This is what piss me off about this article. They don't mention that this has been done before and the commission never acted on it. Why? Because it does not fit with the story that there is a huge gulf opening up between the us and Europe as a result of the election of Donald Trump.
Disclaimer to protect my future employability in tech:
I don't support the DT I just am not a big fan of the media of late either.
Thanks. Between that and the non-binding nature of the vote (now added to the title above), this is just high-end trolling. I wish we could mature enough as a community not to act like decapitated chickens in response to these.
Another classic article pattern is when someone 'introduces a bill' (most proposed bills, of course, go nowhere).
That seems more like the initiation of the current process. They adopted rules in 2013 requiring reciprocity and specifying a series of steps to take if there isn't any, with revocation of visa-free travel to the EU an option as a "last resort". The vote today is claiming that those other steps have been tried and failed regarding the U.S. (unlike with some other countries, like Canada, where progress was made), and therefore advocates taking up that last resort, which was authorized in 2013 but has never yet been invoked. I do agree that there is a good chance the EU Commission will attempt to avoid doing so, though.
You are forgetting the "Visa Waiver Program". Essentially, the rest of us Europeans are required to fill out detailed forms, pay a fee for filling out those forms, and then get a government-issued authorization for "visa free" travel. Right.
As I've said below, if you have to get a visa, you have to fill out a much more detailed form [1], pay a fee that's 10 times higher (USD 160), and actually visit a US consulate for an interview with an official.
So, the visa waiver alleviates the process significantly.
[1] as the law presupposes that you want to immigrate, you have to prove non-immigration, by showing your plan to stay for a specific purpose and specific time, and show binding ties to another country to which you will return.
Also note that it's not binding, it has to go to the Commission first.
And, again, it's been an ongoing dispute since 2014. But still probably a reflection of the times.
(Note that the US Visa Waiver program is opened to countries that fulfil certain criteria in terms of (high) percentage of visa applications granted, and (low) percentage of admitted people overstaying. So, the US basically argues that they stick to their (country by country) criteria, while the EU insists on equal treatment.)
> And, again, it's been an ongoing dispute since 2014.
Not really a dispute initially, more of a concern. The original report notified 5 countries (Australia, Brunei, Canada, Japan and the US). By April 2016 the issues with Australia and Japan had been resolved and Brunei had announced their dropping of visa requirement to the EU, and in October 2016 Canada notified the EU they'd be dropping their visa requirement for Bulgarians and Romanians through 2017.
However,
> Despite the stepping up of political and technical contacts, there have not been comparable indications of progress towards the lifting of visas with the U.S.
> while the EU insists on equal treatment.
That's actually an EU rule it put in place back in 2001: EU visa waiver requires full reciprocity
That's really interesting. So you are saying the US is actually providing "equal treatment" but since each country's stats are grouped separately, some of them fall outside the requirements and lose out on visa waiver.
Of course if you grouped the stats for all of EU it would probably bring everyone in range, but it's hard to argue that would be the right policy for the US.
The point is that the US can arbitrarily keep the number of people who are refused visa as high as it wants. And than it can argue that this number is too high for visa waiver (and I bet the US is doing it for countries like Poland)
The US has an immigration policy that uses the no. of immigrants from every country to make various decisions, such as diversity lottery, green card grants etc. Therefore, its kinda stuck with insisting on a country-by-country basis for making Immigration/Visa decisions. IANAL and all that, but it might require Congress to make changes to the immigration laws to allow the Executive to authorize visa free travel to people from those countries.
what most likely would happen as most of these agreements is full reciprocity. i.e., like Europeans have to pay $14 for the ESTA visa waiver to travel in the US, Americans would have to do the same and register online.
That visa waiver would hopefully work for the entire E.U.
Or, like Australia, Brunei, Japan, and Canada which were similarly notified and implemented the changes, the US will do the same.
It's not simply the financial implications; the visa-process for B1/B2 entails handing over a ton of paperwork (e.g. student records, health records, employment records, etc.) which go into your file, and further, all your 10 fingerprints. The VWP doesn't entail all of that extra stuff. One could argue that the $160-$14 saving is but the simple part, the bigger issue is the loss of privacy that comes with the application of a visa.
What is going on in this world? I was reading news today that the parties on the right side of political spectrum are gaining ground all over Europe. US already has Republicans in power. Every country is becoming more nationalistic. What is driving this change? AFAICT there are no major issues that should have caused this.
This is not nationalistic. One of the standard things that happens with Visa costs is reciprocity. If you charge my citizens a fee for a visa, then I'll charge your citizens.
What is different here is that the EU is involved, and the EU is many countries which generally act like a bloc.
So the US grants Free Visa Access to 23 of the 28 members of the EU countries and likewise those 23 countries grant Free Visa Access to US citizens traveling to the EU. But what about those other five countries?
To make it even worse a US citizen can travel to say Germany, not pay for a visa and then travel to one of the five other countries and since a Germany Visa is actually a Schengen Visa and is good for any of the Schengen area you don't need another visa.
The EU has tried to work with the US to fix this but the US has so far refused or ignored the request.
You can travel to non schengen countries with a schengen visa. At least to countries which have active applications to become schengen members e.g. Cyprus. It's just that Cyprus can't issue a schengen visa. Partly one of the reasons Cyprus doesn't get as many refugees as Greece even though being geographically much closer to Syria and Turkey.
> AFAICT there are no major issues that should have caused this.
