[psyck]

Horde

[1eyedjack]

"Mountain", perhaps, is alliterative. And has the advantage of being consistent with the generic collective term for an excess of anything European (except for wine, I guess, which is a lake)

[MrAce]

1eyedjack, on 2015-August-03, 22:50, said:

But wtf was the point? The content was completely banal, anyway.

[Fluffy]

As a reputed english scholar I consider the term right.

[mycroft]

kenberg, on 2015-August-03, 06:44, said:

"Swarm" was an unfortunate word choice, most likely brought on by frustration.

I think the first half of your comment is correct, and everything after "likely" is not. I expect it was quite deliberate. The Tories in the UK have been pushing the same kind of isolationist rhetoric that Some People in the US are (and, unfortunately, also the Tories in Canada - well, at least the one that is allowed to speak). It was Bulgarians and other "east end of the EU" migrants before, and even more "swarthy"-coloured people now.

I don't know the answer to this kind of refugee migration; but given the UK-led (but certainly not just them) push to change the way the Mediterranean was policed this year, it seems perfectly reasonable to me to believe that the connotations around the word "swarm" were certainly intended, and quite likely deliberate.

[1eyedjack]

Heh, I love the final "Note .." at the end:

Quote

NOTE: If you think that "heartless bastards" will upset your readers, you may substitute "gutless cowards", or even "craven opportunists".

Good to see a carefully considered turn of phrase.

[y66]

Quote

That’s the British for you: criticising people fleeing genocide for pushing their children over a perimeter fence, when we’d do it for a 40% discount off an Asda telly. Frankie Boyle

[1eyedjack]

nige1, on 2015-August-03, 09:53, said:

Exodus?

Endodus?

[Vampyr]

I think that it is important to remember that sympathy for these, or any other migrants, is unrelated to the fact that a small, densely populated country cannot take them all in. Perhaps a country with plenty of room could step up and help alleviate the crisis. The United States, maybe?

[Aberlour10]

Vampyr, on 2015-August-04, 14:57, said:

Perhaps a country with plenty of room could step up and help alleviate the crisis. The United States, maybe?

My impression is that the countries with plenty of room act much more restrictively against refugees than others ( see Australia for example)

[blackshoe]

Vampyr, on 2015-August-04, 14:57, said:

I think that it is important to remember that sympathy for these, or any other migrants, is unrelated to the fact that a small, densely populated country cannot take them all in. Perhaps a country with plenty of room could step up and help alleviate the crisis. The United States, maybe?

Hm. I'm not sure about "plenty of room" any more. Should we put them all in the Mojave Desert?

[Vampyr]

blackshoe, on 2015-August-04, 18:16, said:

Hm. I'm not sure about "plenty of room" any more. Should we put them all in the Mojave Desert?

Well, New Jersey is the only state with a population density higher than England.

When houses and lots are cut back to English sizes, then you can talk about running out of room.

[mike777]

Vampyr, on 2015-August-04, 14:57, said:

I think that it is important to remember that sympathy for these, or any other migrants, is unrelated to the fact that a small, densely populated country cannot take them all in. Perhaps a country with plenty of room could step up and help alleviate the crisis. The United States, maybe?

Excellent point, I hope and pray the USA takes more in, many more in from Asia and Africa.

I guess the worry is:
1) they may work harder, longer, smarter and cheaper, they will add to our culture in new ways
2) they will not work and spend the day smoking weed, swilling booze and making babies, all on your tab.

SILLY FOR THE MOST PART2, TRUE FOR PART1

[kenberg]

This idea of cultural benefits to the host nation keeps showing up. I think it is bogus. My thoughts:

According to Ellis Island records, my father's nationality was Hungarian, his ethnicity Croatian. He was nevere sure just where he came from, only that he arrived when he was ten with his sixteen year old brother. For the purpose of this note, let's say he was Croatian.

I have great confidence that neither my father nor the U.S. government felt a pressing need to import Croatian culture to the U.S. We (the U.S.) had a lot of space, we hoped to build a country, we needed immigrants. My father made a decent living installing weatherstripping, he married, bought a house, adopted and raised me. If we could hold a seance and consult the folks who brought Ellis Island into being, they would probably say "This is what we had in mind". Briefly put, My father was invited to come here. His presence, and that of others, was the result of legislation designed to help the U.S.

The situation with the refugees is entirely different. Not one of the prospective host countries is in need of a large influx of immigrants. From anywhere. And yes, culture, religion and race all matter. My father was born Anton Perekovic but he became Thomas Berg, he learned English, he went to the Presbyterian Church (although his interest in religious matters was, as near as I ever saw, absolutely zip). Had he not said anything, I and everyone would have assumed that he was born in the U.S. My maternal grandfather was born in Denmark. I first learned this about fifteen years ago. They immigrated, and then they assimilated.

