Thoughts on migration

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

Migration is not a threat, but an intrinsic part of human history. Every region of the world has received immigrants seeking safety, freedom, and opportunity since the earliest humans moved from West Africa. Yet today, migration often leads to debates that are fueled by fear and stereotypes.

What if, instead of seeing migrants as a burden or a threat, we viewed them as carriers of new skills, perspectives, and ideas that enrich the societies they join? Can we acknowledge that the so-called “static culture” that many fear losing has always been shaped and transformed by migration?

Why do we let fears about immigration rule our view of immigration? Is it possible that promoting integration policies and community-driven initiatives would help shift this mindset? How can governments, schools, and workplaces become partners in fostering positive narratives about migration?

Embracing immigration goes beyond providing work opportunities—it’s about creating spaces where migrants can thrive, contribute, and be treated with dignity and respect. Let’s imagine a world where community events and public dialogues focus on inclusion and empathy and where shared success stories lead to stronger connections across cultures.

What are your thoughts? Are we still bound by stereotypes and misconceptions, or do you believe society is ready to take these steps?

2

You’re not too familiar with Sharia, are you?

3

My thoughts are that immigration is indeed not the problem. There are two categories of the problem in my mind:

  1. People have a short memory when it comes to history and fail to see the moral failure of our ancestors and flaws in their present societies when they criticise immigrants. No person, group, religion, political party, nation, ethnic group or whatever has any right to wave the moralising finger at anyone. All we can do is point to mistakes that we or our society has made in the past that we do not want to repeat.

  2. Immigrants are no better, and when they become contemptive of their host nation, the answer is not to turn it into a society similar to where they have come from but to return to their origins if it was so good. Instead, immigrants need to understand the history of their own origins and that of their hosts and work together to prevent the mistakes of the past.

I say this as a former employer in the care industry, where many immigrants are employed. As long as we concentrated on doing a good job, their moral instances (often religion) played no other role than to integrate with the professional guidelines we all follow. I had a good relationship with all employees based on mutual respect, which seems to be the way ahead.

4

Safe borders are important to keep enemies out, and allow easy passage for refugees, tourists, and (im)migrants, who should always be welcomed with open arms.

We are all in the human family.

Especially my family.

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5

Do you mean, ingenuity? How’s this for ingenuity and new ideas, and the enrichment of societies that they join?

Some Albanian migrants have reportedly ditched small boats in a change of tack as people smugglers try to evade detection. The gangs are using lorries to transport individuals and veiling their activities on social media by disguising their advertisements as news articles, the Times reports. Almost all migrants who make their way Britain via small boats are intercepted by UK Border Force boats and processed. Individual’s details are then registered and Albanians are removed back to their native country.

However, lots of those who arrive in the back of lorries are undetected by British authorities. This comes as a price, as the method is more expensive at £23,000 a pop. Ads on TikTokinclude a wider package that also includes work in organised crime groups on cannabis farms or taking part in burglaries. The targets of these have included Premier League footballers. TikTok has improved its ability to remove the adverts, but smugglers just activate new accounts and ask “customers” to message them on WhatsApp, where they can operate without detection.

ikTok account named shqipet_london published a number of ads in March. These have been removed.

One of them said: “Journey on the head of the lorry for all we are waiting in Brussels.

"We have a journey every day. Security 100 per cent with Polish and British lorry drivers.

"For the boys with problems [people wanted to wanted in the EU for alleged crimes], only one SMS to us. We are the first hand of this business.”

A different one read: “Tomorrow, space in a lorry for four people. Journey starts in the evening, who is ready to go to the UK?”

They are risking lives for profit and becoming increasingly violent in their determination to make as much money as possible.

6

@ AlonsoAceves No clearly immigration isn’t a treat. For example, the native Americans continued to thrive when the Europeans immigrated, and are still flourishing and in full control of their destiny today. No threat at all in immigration. That is logical.

Because it is part of history, therefore it can’t be a threat. So logical. No threats in history. Threats aren’t part of history.

7

That is a good point. However, it’s a point against the sorts of people who hate immigrants, not just enemy invaders. Such haters invade their “own” country to this day, even if they were born there or legally immigrated.

8

This can only be sarcasm.