Populism and a perception that a more globally-connected world is concentrating the benefits of growth into the assets and control of a handful of individuals instead of "a rising tide lifting all boats." Also, the message that some politicians have been using ("trade agreements are evil!" "immigration is bad!" "the EU is making us abuse you!") has taken hold and people are pushing back against the perceived wrongs.
(I intentionally made no judgment call on the accuracy of these perceptions.)
I find most people have no problem acknowledging that the gap between the rich and poor is increasing, unless the topic is populist politics, then minds seem to change on the topic.
Oh, plenty of people that oppose the brand of right-wing politics usually denoted in talk about "populist" politics (which is largely authoritarian nationalism) have no problem acknowledg ING that the charge of current economic policies unfairly and unnecessarily increasing the rich/poor gap are true.
It's possible to believe that and think that the program of the "populists" coming to power on the back of it does nothing to alleviate that problem, as well as causing a bunch of other problems.
That's partially true but I think it's partially a recasting of right-wing thought into a left-wing mould.
The main driving factor is third-world immigration, and in particular the perception that mass immigration from the third world has had deleterious effects on the West, both economically and culturally.
What we're seeing right now is, I think, a preference cascade. For years people have been told that opposition to mass immigration is "racist" and have kept quiet about it, but now it's become more socially acceptable to talk about it.
> the message that some politicians have been using ("trade agreements are evil!" "immigration is bad!" "the EU is making us abuse you!") has taken hold
Or, perhaps, the dissatisfaction was there all along, and the politicians are merely exploiting the pain of a faction of the electorate. Humans are tribal. They don't become tribal overnight because a politician told them to do so.
The top 1% have been extremely successful in funneling wealth to themselves. The middle and lower classes are getting pissed off. They perhaps don't know exactly how to fight back so they are just smashing shit at random.
This is pretty much it. In the UK, despite the folks in The City funneling that wealth to themselves, the finance industry provides 35% of the British GDP. By fucking them over (whether or not they deserve it), the poor who rely on a lot of welfare have fucked themselves over in the long run.
And over in the US, they've elected a man president who is so boorish that if he ever gives a speech that isn't laden with idle insults and self-aggrandisement, that pundits talk about how presidential and statesmanlike it is.
As others have stated here, this is largely a reaction to globalization and immigration issues that have been present in the world's view. Globalization has left a large portion of each country behind. Large multinational firms have moved a lot of their low-skill labor to cheaper markets and developing countries, leaving a large swath of former employees in their wake with very little perceived hope of finding another job at the same level. Whether you agree with the feeling of hopelessness or not, you have to admit that there is a large population that feels that way. You can't tell them that their feelings or views are not valid and that this is good for the world; their world just got ruined for the profit of others.
Pair this with a large influx of immigrants from other countries, and it scares people even more. The constant threat of terrorism has caused people to live in fear, and governments to react accordingly.
All in all, those are some major parts of the puzzle.
In another comment section (Reddit, I believe) there was anecdotal evidence that visitors from Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Poland and Romania regularly outstayed their visas and were notorious for violating a tourist visa, hence the additional checks the US wanted to put them through.
> In another comment section (Reddit, I believe) there was anecdotal evidence that visitors from Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Poland and Romania regularly outstayed their visas and were notorious for violating a tourist visa, hence the additional checks the US wanted to put them through.
I guess it was anecdotal evidence, because the data shows the contrary:
There are a few countries on the VWP that have higher overstaying ratios (Hungary, Chile, Slovakia). Croatia in particular has an overstaying ratio lower than Austria's and Netherlands'. Source: https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/FY%2015...
The reason they don't get VWP is the visa refusal rate, aka "US embassy in your country does not want to give you visa".
Using the visa refusal rate as an excuse sounds a bit like circular logic: "We're not going to give you online rubber-stamped visas, because we're currently not giving you many visas." I'm not saying that the refusals don't have merit, but since they are discretionary, the refusal rate may never improve. It's just the perception: "Those Eastern-Europeans seem dodgy to me, so we won't allow them because they'll surely overstay." Yet the reality is that they don't overstay so much.
"In another comment section (Reddit, I believe) there was anecdotal evidence that visitors from Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Poland and Romania regularly outstayed their visas and were notorious for violating a tourist visa, hence the additional checks the US wanted to put them through."
Well, what would you think if we said the same thing about US-americans (remember the term american is also from Colombians) from a number of states?
No, we the EU are one and if you do this to Bulgaria, you are doing this to all of us. This is not nationalism, it's actually the opposite.
Pedantic or Latin American, in my experience; it's not much fun to be forgotten, and I feel their frustration but can't think of a very good solution. "US-American" doesn't really roll off the tongue... Maybe the US could adopt the same ethnonymn as Usa, Japan? :P
Well they are South Americans then. In my experience (my Brazilian friends at least) they prefer being called Brazilian. Nobody except those with an axe to grind or more time than is good for them care that people from the United States of America are called Americans. I really wish people would just grow up and stop caring about stupid little things like that.
Or people for who English is not their first language. In Spanish at least, an "americano" is anyone from the Americas. People from the US are "estadounidenses".
It started with the Mexican-American war of 1846, so that is a viable theory (though the CIA was not yet involved). That's the war Mexicans still teach in every Mexican school with a big famous map showing that California and Texas are Mexican territory unjustly stolen by the USA.
Terrorism in Cyprus? Been living in Cyprus most of my life I don't remember hearing of any terrorist incidents other than an attempted bombing of Israeli embassy in the 80s. There's definitely more terrorist activity in Western Europe than eastern.
And (in many countries) significantly underestimate the the threat from actual threats like pollution and climate change.