If I can just say a bit more about the U.S. The usual figure for illegal immigrants is, I guess, eleven million. If this comes up in debates, I believe the first question any speaker should address is "Is it a good thing or a bad thing to have eleven million illegal immigrants here?". I think the answer is self-evident, it is a bad thing. If we thought it was a good thing then we would have set up a modern Ellis Island and brought them here legally. How this problem should be addressed is a legitimate debate, just as how to deal with the refugee problem is a legitimate debate. But speaking as if it's really great that we will be adding to our cultural diversity? No, I don't think so.

I expect to be called names for this post, particularly for saying that culture, religion and race matter in setting immigration policy. In addressing practical problems, I believe these things do matter. John Lennon's Imagine is a beautiful song. Hemingway provided the response, albeit in a different setting, many years earlier: "Wouldn't it be pretty to think so?"

[Vampyr]

By the way... the migrants that are causing the main problem in the UK at present are coming from France. How and when did refugees from France become recognised? Is escaping less generous welfare benefits a valid reason to grant asylum?

[PassedOut]

It seems to me that the pace of assimilation varies with circumstances like age and location.

My maternal grandmother was born in the USA to parents who had emigrated from Trysil, Norway with their (very) extended family and other families from the same area. They all settled in a county near Alexandria, Minnesota and started farming there. They picked out a beautiful spot overlooking a lake, built a Lutheran Church there, and called the church "Trysil." They spoke Norwegian at home and at church. My grandmother spoke no English until she went to school, and even then the kids spoke Norwegian to each other outside the classroom. She had a strong Norwegian accent all of her life.

My maternal grandfather came to the USA from Hustad, Norway by himself at age 19 with very little money. He moved to Minnesota and became a Lutheran minister, earning the money for his education first as a farm laborer in the area where my grandmother lived and then as a trolley conductor in Minneapolis. His first church was the aforementioned Trysil church near Alexandria. He married my grandmother when he was 31 and she was 21. She remembered my grandfather having given her and a bunch of other kids a sleigh ride at Christmas time when she was 10 and he was 20.

When I knew him, my grandfather had only a slight Norwegian accent, and he worked on it by tape recording his sermons in his study and then playing them back to listen for ways to remove his accent. You would never have guessed that he was the one born in Norway and my grandmother the one born in the USA.

My first wife arrived in the USA at age 10 speaking Russian and German, but very little English. Nevertheless, she skipped one year of elementary school, one year of high school, graduated from college in 3 years, and had her Masters in 17th-century English literature at age 20. I met her at the University of Wisconsin chess club when she strolled in, sat down across from me, and moved her King's pawn. She was there working on her doctorate. She was the only girlfriend I ever had who could play double-blindfold chess with me. (Once we were sitting in a Laundromat at 3 am when a police officer entered and asked what we were doing there, sitting back to back. He was pretty suspicious when we explained that we were playing chess.)

Finally, we know a mother and daughter where the daughter is a citizen and her mother is Mexican, illegally in the USA. As an illegal, it is very difficult for the mother to assimilate, as one might imagine. There are some things that should not be, but nevertheless are, and we need to deal with the situation.

[PassedOut]

kenberg, on 2015-August-05, 06:43, said:

I expect to be called names for this post, particularly for saying that culture, religion and race matter in setting immigration policy. In addressing practical problems, I believe these things do matter.

I believe that culture and religion (which I consider to be tightly linked) do matter. But I can't think of any way that race matters. My experience has been that race doesn't matter at all, except for people's reactions to folks who look different.

[y66]

If we're going to bring the Beatles into this, perhaps the "don't dig no Pakistanis taking all the peoples' jobs" version of "Get Back" is more to the point. That was Paul, who seems to be more concerned about David Cameron's position on fox hunting these days than immigration.

John's *real* fans might prefer "You say you got a real solution. Well, you know we'd all love to see the plan." or these lines from his 1968 Rolling Stone interview with Jonathan Cott:

Cott: Couldn't you go off to your own community and not be bothered with all of this?

Lennon: Well, it's just the same there, you see. Cause I mean India was a bit of that, it was a taste of it – it's the same. So there's a small community, it's the same gig, it's relative. There's no escape.

[psyck]

blackshoe, on 2015-August-04, 18:16, said:

Hm. I'm not sure about "plenty of room" any more. Should we put them all in the Mojave Desert?

Just send them all to India, they are used to taking in millions of refugees, from Bangladesh etc.

[blackshoe]

Vampyr, on 2015-August-04, 18:46, said:

Well, New Jersey is the only state with a population density higher than England.

When houses and lots are cut back to English sizes, then you can talk about running out of room.

I do not think anybody gets to decide what population density we should have here. Or what size houses and lots we should have.