Indigenous populations across the Americas plummeted by approximately 90–95% between the late 15th and late 17th centuries. In North America specifically, the population of Native Americans declined from an estimated 8 million in 1492 to fewer than 600,000 by 1800, and further to about 250,000 by 1890.

The decline was driven by a combination of factors, including exposure to Eurasian diseases (e.g., smallpox, influenza), violent conflicts, massacres, forced displacement (e.g., Trail of Tears), and cultural genocide. Disease alone accounted for significant losses as Native populations lacked immunity to Old World pathogens.

Indigenous tribes lost nearly 99% of their historical land base due to colonization and expansion2. This led to the destruction of many tribes’ cultures, languages, and ways of life.

While specific data on the number of tribes eradicated is not readily available, it is clear that colonization resulted in the extinction or near-extinction of numerous tribes and irreparable damage to others.

9

Adapting to a new culture can definitely be tricky, and it often feels like a balancing act for both sides.

Do you think it’s the host society that should make more space for different customs, or is it the migrants who should embrace the local way of life more?

10

I understand that Sharia is based on interpretations of the Prophet Muhammad’s teachings. Could you share more about what you mean? Are you referring specific groups that interpret it in extreme ways?

11

What? Are you meaning to tell me you are incapable of a basic internet search to locate what “Islamic Sharia” is?

Do you perhaps not realize that most Muslims worldwide welcome Sharia and wish to live under its law? You may be forgiven for not knowing this, but. I mean, we each have access to the same internet.

Please, try to learn a few things about the future that is being prepared for you, without regard to and specifically AGAINST your own personal interest.

Well that last part is an assumption, since I don’t know you that well yet.

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12

I can’t decide whether this is funny or something we should be worried about

13

Yes, this was sarcasm, pointing out what overly enthusiastic immigration can mean. I understand the natives originally welcomed the Europeans. It may seem hyperbolic but we’re only half a century into the process of mass migration into Europe from Africa and the Middle East.

Where is the border between immigration and hostile takeover? Many people in Europe are worrying about great numbers of young men arriving by boats, unlike earlier immigrants seemingly lacking any intention to partake in the culture, let alone learn the language, so that it is hard to find work, who then successfully apply for social security moneys and housing which native people are often unable to acquire.

When the new kind of immigrants are both seemingly hostile to or at least contemptuous of host cultures, and get priority access to welfare money, it feels a bit creepy.

Numbers; over 50 percent of new immigrants get welfare, 20-30 percent of descendants of older immigrants, and only about 5 percent of the general population. Cities are obligated by law to free up housing for immigrants, where for native people the need for housing is very dire.

Maybe a little bit of discomfort is understandable.

@ AlonsoAceves “Do you think it’s the host society that should make more space for different customs, or is it the migrants who should embrace the local way of life more?”

The migrants don’t need to adapt in all ways, they should have the right to practice their tradition in their personal sphere, but they should at the very least show respect to the local way of life, if they are not so inclined the motives for migration would be parasitical and/or hostile in nature.

“What if, instead of seeing migrants as a burden or a threat, we viewed them as carriers of new skills, perspectives, and ideas that enrich the societies they join?”

Wouldn’t whether we view them in this or that way depend on what they actually demonstrate? It is a practical matter, not an abstract one.

14

If immigrants are to take up the offer of protection made by host countries, it is only reasonable that the culture of the host country should be respected. It is a sign of disrespect to start proselytising or even actively trying to dismantle the social order, and suggests that this was the intention of some groups of immigrants from the outset. In that case, it would be perfectly understandable for the host country to send the immigrants back to where they came from.

What seems to have been the policy in European countries in the 1960s was to recruit from other countries, which has been a common practice throughout history. Here in Germany we have a large Polish population because the former Masurians make a significant contribution to the labour force. Many emigrated during the industrialisation of the late 19th century to work in areas such as the Mines and Steelworks of the Ruhr Valley.

Germany’s recruitment of workers from Italy and Turkey was driven by post-war economic needs, labour shortages and structured migration agreements. In 1955, Germany recruited Italian workers early in its post-war recovery. Italians were seen as culturally similar due to a shared Christian heritage, which eased integration concerns. In 1961, an agreement was signed with Turkey to address persistent labour shortages. The initial two-year residence limit was abolished in 1964, allowing long-term settlement. By 2017, more than 2.77 million people with a Turkish migrant background were living in Germany, making them one of the country’s largest minority groups.