I've been working on a project related to greenhouse gas emission savings lately and it's depressing how "massive" gains in efficiencies are a drop in the bucket of total emissions.
It certainly doesn't have to be a physical threat. People respond extremely negatively historically to forces that alter the culture they are used to or prefer.
If you take 30 million people from African Muslim majority nations and drop them into France in the next few decades, would the French culture remain unchanged? No, it would change dramatically. The people of France would react as you'd expect to the notion of that cultural change. The people of France - in my opinion - largely believe their culture works, that it is very valuable, that it is beneficial to their quality of life. Why would they want to see it change substantially? There will be something like a billion plus more people living in Africa and the Middle East in just the next 25 or 30 years, while the population of Europe contracts. Europeans have one of two choices to make in that time: heavily lock down immigration, or allow vast cultural change (and I'm sure it'll vary widely from nation to nation what occurs).
What's the big deal with climate change and famine? I am sitting in an air-conditioned room and have a pantry full of food! We as a species have hilariously overblown reactions to perceived threats.
The smug your-problem-aren't-real attitude by the elite is certainly another reason for populism.
> Are you serious? It is largely a reaction to globalization and the refugee crisis.
The financial crisis is the real problem. The refugee crisis is just another problem on top of the existing one... Basically people already struggling to make end meet, don't want extra cheap labour in the market.
Yeah, I was gonna say early Climate Change effects and Automation/AI's wealth concentration. Just wait until the Genetic Engineering really starts rolling now that we have CRISPR-CAS9.
Meh, mortality rate would be bad, but not as bad as it was in those days. IVs help a lot with dehydration, which they did not have. You'll need something more lethal to accomplish the terrifying and sadistic goal of being the worst thing to have happened to the world since the dinosaurs. Likely, we will just mumble along like we always have through the black death, polio, etc.
What made you doubt my seriousness? Of course I am serious. I am not aware of how bad refugee crisis. Sure, people are complaining but we are not talking about millions of refugees that change the social fabric altogether. Globalization has been going on for decades now and things do seem to have improved for many. Why now?
> ...but we are not talking about millions of refugees that change the social fabric altogether.
That is exactly what people are talking about. [1-5]
> Globalization has been going on for decades now and things do seem to have improved for many. Why now?
Things have improved for some, generally in different countries than the places where things have gotten much worse. See the decline of middle America. Add an elite class who's comfortable with and encourages income inequality [6], and you get lots of anger and backlash. Especially if you only call the people with complaints about globalization ignorant and racist for caring about their own self interest.
> millions of refugees that change the social fabric altogether
Note that there were slightly over 1 million applications for asylum in Europe in 2015 [1]. I can't find numbers for totals in 2016, but [2] has some raw statistics & charts. Note that these numbers don't account for migrants that don't apply for asylum (which could be a very small or a very large percentage, but is likely non-zero).
I can't speak for the "changing the social fabric" bit though.
This isn't true, his base of support is motivated by any number of factors and many of them are financially well off.
Plenty of his political supporters would be happier if he behaved more like the usual politicians but will put up with his shenanigans as long as they get what they want from him.
What's driving it all it the fact that US completely destabilized the Middle East and started funding ISIS and affiliates. This has resulted in one of the greatest humanitarian crisis in history, and triggered a massive influx of refugees seeking shelter in Europe from the region.
This is what's knows at the refugee crisis, and what the right wing European parties have been using to go mainstream.
For a while, I had thought that the modern world had finally transcended the grip of medieval-minded ignorance. But the medievals didn't go away, and they eventually organized and voted and, in the U.S., got lucky with a system that disproportionately allocates presidential voting power, allowing the GOP to win 3 out of the past 7 elections despite having won the vote only once.
Surely the U.S.A. (a 1776 result of the scientific Enlightenment responsible for every single improvement to human life, assuming that you don't want to be a disease-ridden illiterate peasant lucky to make it to your 30's) meets any reasonable categorization of a nation-state.
46% of Americans believe that humans were created in their current form sometime in the last 10,000 years by a Bronze Age deity fond of stoning. Don't even start trying to convince me that the medieval world is behind us.
> AFAICT there are no major issues that should have caused this.
Globalization, the rise of the precariat, anemic economic recovery since the recession for the lower and middle classes, justified and unjustified distrust in institutions, better use of technology and propaganda by the right, poor quality of liberal/centerist establishment candidates...
But besides that, no, nothing is driving this phenomena.
It is true that populist parties are on the rise. However, both in France and in Germany, favorites for this year election are on the center-left (Emmanuel Macron and Martin Schultz, respectively) and very firmly in favor of more EU integration. The rise of nationalist parties doesn't necessarily mean that people are becoming more nationalist overall.
People are talking about globalism in response to your question, but that answer is beating around the bush. The truth is that neo-liberal elites have been slowly weakening democracies and taking more and more wealth and power. They recognize that the inequality gap is now too large, but in their greed and competitiveness they have been unable to relinquish their grasp despite and a critical mass of unrest is fomenting.
An example is how the US Democrats clearly needed to support an anti-establishment progressive to win the election but in their greed for power and wealth they maintained the status quo rather than doing something that would help the common man, giving up the election to a nationalist.
It's complicated but one issue is what you might call depression economics. Before in the 1930s and now there was an economic boom when people ran up a lot of debts followed by a period of anemic demand while the debts got repaid. Both periods had approx 0% interest rates and quite a bit of unemployment and the rise or right wing / fascist politics. Not quite sure why - I guess the left out people don't understand debt deflation and blame immigrants and foreigners for their lack of jobs and money. At least we have a lite version compared to the 30s.
