Leave or stay in the EU?

[Overdriven]

Yup it does need apostrophes.

Now if you told me that Jordan, Turkey ect have a refugee crisis then I would agree.

The number of refugees they are currently saddled with makes it pretty frikkin embarrassing that so much of Western Europe is moaning about it so much for far less numbers.

[Angantyr]

It's not evenly spread out across Europe but concentrated in certain countries where welfare tourists can get most state benefits, which of course runs contrary to the requirement of having to seek asylum in the first safe country you enter. We should also be mindful that the current migration crisis wouldn't be felt as hard if Europe hadn't been swamped with economic migrants in the last 30 years.

Be careful comparing the situation to migration to other Muslim countries, the culture differences are vast for Africans and Middle Easterners coming to Europe. Neighbouring or similar countries are traditionally the ones that soak up these types of things, and for good reason.

Be also careful naming them refugees, official numbers says something like 2 out 5 are actual refugees from the war in Syria.

[Overdriven]

Ah yes the myth of welfare tourists. With no real figures to back that myth up.

Most refugees have sought safety in the first countries they enter. Hence the millions that are already in camps in Turkey, Jordan and other nearby countries.

But honestly, if you were given the choice of going and living in the squalor of a refugee camp, or making an arduous journey with the possibility of building a better life for yourself. What would you choose? I know damn well which one I would aim for.

Add to that, leaving the EU is unlikely to solve any immigration 'crisis'. Do you really think our politicians are going to stop migrants coming in? Your kidding yourself if you do. Cheap labour, have to pay minimal benefits, if any. Heck it wouldn't surprise me if migration increased as a result of us leaving the EU.

Sure there's a minority of migrants that give others a bad reputation. But the many I've had experience with are fantastically hard workers, intelligent and here for good reasons. Programs such as benefit street pretty much prove that some of the native whites are hardly as worthy of being here as some migrants.

[Angantyr]

What on Earth are you talking about, what myth?

The numbers pouring into Germany and Sweden and elsewhere is well-known fact with a myriad of reports and studies done, so many that I highly doubt it has honestly gone over your head and so many that countries across the Europe are closing their borders despite Schengen. More than a million came to Germany alone in 2015, Germany and Sweden (not exactly Syria's neighbours) being the most popular destinations. People smugglers even made charts designating the most profitable places to seek asylum, never mind they were in the absolute far corners of Europe.

As for saying most have sought safety in the ME, so what? I never argued about that, I argued that the ones coming to Europe go through as many countries as they can to get to Northern Europe because of the social benefits.

As for the appeal to emotion - yes, of course I would; no one doesn't understand why these people want the best opportunities but world affairs has to be moved by rationality not human emotion. Would you not kill a man who raped your daughter? If you're in any way a man you would, which is why the state has a monopoly on violence so rapists and other criminals are judged by law not vigilantism. Point being that because I would do something for my family does not mean it should be public policy.

[Overdriven]

You said welfare tourists. I called that a myth. Nothing you said in that follow up there was anything to do with debunking that.

[Angantyr]

I'm truly puzzled as to what definition of the word you're using, then. I'm not just talking people are going to be on state welfare, but people who specifically go where there's most social benefits, welfare states the native populations have paid for through exuberant taxes for generations, applying their refugee status despite heading through several safe countries. Maybe not so much in your country where there's few social benefits but certainly in Scandinavia and Germany.

People who do not qualify as fleeing conflict or persecution under international law are coming to Europe as economic migrants. They choose their destinations based on social welfare. That is one group of welfare tourists.

Then there's the ones that are actually fleeing from the war in Syria, a great many of whom have not sought asylum in the first safe country they have come to but instead chosen to go to Sweden, Germany, Holland, Denmark or Norway etc. Heading towards the best economies in the EU is welfare tourism.

Frontex demonstrated how people smugglers give detailed accounts of benefits of individual EU countries so they can compare the available benefits of countries that has such systems in place, for example Germany and the Scandinavian countries. When our new immigration minister earlier this year put ads in Lebanese newspapers that we out of necessity had cut down on the benefits for asylum seekers here in Denmark there was a marked fall in asylum applications almost instantly.

