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Comment by Mikeb85 | Hacker News Reader

Make this claim about a place like France with a strait face (Muslims make up 10% of the population, and 70% of prison inmates, not to mention most of the crime).

Yes, in the US and Canada immigrants, refugees and Muslims generally assimilate well. Because we have limits and take the best of these groups.

But this claim is a bad debate tactic since Muslims commit crimes at a higher rate in many other countries. Now of course part of this is due to rebellious youth who can't integrate into a fairly closed culture, but countries which have taken in large amounts of Muslim immigrants quickly haven't always fared so well...

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> Muslims make up 10% of the population, and 70% of prison inmates, not to mention most of the crime

Substitute "black" for Muslim and this is the basis of a great deal of racist beliefs and policies in the US. The important question isn't who is in prison, and who is committing crimes, but why. Being Muslim (or Black) doesn't naturally incline someone to be a criminal. Something in the society at large is leading to either higher rates of conviction for the same crimes (the case in the US, harsher punishments for black offenders than whites for the same crimes), or an economic situation that leaves criminal activity as the only apparent or more economically beneficial choice for members of these groups.

And I covered this in my post (last paragraph). It doesn't matter though - witness the rise of ultra-right populism in continental Europe, Brexit and Trump.

And crime IS mostly an economic phenomenon, poor expected outcomes in life lead to high crime rates. But there is a link to high migration rates as well (if the economy can't absorb the new workforce quick enough, it leads to problems).

The problem is, the moral dilemma ceases to matter when a majority of the population (you can call them dumb, racist, whatever, but they're part of society) votes in someone to 'solve' the problem. There is a point where feelings and morality don't matter as much as practicality.

> Being Muslim (or Black) doesn't naturally incline someone to be a criminal.

How do you know this? It might. I'd bet being Muslim inclines somebody to not be a criminal for some types of crimes, in fact, so I wouldn't categorically dismiss the idea that religion affects criminality.

Also as has been well-discussed here, crime rate differences are still present in non-economic crimes and your attempts to explain the situation fall flat. It's a story you're making up, badly, and to talk about this stuff with that kind of certainty is a bad look. The truth is, we don't know.

> How do you know this? It might.

And based on an "it might" it's fine to just assign blame and pass judgement?

> I'd bet being Muslim inclines somebody to not be a criminal for some types of crimes, in fact, so I wouldn't categorically dismiss the idea that religion affects criminality.

In fact? By what facts?

> And based on an "it might" it's fine to just assign blame and pass judgement?

What on Earth are you talking about?

> In fact? By what facts?

The fact there is regarding the question of what bet I'd make. "In fact" is a common figure of speech.

If society can't keep up with immigration and changing demographics you're bound to have problems. In France, people with French last names on their CVs are more likely to get called in for job interviews. Similarly in the US Nationalism has reared its head because society has intrinsic speed limits on liberal progressiveness. To what degree do we need to factor that into our trade and immigration policies if progressive policies move so fast that they start to tear apart society? (Open question -- not an opinion)

"In France, people with French last names on their CVs are more likely to get called in for job interviews. "

It's the same in the U.S. if you have a "Black" sounding name, you are less likely to be called in for an interview. I never understood why Black parents would give their children "ethnic" names knowing that it makes it harder in society. Even if their were only a 10% difference, why handicap your children?

And yes I'm Black.

You assert the existence of intrinsic sped limits with no evidence, as if immigration were a) an independent factor to be turned up and down at will without any need to review other aspects of social policy and b) as if France had negotiated the terms of its colonial role with the countries it saw fit to colonize.

To put it bluntly, a country doesn't get to colonize other other countries and then complain if people from those countries take the claims of civilizational superiority at face value and come to experience it for themselves. Colonization drastically and permanently altered the destiny of those countries, and unwillingness to accommodate people from those places displays a lack of responsibility.

Morality doesn't matter when the whims of the populace ultimately get to drive policy.

The fact is, integrating immigrants IS an economic issue, there IS a limit, and if we fail, there WILL be backlash.

That was why I made a pragmatic argument, which you ignored, as well as a moral one. You have not offered any evidence for your claim about limits and so my participation in this discussion is at an end, because I refuse to waste time arguing with people whose idea of debate is to simply repeat their premises.