Pretty much all of the responses here are irrelevant. (Perhaps accurate, but unrelated to this story.) As per the top comment on this article, what's happening is that The Economist hit a slow news day and wrote up a non-story in a misleading way.
For years now, the US hasn't honored visa-free travel for five eastern European countries. That technically violates the visa-free reciprocity agreement, so the EP occasionally makes some noise about enforcing those rules. The EC doesn't want to, nor do actual European member states (even the ones not getting reciprocity!) because it would hugely deter tourism, something places like Greece really can't afford.
So: the EC is rattling a saber to press the US to hurry up on a narrow bureaucratic issue. The US will probably continue to ignore them, and the EC will probably not do anything about it. A bunch of news orgs looking for clicks slapped dramatic headlines on that and spun it as closely related to current events, making all of us a little more ignorant.
This specific situation is not that, it's a problem with visa waiver reciprocity: all US citizens get a waiver to the EU, but not all EU countries get waiver in the US. In 2001 the EU adopted a rule that reciprocity is required for an EU visa waiver.
The US were notified about the non-reciprocity issue in 2014 alongside Australia, Brunei, Canada and Japan, published in the Official Journal of the European Union on 12 April 2014[0]. The situation with Australia and Japan had been resolved by April 2016[1], Brunei resolved it in April 2016[2], and Canada is in the process of resolving it and will be implementing reciprocity through 2017 but there had been no such evidence from the US by December 2016[3]:
> Following intensive and coordinated efforts and sustained engagement between the EU and Canada at political and technical level ahead of the 16th EU-Canada Summit on 30 October 2016 in Brussels, Canada provided a clear timeline for achieving full visa waiver reciprocity with Bulgaria and Romania, the two remaining EU countries whose citizens still require visas. On 3 October 2016 Canada announced that it will lift the visa requirement from 1 May 2017 for Bulgarian and Romanian travellers who have held a Canadian temporary resident visa in the past 10 years or who hold a valid U.S. non-immigrant visa. The rest of the travellers will become visa-free as from 1 December 2017.
> Despite the stepping up of political and technical contacts, there have not been comparable indications of progress towards the lifting of visas with the U.S.
Financialization of the banking sector and globalisation[1] happened. Socialists in Europe and the US (if you like to call democrats socialists...) failed miserably to address any of the above in a meaningful way, so we're in 1929 all over again.
[1] Money can move freely across borders now but not people ;-)
> What is going on in this world? I was reading news today that the parties on the right side of political spectrum are gaining ground all over Europe. US already has Republicans in power. Every country is becoming more nationalistic. What is driving this change? AFAICT there are no major issues that should have caused this.
Yeah... Not going to happen. Americans spend billions on European vacations, and nobody is going to threaten that when push comes to shove (any additional hassle is going to send people to Cancun instead). This is just posturing.
There will be in uptick in international travelers skipping the US and going elsewhere in Europe. The downward trend in travel to the US is being called the Trump slump. NYC for instance is now projecting 300,000 fewer international tourists in 2017 than the previous year instead of the 400,000 gain over the previous year predicted a few months ago. Travel searches for flights and lodging in the US are down 20 to 50% worldwide outside the US. Those vacationers have to go somewhere besides here. It may as well be EU countries.
Like Europeans spend billions on American trips with the strictest VISA system, handing over even social media accounts and going through other non-standard border procedures. I don't think VISA requirements are a major force in tourism.
That is absolutely true, however the majority of European sway is with Germany, and the lost tourism would hit other countries (Greece, Spain, Croatia) much harder.
There will be a hit in tourism, but I doubt that it will happen on those three countries. When Americans go to Europe they tend to focus on France/Italy; Spain is more popular for Europeans. Think about tourists in Miami (searching for sun) compared to tourists in New York (searching for "history").
For me to go on vacation to the US, as a European citizen (outside of the 6 countries that are the reason for this action), I just need to get an ESTA for $15 or so. I guess the EU visa will cost something similar. It's not going to change anything.
they're proposing requiring full visas for US citizens if the US doesn't comply, the sort where you have to book an appointment with the consulate for an interview and pay several hundred dollars.
Yup. Visa entails filling out a huge form [1], submitting it and a fee of USD 160, visiting a US consulate for an interview with an official, then getting a visa, or a rejection (with no reasons specified).
[1] It's a huge form because, to quote Wikipedia,
> The presumption in the law is that every nonimmigrant visa applicant (except certain employment-related applicants, who are exempt) is an intending immigrant unless otherwise proven. Therefore, applicants for most nonimmigrant visas must overcome this presumption by demonstrating that:
* The purpose of their trip is to enter the U.S. for a specific, intended purpose;
* They plan to remain for a specific, limited period; and
* They have a residence outside the U.S. as well as other binding ties which will ensure their return at the end of their stay.
Citizens of the five countries currently have to get a full B-2 visa to visit the U.S., which costs $160 and involves an interview at the embassy. Why do you think the requirements for U.S. citizens coming to Europe would be much less onerous?
there's around 12 million travelers* from the US to Europe every year, so if a ESTA-reciprocity is implemented, it'll bring around $180m of revenue to European immigration offices.
* that's only counting leisure travelers, there might be many more business travelers?
ESTA is all electronic, the process would be automatic, I'm sure you can run it for less than $180m a year.
It could be as simple as: Enter first name, last name, passport number, passport country, date of flights >>> Cool you have 90 days this year! or >>> You've stayed more than 90 days, please get a real visa.