It was the conservative Chancellor Merkel who opened the floodgates without considering the integrative efforts needed to contain immigrants from war-torn Islamic countries, and many of the young men underwent long-winded processes, leaving them unemployed and bored. It is the bureaucracy of Germany that has caused many of the problems and the towns and cities faced a huge financial burden that the Federal government failed to address.

Immigration on this scale is obviously perceived as a threat to residents. It is also telling that expectancies amongst the immigrants often arise because of the self-portrayal of countries, and then consequently disappointed. In many cases, it is not only the ‘open arms’ policies but the incompetence of bureaucratic structures in the countries that exacerbate the problems.

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15

I appreciate you taking the time and patience to attempt to educate these people on the real world. For me, I have no patience left. I remember trying to fight this fight 10 years ago, and people like this were just the same way back then. They do not change.

In fact, I have never once seen anyone change, not really. Ok well, I did change when I woke up to the truth on these issues. It was a process of learning to see reality for what it is, without my own emotional biases and prior programmings. You and Parodites were instrumental in that, as were others.

Now I see, I am a very very rare case. Because other than myself I have never once seen anyone even try to take their blinders off. And that is a very weird thing. Because we are supposed to be humans, living in a supposedly free society. Humans are supposedly rational and thinking, able to ascertain truths especially if shown them. Or maybe that is naive.

What good is a human compared to any other animal if we cannot at least adapt and learn to see reality, to develop more truth over time and discard errors? Animals do that, albeit not as actively with such big brains as we have. But what I see is a parallel to mass migration: the taking over of the human mind, the colonization of thought and mentality with mass error.

First, we are still in this stage now, there is a breaking down of reason, thought, active mentality, respect for logic and especially respect for honesty and an ability to see reality as well as detect one’s own cognitive dissonances and emotional ties to key important ideas and issues. All of those are deeply human faculties, and I see in the people around me they are almost non-existent now. TV and chemicals in the food, water, air, EMF radiation, genetic decline, who knows what else… for whatever set of reasons, it has largely happened already. Those human faculties are dulled to the point of almost no longer existing.

The consequence of that is what you encounter every time you try to post the truth here. Instinct-level resistance, no-thinking, blind regurgitation of empty phrases and nice-sounding libfantasy hopiums. World-denial.

So what comes next? These people will not wake up. Their descendants, to the extent they have any, will likely be worse. What happens when the human mind dies in most of the important ways? Well then it can be filled in, directed, and taken over. I believe that process has just begun, as the saying goes we ain’t seen nothin yet.

Probably we will look back at these times and realize how lucky we were to live in a world where most people were simply stupid. As opposed to actual zombies entirely taken over by external forces like AI or whatever else is coming to eat their brains and replace the mind’s inner content with… something else.

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16

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The latter…

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

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Check out the US :backhand_index_pointing_down:t3: …the Albanians’ reach is crazy, literally world-wide… violent crime, brothels, human slavery, drugs, the works.

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…and the rest of the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albanian_mafia

17

agree with much of what you said, Bob. Immigration should be understood as a process of moderate, if not complete, integration of migrants into the culture of the host country. However, I believe that even if we can handpick immigrants who adhere to this norm, integration is a two-way street. At some point, the host country will have to accept that it will be impossible to completely strip migrants of their customs and beliefs. Consequently, subsequent generations—both descendants of migrants and those of the host—will develop a richer, more diverse culture with a broader range of worldviews.

The key is to ensure that neither the migrants nor the hosts radicalize the process in any direction.

18

That’s crazy. These bands of organized crime are growing larger and more powerful by the minute

19

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It’s definitely a phenomenon!

What would you propose, to deal contain and manage it?

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Are you saying that you didn’t know that this was going on?

20

What’s stopping us from asking the one defining question: Who benefits from migration? You’ll get a very specific gang of scoundrels who orchestrated it — and those who serve them, hiding behind history, politics, or whatever else suits their purpose.

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