What pragmatic argument? You just asked for evidence there's a limit.

Anyhow, there's a plethora of studies that have been done on the economic impacts of migration, expected outcomes to immigrants measuring different factors (wages, employment, and subjective measures of assimilation), and so on. It's basically an entire field in itself.

What is the real 'limit'? The answer is when the negative societal effects become greater than the positive ones, and the host population decides to limit immigration.

The rest of your post was a moral argument, which again, doesn't matter when the population has decided they're at the 'limit'.

It sure would have helped if the US hadn't caused the refugee crisis in the first place with our unjust and unjustified wars. We knew even in 2003 that going into Iraq would create a power vacuum that would unleash Muslim radicals. We knew that before going in, still went in, and now have the audacity to refuse the refugees that we created. The Iraq war was not a progressive policy; it was not a sane policy. Claiming that progressive policies led to this situation is delusional.

rebellious youth who can't integrate into a fairly closed culture

'a fairly closed culture' in this case being a racist framework that says they're not French enough and chooses to lean on archaic work rules and so on to enforce that barrier.

Thinking like that would be a mistake.

The quality of immigrants that US and Europe attract are vastly different. US attracts mostly high quality skilled labor (doctors, tech workers etc.) On the other hand, EU countries often attract the worst sort (people attracted to EU welfare, unsorted refugees, unskilled labor etc.) Naturally, the lower class folk are unlikelier to adjust to life in a new country, and so they commit more crime. This does NOT happen in the US. It is therefore unreasonable to compare US immigration to EU immigration.

Case in point: immigration from Pakistan. Pakistanis in the UK (as an example of a European country) tend to be poor and are highly represented in crime. Pakistanis in the US, on the other hand, have an average income $10000 HIGHER than the average US income. There is also no evidence to suggest they are involved in crime at a rate remotely comparable to the general population.

I don't care for your Donald-Trump style evidence-free arguments. Perhaps if you backed them up with a) statistics and b) an acknowledgement of European countries' record as colonial powers, which gives people of the former colonies an overwhelming moral right to move to the country that disrupted the development of their country of origin.

How is that a Trump style argument? Poorer people commit more crime on average than richer people? Isn't that true across the spectrum?

Did you try reading the other words in my comment? It's written quite plainly.

> It is therefore unreasonable to compare US immigration to EU immigration.

Unreasonable, but it doesn't matter when society and politicians use European problems to justify policies at home.

You can't take this out of the context that France had many North African colonies, and has had a large underclass of people from those countries for many decades. Poverty is highly correlated with imprisonment.

I can't find a non-paywalled link ATM (the ridiculous politicization of this issue has made it nearly impossible to get signal out of the noise), but I've seen studies that show that if you control for poverty, the link essentially disappears.

> I can't find a non-paywalled link ATM (the ridiculous politicization of this issue has made it nearly impossible to get signal out of the noise), but I've seen studies that show that if you control for poverty, the link essentially disappears.

Can you guarantee that a large, rapid influx of immigrants won't lead to a poor underclass? Because that's as much of an issue as wherever they came from...

The current rate of immigration to the US is 0.3% of its population per year. Put another way, for every 3,180 Americans, they have to somehow integrate 1 new person a year into their culture.

In no way is that a "large, rapid" influx. This whole issue is just political football and scare-mongering.

That's assuming uniform distribution. What actually happens is immigrants go where other immigrants go, affecting some communities far more than others.

You're right, the US has a low rate of immigration and should be able to handle it, but that's not necessarily the case.

Also, 0.3% per year amounts to nearly 8% over one generation, not including differences in fertility between immigrant groups and born Americans.

I'm very left, and I'm quite alright with measures like regional quotas designed to avoid "clumping" - which I believe would address most of your concern there.

And you're right about the 8%, but since only about 10% of immigrants to the US are Muslim, really we're talking about 0.8%, over something like 25 to 30 years. That is so completely disproportionate to the hysteria over immigration (literally the number one issue for Trump voters, IIRC) I can't help but conclude that it's a purposeful scare campaign.

Also, it's not often that any immigrant group is the boogeyman for more than a generation. It used to be the Irish, then the Polish, then the Puerto Ricans, and so on. A huge fuss is raised, and then they assimilate, at least in the US.

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