If one gets denied the ESTA, like the US system he'd get refunded $10 of the $14 and if he stills want to travel, he would then have to show up to the embassy for a real, couple of hundreds dollars visa, similar to what today's countries who are not part of the ESTA program have to go through to visit the US.
It's not even a visa, and neither is VWP (a program designed to allow individuals from certain countries to enter the U.S. without obtaining a visa) which ESTA determines your eligibility for.
In the past 8 years, the relations between the EU and the US had improved a lot (despite there being some high profile espionage scandals). I truly hope both sides can work together, and solve minor issues like these. It would really suck to go back to the times of "Freedom Fries", especially with the threat of inner rupture, and Russian pressure in the Baltics.
> I truly hope both sides can work together, and solve minor issues like these.
The issue has been ongoing for almost 3 years (the US were notified in April 2014, alongside 4 other countries which have either resolved the issue or announced a resolution timeline), and the latest report of the commission on the subject (in December 2016) noted:
> Despite the stepping up of political and technical contacts, there have not been comparable indications of progress towards the lifting of visas with the U.S.
So outlook not so good, the US doesn't seem much interested.
The revengeful soul in me hails it (being married to an Iranian women that should currently better not sei a foot there and myself needing a visa because I visit Iran regularily).
The European citizen that I am takes a deep breath of calm as he knows that this was "only" a decision in the parliament, so probably not much will happen in real life.
> What is driving this change? AFAICT there are no major issues that should have caused this.
I honestly can't imagine how you could avoid exposure to any of the incredible amount of discontent in Europe right now.
European leaders have been importing millions(!) of people from incredibly violent, theocratic, illiterate, and regressive regions, to the detriment of peaceful, secular, educated, and liberal Europeans who are not socially or memetically equipped to handle such an influx of radically different and heavily indoctrinated people. European news media emphatically denies that anything bad is happening; "No, rape rates have only gone up a little bit! No, we're not putting a wall around the Eiffel Tower, it's an aesthetic perimeter! No, Sweden isn't banning christmas lights in public for Muslims; it's because we all of a sudden realize that street lights can't structurally support christmas lights!" Most people in Europe are not dumb enough to fall for this.
For decades, the sentiment in the European political system has been "us last". Here's a great quote from the President of the EU Parliament until earlier this year, Martin Schulz: (and yes, it's a real quote): "For me, the new Germany exists only in order to ensure the existence of the State of Israel and the Jewish people."
The conclusion that any impartial observer would make is that European politicians don't seem to give much of a shit about Europeans, and instead see them as more of a resource to be used up for the sake of various political causes (mass immigration is a big one, and as Mr. Schulz demonstrated, Zionism is another).
It should come as exactly zero surprise that, at some point, Europeans are going to get fed up with being treated like shit by their own political system.
I'm not even European, but this sentiment is very obvious to me from my European expat friends. A large number of them are in support of leaving the EU in favor of increased national sovereignty (because then at least their own interests might come into play), and those that want to stay in the EU mostly feel that way because they falsely conflate free movement and free trade with the existence of the EU.
The result of this discontent with (forced) social globalism is that countries are becoming more isolationist. This led to Brexit, will possibly lead to France leaving the EU as well (although the EU parliament is currently trying to attack Le Pen), and who knows what next.
To be clear, I'm not happy about any of this, but I honestly don't know how people didn't see it coming.
A couple things that are both true: (1) Yes, there is political discontent; (2) No, you can't conduct flamewars here.
Nothing like this wretched, tedious subthread ("Angela Merkel has chosen to ethnically cleanse the German people") belongs here. We ban accounts that take HN into circles of internet hell, so please don't post political or ideological rants in the first place. HN comments should become more focused, civil, and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. If ever there were a case for a negative feedback loop it's this one.
All: If you can't discuss something in the spirit of this site—intellectual curiosity—then please don't post until you can.
> European leaders have been importing millions(!) of people from incredibly violent, theocratic, illiterate, and regressive regions
We have a large Turkish community in Germany and it turns out that the new people from e.g. Syria are less violent, theocratic and regressive than the 3rd generation Turkish immigrants we already had.
> I'm not even European
Which means you have no idea whats going on. People here care more about their favorite soccer team than immigrants. Right wing party popularity is falling again after having a short peak. The real problems in Europe are caused by stupid "austerity" politics, not by refugees.
Maybe it could have, but it wasn't. Have you tried analyzing my arguments instead of just recognizing that it sort of reminds you of something you disagree with?
This type of reaction is why the discussion has been polarised so much, in Europe and elsewhere. Instead of sticking on simple labels and well-worn claims of 'hate speech' you'd do better to try to refute those statements with data. Let's try, shall we?
The first statement was that 'European leaders have been importing millions'. Your simply deny this without any evidence to the contrary. The facts seem to point to the validity of the original claim, with Germany taking in more than a million migrants and refugees (these are two different categories) all by itself. Maybe it would have been closer to the truth to state 'around 1.5 million in a single year' instead of 'millions', but the original poster did not state that the claim was for a single year. All in all, the original claim has more validity than your flat-out denial.
The second claim was that these migrants and refugees come from 'incredibly violent, theocratic, illiterate, and regressive regions'. You claim this to be 'aggressive against millions of people'. Let's dissect the original claim, starting with 'violent'. This needs no discussion, those regions are violent, this being one of the stated reasons for people to leave them in the first place. The middle-east is riddled with conflict, it is a volatile region. Syria and Iraq in particular stand out but it would be foolhardy to the extreme to try to claim the rest of the region is stable and peaceful. The next part of the statement is 'theocratic'. Taken literally this is only true for part of the region from which the migrants and refugees come. Iran is a theocracy, and Iran is where a large part of those claiming to be Afghans come from. Syria and Iraq are in themselves not theocracies but the regions claimed by IS/Daesh are. The African countries from which a large part of the migrants come are not theocracies, although most of them have an islamic majority.
