Comment by dvasdekis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dvasdekis | Hacker News Reader

Lived in Sweden (Malmo) during the Syrian refugee crisis. Watched in horror as my Swedish friends swung from refugee-welcoming to authoritarian "Nej!" in just 6 months.

Why? The rent doubled, the buses were full, taxes increased and crime sky-rocketed as immigrants who didn't have enough to eat crowded on to Sweden's generous social benefits scheme. The swedes, with a proud tradition of construction unions, heritage planning and social consensus didn't have the ability to reach an agreement on how to feed and house so many immigrants so quickly. This led to the migrants literally building a shanty town around the Malmo benefits office, instead of being allowed to build homes for themselves, as the EU refused to support the lone member state that did the right thing.

Proportionally, this influx would be like 5 million people arriving and applying for asylum in the US in a single year. [1]

As I witnessed these kind and tolerant people transform into the racist bigots this lady encountered, I think things would have very been different if the planet had treated the 2015 refugee crisis as a common problem, and not dumped it all on Sweden.

No, there is no excuse for racism, or for the lack of action in this case. But there are forces that provoke it, and every country that didn't take in a proportionate number of refugees during this crisis shares the blame for the social mess that Sweden is in today.

[1] https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-rise-of-sweden-democr...

> Watched in horror

Why in horror?

This is a natural reaction when your world collapses because of people vastly different than you.

The ones who are eager to integrate are not a problem. The ones who want to bring their culture and put it in opposition to the one of their host country are a problem.

I am French and a militant atheist.

My two best friends are:

1. a devout catholic and we discuss how our views are bad and how the other is wrong in his head. And then go for a beer.

I support the fact that we are culturally Judeo-Christians and therefore part of my traces go to the small village church. This is life, and I protest that but know that nobody is going to cut my head for that.

2 a 2nd gen Muslim who meets with his family for their celebrations but otherwise does not care too much except that he is pissed off because when there is an issue it is always presumed that the culprit is Muslim. To what I say that if they did not have the arguably bad habit to cut heads when someone shows their god in underwear it would be better, we argue for a moment and go with nr 1 for a beer and juice for nr 2.

I know them and their friends for years and we are uber cool with each other.

If everyone was more tolerant and less aggressive about their beliefs we would not have extreme right parties

Nobody "dumped" refugees in Sweden. You took them in gladly.

You can't start complaining when everybody warned you.

> [...] instead of being allowed to build homes for themselves [...]

With whose money shall they build themselves homes? My money? I can't afford building a home for my family _despite_ being employed full time. So that solution you're implying would result in even more hatred. Rightfully so.

Migrants often come to the country with the physical skills, but not the certifications to do work like construction. I used the word 'allowed' in this context to mean that they, generally, lacked the ability to negotiate the complex modern construction standards of the Swedish state.

Mankind has been building homes for itself for 1.8 million years.[1] It's the norms of what constitutes a home (electricity, indoor plumbing, double glazing, certification) that have shifted, and I do not believe the migrants stood any chance of building homes compliant with modern swedish codes.

To answer your question, I believe you could build a home better than any caveman on your days off. But I think you're saying you don't have the money or time to build a modern, compliant home with the features I mention above, or to purchase the land for it.

There is plenty of rural land on the outskirts of Malmo. Sweden allowing a ghetto of poorly-developed, noncompliant houses would have been better than the tent-city I saw.

When I lived there, I was living in a noncompliant shipping-container construction that the government had erected hastily for overseas students with special permission, and it was more than enough. I believe the migrants had sufficient skill to build shipping-container homes, but there wasn't the political will to allow this bypass of swedish building compliance and due process.

[1] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/who-built-the-first-hou...

Yeah but those weren’t really “refugees” were they? You can’t call your self a refugee if you cross who knows how many borders from Syria and Afghanistan all the way to Sweden. And then add insult to injury by vacationing in the countries they are “fleeing” from.

Sweden wasn’t “the lone member state that did the right thing” and the illegal immigrants were not “dumped on Sweden”. Sweden made a very bad choice opening up to what is very clearly a criminal cohort going out of its way to abuse welfare.

And the same goes for Germany. Even more so because their incompetent leadership invited the entire middle east to Europe.

If you really wanted to “help out” and “be humanitarian” Sweden and the rest of the EU should have established safe zones in Africa. And end what is essentially a ferry service from Africa to Europe. Migrants go on dingy inflatable boats 5 miles of the coast, issue an SOS and get transported to the EU. If this isn’t incentivising illegal migration, I don’t know what is.

You can’t expect to conduct a policy of ethnic replacement which is what Swedens policy has been for the last few decades and don’t get resentment from the native population. You reap what you sow. The only good news is, the tide is turning.

>And the same goes for Germany. Even more so because their incompetent leadership invited the entire middle east to Europe.

>If you really wanted to “help out” and “be humanitarian” Sweden and the rest of the EU should have established safe zones in Africa.

The solution is to stress African countries instead of the European ones that helped create the Syrian refugees in the first place?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com