the refugees fro. Germany would have had a similar status to the refugees of today, don't speak the language, needing placement.

The French are still going to accept refugees. It's a sad day when the US is more cowardly than the French on this subject. So terrified of terrorists that we refuse to do what our allies will.

On November 19 2015 11:17 RenSC2 wrote:

You do know you're in the US thread, right? I don't know of too many rafts illegally crossing the Atlantic Ocean with Syrian refugees on it.

So while Europe takes in the male refugees that want to flee, we in the United States take in a million or more women and children. That way the women and children aren't left behind in Syria while hoping for family re-unification laws to take effect. Instead, they are brought to America, out of harms way. If they'd then like to go to Europe to re-unify the family, that would be good.

Sure, it's sexist, but if you can get past political correctness for a moment, it seems like a palatable solution. Obama mocks Republicans for being afraid of women and children, but that's not what they're afraid of and any thinking human being knows it. He's not being genuine and he's not addressing the real fears.

His solution is 10,000 refugees over the next year and it's scary to a lot of Americans. I'm from Illinois, a Democrat state, but we've got a Republican governor now (who has proclaimed that he will reject Syrian immigrants, though he doesn't have legal power to do so) and if the national Democrats don't address real fears, Illinois won't remain blue forever. Mocking the fears with straw men isn't going to get rid of the fears.

IL will probably vote for native born Hillary Clinton anyways, but not Florida and Ohio. If a Republican takes those two states and the presidency, then the number of refugees from Syria goes from 10,000 to 0.

In my suggestion of only taking women and young children (12 and under), we could take in 100s of thousands or millions of refugees (10-100x more than Obama's proposal) and the fears of terrorism would be gone. Then the only argument would be economic, and that's a much easier argument for the Democrats to make.

The only thing it takes to get over this roadblock is to ignore political correctness on this issue.

On November 19 2015 11:39 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:


Can you please elaborate on what these legitimate concerns are? I've heard a lot of fearmongering and references to how 3 year olds are probably terrorists, but nothing legitimate.

On November 19 2015 11:42 Plansix wrote:
That is nothing. If we took in 50k, it would 1+ billion spread across the entire US federal government. That is 1/75 the budget of NYC. The federal government looses that much money in the couch cushions.

On November 19 2015 11:22 Plansix wrote:

There is little evidence that they are a drain on the economy or state. We already have a robust immigrant population and works on our soil and they are not a drain either. And the refugees fro. Germany would have had a similar status to the refugees of today, don't speak the language, needing placement.

The French are still going to accept refugees. It's a sad day when the US is more cowardly than the French on this subject. So terrified of terrorists that we refuse to do what our allies will.

A survey of French Muslims in 2014 found a community seething with anti-Semitism. Sixty-seven percent said “yes” when asked whether Jews had too much power over France’s economy. Sixty-one percent believed Jews had too much power in France’s media. Forty-four percent endorsed the idea of a global Zionist conspiracy of the kind described by the Holocaust-denying French Muslim comedian Dieudonne. Thirteen percent agreed that Jews were responsible for the 2008 financial crisis.

On November 19 2015 11:17 RenSC2 wrote:
The only thing it takes to get over this roadblock is to ignore political correctness on this issue.

On November 19 2015 11:46 kwizach wrote:

Respecting human rights is "political correctness", now? Let me fix your post: "The only thing it takes to get over this roadblock is to ignore any shred of human decency and empathy you might have left, and fully embrace bigotry and right-wing xenophobic myths".

On November 19 2015 11:43 bo1b wrote:

The U.S is now only accepting children as refugees?


Not a bad thing to say when National debt is pushing 18.6 trillion. And what on earth makes you think it would stop at 50k?

On November 19 2015 11:45 xDaunt wrote:
Comparing the present Muslim refugee population to the Jewish-German refugees from the 1930s is completely asinine. Let's just set aside the complete absence of Ashkenazi suicide bombers and terrorists for a moment and look at the other differences. The Jews were well-established in Europe and had largely assimilated into European society. We're talking about centuries (and in some cases, over a 1000 years) of coexistence. Religious differences aside, European Jews were a people adhering to largely Western values and traditions. You can look at any of the Jewish peoples (Sephardic, for example) and see them doing a pretty damned good job becoming part of their host society and truly assimilating into it despite the ebb and flow of antisemitism. You can't say the same about Muslims, who are not remotely Western, remain insular, and demand things such as their own court systems to administer Sharia law to community members.

On November 19 2015 11:48 Plansix wrote:

So you're scared of the refugees and don't think the we are capable to finding potential terrorist? Because that is what I'm hearing. That you are afraid we can't handle it, that we are competent enough.

On November 19 2015 11:45 xDaunt wrote:
Comparing the present Muslim refugee population to the Jewish-German refugees from the 1930s is completely asinine. Let's just set aside the complete absence of Ashkenazi suicide bombers and terrorists for a moment and look at the other differences. The Jews were well-established in Europe and had largely assimilated into European society. We're talking about centuries (and in some cases, over a 1000 years) of coexistence. Religious differences aside, European Jews were a people adhering to largely Western values and traditions. You can look at any of the Jewish peoples (Sephardic, for example) and see them doing a pretty damned good job becoming part of their host society and truly assimilating into it despite the ebb and flow of antisemitism. You can't say the same about Muslims, who are not remotely Western, remain insular, and demand things such as their own court systems to administer Sharia law to community members.