The claim of illiteracy applies to part of the countries from which migrants arrived to Europe. Literacy in Afghanistan is 28% - that is literacy, so the illiteracy rate is 72% [1]. Other regions fare better but compared to the near 100% literacy rate in western and northern Europe they fall short. Literacy in Africa varies wildly but none of the African countries from which migrants arrive nears 100% [2].
The third part of the original claim was that these countries are 'regressive'. This is a very subjective term and as such can not be dealt with like the other claims. It could be applied to some of the countries from which refugees (Syria, Iraq) and migrants (Somalia, Afghanistan) arrived as those countries did regress from stability into chaos due to the collapse of governmental and societal institutions.
Now to the last part of the original statement, the one which states that 'European politicians don't seem to give much of a shit about Europeans'. You call this 'hate speech', but that is simply wrong and one of the more damaging parts of your claims. Hate speech is one of those labels often used by those who wish to quell discussion (others are 'racism', 'islamophobia', 'xenophobia', 'fascism', etc.). The term 'hate speech' is relatively well-defined as being "speech which attacks a person or group on the basis of attributes such as gender, ethnic origin, religion, race, disability, or sexual orientation" [3]. You apply this term to a claim of politicians not looking out for their constituency. This is a total misapplication of the term, using it in such a way actually devalues it by implying that politicians who follow their own agenda (which many of them do) are no worse than, say, Westboro baptist church supporters toting claims of whatever horror being some gods punishment for homosexuality.
Germany 'imported' migrants by making it well-known around the world that they'd accept anyone who claimed to be from Syria. This message was heard by traffickers who passed it on to their victims by claiming they'd be welcomed with open arms by Merkel. Those victims - or the family of the victims who sent one of their sons to serve as 'anchor' - paid large sums to the traffickers to smuggle them into the Schengen zone, from where they could make their way into Germany or Sweden.
Who claimed that Germany 'imported millions of illiterate people from Afghanistan'? I do not see that claim anywhere but in your last message.
Bringing up Goebbels in a politically tainted discussion is counterproductive unless there is a clear cause to do so. In this case there is no such cause.
Making claims of something being 'the usual tactics by the right wing propaganda' is even less helpful as all it does is polarise the discussion. Leave out the labels, the epithets, stop comparing with Nazi tactics. If you don't think you can 'win' without resorting to such means there is a good chance you don't have anything useful to add to the discussion.
Germany did not make anything like that 'well-known' around the world.
Refugees have been fleeing for some time from Syria, especially when the war escalated. People from North Africa increasingly come to Europe, especially because the events of the last decade: war, collapse of order, economic problems, ...
Claiming that all these people come to Germany, because we imported or invite them is just a lie. The wave of refugees coming to Germany from Syria was especially, because no one else helped them, just when the war escalated. Some EU countries don't get enough help dealing with refugees and others simply refuse to provide help. In the past German politics wasn't very helpful either and the problem slowly escalated over time. But one of the root causes are failed politics of regime change in middle east and north africa.
1, 2 or 3 million refugees in Germany is not the biggest problem. The much bigger problem is ending the war in Syria, which is to a large part caused or fueled by countries like the US, Russia, Iran, the Saudis, ... If the war ends, many refugees could return home... which would take years.
You brought up the illiteracy rate of Afghanistan, not me.
Don't whine when you spread right-wing propaganda that you sound like Goebbels. That's all from Nazi propaganda: Überfremdung durch Massen von Untermenschen, Politiker als Volksverräter, ...
IOM and UNHCR estimated 1 million refugees back in December 2015. More since then.
> This is aggressive against millions of people.
Not sure how. You can describe it however you like, but that won't change the fact that it's true.
> This is hate speech.
Criticizing European politicians is hate speech? Interesting.
(Side note: this is why people don't like "hate speech" laws. A surprising number of people think "hate speech" means essentially anything they disagree with.)
> IOM and UNHCR estimated 1 million refugees back in December 2015. More since then.
True, but they have not been 'imported' by politicians. These people fled from the war in Syria. Germany has a right for these people to ask for asylum in its constitution. Unlimited.
> Criticizing European politicians is hate speech
Claiming that European politicians give a shit (his words) about their citizens is not 'criticizing' anything. It's just hate speech against politicians.
I don't agree with Merkel in many things, but I'm pretty sure that she cares a lot about Germans. Practically every German politician does.
> Claiming that European politicians give a shit (his words) about their citizens is not 'criticizing' anything. It's just hate speech against politicians
This is probably the strongest invocation of Poe's law I've seen in the last few years.
I'm European and German. I feel well supported by politicians like Merkel and Schulz. Both are among the most popular politicians in Germany and there is a reason Merkel is chancellor: people have voted for her politics. After the next election either Merkel or Schulz will be chancellor.
The whole "if you support Europe in any respect, you must be a white supremacist" meme is one of the most inane things I've heard in a long time. Europe isn't all white, and hundreds of millions of white people aren't in Europe. You've made a lazy attack that doesn't actually address what I said.
"For me, the new Germany exists only in order to ensure the existence of the State of Israel and the Jewish people."
Funny then how Angela Merkel has chosen to ethnically cleanse the German people and replace them with a population whose top geopolitical priority is and has always been the destruction of Israel and the extermination of the Jews.