[Overdriven]

If they are working and paying tax then who cares if they are taking welfare. They are paying into the system after all. As long as they aren't completely freeloading, aren't jumping housing queues and bullshit like that then it's fine. And those are already things that are within most nations power to change as it is. If migrants are being given multi million pound properties in central London as some trustworthy publications suggest *dailymail egh* then that is a fault of the existing system. Stopping migration won't alter what is already a broken internal system.

Plus you have the nations with a falling population, Germany being the prime example, that need migration if they are going to maintain economic growth.

Like I said, it doesn't matter whether your in or out, migration will always exist and in all likelihood politicians, even if given more power, won't do jack shit about it because the overall benefits are too great as long as economic growth is the overall goal. Which for western capitalist nations, it is. The only way you'd probably change that is by voting in an extreme far right party.

Edit:

Fact is migration is the go to topic for those who want to vote out. I've barely heard any substantial arguments of any other kind bar some wishy washy bollocks about sovereignty. It's the topic that drums up the feelings of morons but is probably the least applicable topic to the EU debate. There are far bigger issues like TTIP which you just don't see discussed, even though they have far more bearing on our every day lives, that would swing my vote to leave. As it is I'm probably going to vote in because I'm sick to death of the migration discussion being the only real topic leave cling onto and there's so little information about other more concerning factors.

[Angantyr]

Sorry Overdriven, maybe we can continue our talk another time, the things I need to write up to answer your points I have simply reiterated ad nauseam here in the past, and frankly however important the topic, it is starting to bore me to a great extent.

I think Britain will vote to stay tomorrow, anyway.

[Butan]

Its tomorrow? Noice, cant wait to hear the results 

[Butan]

Which, as already stated here, is pretty strange considering leaving the EU alone will have no immediate impact on migration in the UK. You'd need a party that's anti-migration in charge in order for that to happen.

When people vote to 'take back control!' on a national level, and do so from an anti-immigration platform, I wonder if it crosses their minds that they're notionally giving full 'control' back to the refugee-aid loving government we currently have. Our government's not miraculously going to become UKIP or BNP overnight as a result of leaving Europe. If the voters are daft enough to go that way, I hope they spend the next few years becoming good and dissolutioned over how 'taking back control' didn't make every little thing alright.

If they are out of the EU they dont have to respect EU laws, which have hands into how countries within the union deal with immigration. Sure then the government must act, but they could not at the same level while staying, both are needed for total immigration control; thus the anti-immigration argument of leaving the EU is valid.
This is two sides of the same coin.

"The people are voting to stay or leave, they arent voting on what government they would have"; is basically what you are saying 

[Angantyr]

Nevertheless if the UK leaves the EU it will be considered a political defeat for the current establishment that may spill out into other areas of domestic politics.

[Butan]

Nevertheless if the UK leaves the EU it will be considered a political defeat for the current establishment that may spill out into other areas of domestic politics.

It may indeed be one sign of a governmental change, even though I think that the "out" side is way more than anti-immigration far-right people. So in a way, the referendum could say "out", and the government could stay.

But the 'out' campaign shouldnt promise what they have no power to deliver

Anything to get a vote hehe

[Leshma]

First time I took serious notice of this event. God, British politicians are retarded. Just like local ones. For some strange reason I expected more from them.

[kinngrimm]

EDIT:

...
Plus you have the nations with a falling population, Germany being the prime example, that need migration if they are going to maintain economic growth.
...

Why would we want continious growth? That is the economic formular for all problems. Partly based for the reason that there is population growth in the first place.
I don't think that is sustainable anymore and i am rather glad if birth rates are going down on their own. No need for Monsanto doing that job to us then anymore  .

[Angantyr]

There's plenty of ways to increase population growth naturally as has always been done through population politics, incentives economic and otherwise, children that doesn't come with any of the sociocultural problems non-western immigration brings nor distorts the generational or gender proportionalities (such as bringing in hundreds of thousands of immigrant men in their 20s and 30s does).

A recent Danish campaign ad for more children by a non-government actor (a travelling bureau), part of a current cultural trend.

And yes, across the globe people really should be having less children, we are right now suffering from the last few generations' human overproduction in Africa and the ME, part of the reason behind this great migration wave.