The new 'refugee' dominated Germany is going to be an interesting place.
We've banned this account for abusing HN. I hate to ban anyone who's been here for years, but ideological and political battle is not what this site is for—indeed it poisons everything we care about. When we ask someone to stop and instead they do it worse, obviously we have to ban them.
One significant thing that you are missing is a sense of making good on past misdeeds. Europe owes it's economic power to centuries of fucking over Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. And when they de-colonised those places, they set up systems to keep them fucked up. So when you see refugees trying to escape those places, there is a sense of duty to them.
A clear case of this is Syria, which is in the shitter because of the Western destruction of Iraq fifteen years ago. Before the US went in, a number of critics were saying that the US had no exit plan and that removing Hussein would massively destabilise the region - both turned out to be true. So when millions of refugees stream out of there, "our side did that to them".
Another thing you're missing is that Europe still has in living memory the scars of what happens when you're divided rather than unified. We don't have the pain of nazi occupation and collaboration here in Anglotown. WWII had not only country against country, but neighbour against neighbour, and we Anglos have absolutely no idea of what that was like. The same thing happened more recently in '90s former Yugoslavia. European unity is about more than free trade.
Yes, you're right; European politics has fallen victim to ridiculous notions of ancestral guilt. Is it any wonder that people who had no involvement in something that happened hundreds of years ago are unhappy that they're being punished for it?
> European unity is about more than free trade.
You're right again, which is why it's insane to drive a wedge between Europeans with politically and socially untenable forced immigration.
Just because you say it's "socially untenable forced immigration" does not make it so. You have no evidence that it is, indeed, untenable. Rants from your "expat friends" are not evidence, they are anecdotes.
Germany has been accepting much more immigrant refugees than other European countries, out of moral duty but also out of economic interest. Germany has had pro-immigration programs for years before that, especially after the great recession, because the country has a deficit of young working-age people to contribute to their economy.
Some refugees have committed crimes and offenses, as it is likely to happen from any large group of people. I have yet to see any evidence that they do it in higher proportion that european-born population.
You can take any anecdote and turn it into fear-mongering. Before we had refugees, romani people were the target of choice, before that, south-europeans. Nationalists have always found a convenient scapegoat.
And by the way, there is no evidence that immigration, even mass choc-wave immigration, has adverse effects on the economy of a country.
Just because you say it's "socially untenable forced immigration"
does not make it so. You have no evidence that it is, indeed, untenable.
Have a look around the suburbs of [Sweden] Stockholm, the city of Malmö, some of the suburbs of Göteborg or [France] the banlieux of Paris to get a view on what the original poster meant. There is no need for 'rants from "expat friends"' to form an opinion on the situation which has developed due to untenable migration.
Also, what do you mean by 'immigrant refugees'? There is no such thing as an 'immigrant refugee', people either come as refugee or as immigrant. You can claim that refugees are by definition immigrants. Objectively speaking this is true as they migrated from another country, but in the context of the discussion on migration it only serves to muddle the view as refugees have a special status, guaranteed by international conventions, whereas immigrants do not have this claim. This is an important distinction due to the fact that many immigrants (without valid claims of refuge) came along with the refugees from the war in Syria and Iraq. In some countries - Sweden being a good example - the majority of those claiming asylum fall under this category and as such did not have valid reasons for asylum. The insistence on grouping these different categories together only serves to erode the public support for true asylum seekers as the number of people 'hitching a ride' on the crisis quickly strains the capacity of a country to take up (true) refugees to the breaking point (viz. Sweden, again). Sweden has now 'closed its borders' (in theory, at least, in practice it still takes up around 50.000 per year).
I have yet to see any evidence that they do it in higher
proportion that european-born population.
Evidence is available in abundance for those willing to look for it. Here is an often-discussed publication from the Swedish "Crime-prevention council" on the subject:
I'm a migrant myself (from the Netherlands to Sweden) so this thing is interesting to me. If you read these reports you'll soon find out that it is not simply the fact that someone migrates from country A to country B which makes him or her more likely to commit crimes. A simple look at the statistics shows that immigrants from certain regions to both Sweden and the Netherlands are actually underrepresented in crime statistics, this goes for people from eg. China and Japan. People who come from eg. north-African and middle-eastern countries are over-represented. Over- or under-representation in crime statistics is more a factor of culture and cultural differences than it is a simple factor of origin.
Hundreds of years ago? Decolonialisation was still going strong in the 1960s, with some last vestiges as late as the 1980s.
> they're being punished for it?
This is such a childish view. Recognising that you've benefitted from the suffering of others and wanting to share back some of those benefits is not "punishment".
You can't comment like this here, so please don't. Yes, the GP started it with the 'dumb enough', but the 'your nonsense' clearly crosses into personal incivility and we ban accounts that do that.
> Feel free to actually try to refute anything I said.
Refute right-wing propaganda?
> It is according to Avraham Burg, and I'm not sure there is anyone more qualified to make such a claim.
Point me to a recording where Schulz said anything like that. On the contrary, Schulz has a decade long track record working for Germany and the European Union.
I'm not right-wing by any stretch of the imagination (pretty hard left, actually), so the fact that instead of actually thinking about my arguments you just slap a label on them and dismiss them out of hand should disturb you.
Perhaps what's confusing to you is that I'm capable of considering the thought process of people I disagree with.
> Point me to a recording where Schulz said anything like that.
You understand that not everything politicians say is recorded? That said, Burg has literally no reason to lie about this.
> You understand that not everything politicians say is recorded? That said, Burg has literally no reason to lie about this.
So all you have is that?
Let's sum it up: there is no recording of that, there are no witnesses, there has been no transcript, Schulz himself has never acknowledged it, there are no other sources where Schulz has said anything like that, ...
All you have is a sentence which is circulating in right-wing groups.
It's actually obvious that Germany in its current form exists and that Martin Schulz aims to be its next chancellor.
> All you've done is prove my point
Sure not.
> even people who work for the EU for a long time appear to have plenty of conflicting non-EU interests.
So what you're saying is that a direct claim from a high-ranking Israeli politician about a conversation he had, with no apparent benefit to lying about its contents, is not enough?
> right-wing groups
Haaretz, a liberal Israeli newspaper, is a "right wing group"?
> What does it have to do with Martin Schulz?
I feel like I'm chatting with a bot; do you remember the course of our conversation?
Yes, Schulz has been working for the EU for a long time; he also, apparently, has had strong interests outside the EU for as well. Why do you think many Europeans feel betrayed by the EU?
> So what you're saying is that a direct claim from a high-ranking Israeli politician about a conversation he had, with no apparent benefit to lying about its contents, is not enough?
Exactly. Random people can claim anything. There is no credible source and Schulz never said anything like that on record.
You might want to listen to what Schulz actually says.
> Haaretz, a liberal Israeli newspaper, is a "right wing group"?
Repeated only by right-wing groups.
> he also, apparently, has had strong interests outside the EU for as well.
"... Among the newspapers Haaretz is definitely left leaning, with some columnists in the radical left. ..."
Claiming that Haaretz is 'Repeated only by right-wing groups' is rather unbelievable, they'd be undermining their own arguments by doing so. That is, unless the 'left and radical left' in Israel is actually 'right' when compared to other countries. I don't think this is the case.
Burg's comments put Schultz's ability to support pro-Israeli policies at risk; if he's known to be an ardent supporter of Israel for ideological reasons (to the exclusion of concern for Germany), people will be more critical of his motivations when it comes time to e.g. send military aid to Israel.
Calling out your supporters, when being a supporter is politically contested, isn't a good idea. If Burg was lying, he'd be better off saying that Schulz doesn't give a shit about Israel.
Stating that Germany only exists for the sake of Israel is controversial, however. (At least, I hope it is! I hope most Germans have enough self-interest to dislike the idea of being a vassal state.)
"The main reason for the vote is the way that travellers from some EU countries are treated by America. While most citizens of EU countries can travel to the United States without a visa, those from Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Poland and Romania must still obtain one. Because the EU demands equal treatment of all its citizens in such matters, it says it is legally obliged to fight back."
I won't say it's a good idea - the vote is not even binding, btw -, but at least there's a reasoning behind it. EU wants to be treated as a country[1] and no country accepts different visa requirement for their states.
The EU is composed of seven major institutions, only one of which has direct representation by voters (the EU parliament), and the number of representatives of each country is (roughly) proportional to their size, so any given voter of a small EU country has effectively zero representation. The EU is very far from a democratic, representative system, and yet it hold tremendous power over its 'constituents.' Not to mention the irresponsible ECB policies and fiscal safety net draining the few remaining EU countries with any wealth... I'd like to see more state sovereignty and individual sovereignty return to Europe.
The freedom of trade and movement that the EU brought is great, but I suspect that for the most part, that can be negotiated without a 'super-government' making the rules.
The problem is that the EU is organized in such a way that it is at an intermediate stage between it being just a bunch of different nations and it being something similar to the USA. We need more EU and less nationalism to become something similar to the USA, we need a bigger EU government and smaller nations governments. The EU government is about 1% of the GDP and the nations governments are 50%, we need to reverse those numbers.
Of course I agree that the EU is not very democratic right, we also need to change that.
this is not actually true, the way the EU has been setup is very clever: it does not attribute a large proportion of costs directly incurred by its policies to itself.
when powers are transferred to the EU, the national institutions used to implement those powers (that previously served the national government) remain, but now implement the EU's legislative program, but the costs incurred doing so are still paid by the national treasuries.
prime examples are civil aviation, food safety and agriculture policy.
these departments are essentially operated by and for the EU, yet the expenses of those departments are not correctly attributed to the EU.
if these expenses were correctly attributed for that 1% would likely be 3-4x higher, and people would be a lot more upset.
> the EU is organized in such a way that it is at an intermediate stage between it being just a bunch of different nations and it being something similar to the USA
There's certainly an argument for that, but I would instead argue that the US states would benefit from being independent countries (this is not as compelling as dissolving the EU, though; we're not at that point yet). The primary motivator is diseconomies of scale -- these huge organizations become extremely inefficient, and often corrupt (look at India and China).
So that is why everybody wants to move to Europe and feel safe there? It is like a magnet. Not only for economy but for safety too.
The EU is established to prevent wars and to keep peace.
What heaven is there out of EU? The USA where they shoot you during a police raid or Russia where they shoot you for being an opposition leader or Russia and Turkey where they put your buisness in jail for not supporting the leader or Middle East where ISIS like countries are everywhere or China which is humans' republic?
> The EU is established to prevent wars and to keep peace.
I think there are a lot of people in the Middle East and Africa who would take issue with that statement.
Nowhere is perfect, but that doesn't mean we should strive to improve. Not a single country in the EU is anything like the socialist paradise many white, liberal, American millennials envision.
We've banned this account. You can't use HN for political and ideological battle. That's an abuse of this site which destroys what we care about here. Please stop creating accounts to break HN's guidelines with.
