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Comment by veave | Hacker News Reader

So they enter the country ilegally and... get to stay? Am I missing something?

You may have missed the part where dirt poor people risked their lives to reach somewhere better. Why not give them a chance? What is there to gain from sending them back? Excuse the pun, but "discouraging more migrants", that ship has sailed.

> Why not give them a chance?

So survival of the fittest? You only get a chance if you're brave enough to risk your life by crossing an ocean on top of a rudder or a non sea-worth dinghy/overcrowded boat?

Seems like a very cruel and inhumane policy...

If the best and brightest people leave the country - how is it going to improve?

> the best and brightest people leave the country

There are significantly easier way for them to do that already than hitchhiking on a cargo ship's rudder.

They send most of the money they earn back home.

If a skilled surgeon leaves Nigeria and migrates to Europe or the USA - their hometown is now worse off, because they lost a good specialist and access to healthcare now became worse. And whatever remittances that person sends back home don't offset this.

Rich Western countries poaching skilled workers from poor countries make those countries even poorer.

Well, maybe. Or maybe, they send home enough money to open a clinic, or to fund critical health services that help even more people.

There is nothing straightforward about any of this stuff.

Well if X is the number of dirt poor people willing to risk their lives, and Y is the number of unskilled immigrants you can reasonably accept, then if X > Y, this is an incredibly stupid policy.

Why would you accept any unskilled immigrants as long as there are more than plenty higher skilled immigrants who want to enter you country?

> this is an incredibly stupid policy.

Encouraging people to risk their lives to enter a country illegally (by giving them an impression that they'll be allowed to stay) instead of having a transparent and clearly defined process which would allow people to immigrate legally is an incredibly stupid (and cruel) policy.

Wouldn't this encourage others to take the same risk? Not all will succeed. It'd become some sadistic Hunger Games-esque style of immigration control.

I wonder how could any semi rational person downvote this comment?

Why would you think outsourcing your immigration policy to people's smugglers could ever be a good idea? Forcing people to risk their lives by giving them the impression that they will be allowed to stay if they give up all of their (and possibly their extended family's saving to people smugglers who are just likely to literally sell them so slavery) just seems extremely cruel..

See what is happening on the Mediterranean. Again and again people are dying because they are baited to make extremely risky crossings.

I'm well aware of what's happening in the Med, and in the English Channel.

The latter is even more perplexing. People are risking their lives to leave a safe country, France, to get into the UK.

Until recently, most of those making the asylum boat journey from France to the UK, were actually from Albania. They were being sent over to work in gangs involved in drug and human trafficking. It's all coordinated.

Also see what happened in Australia: the government took a hard-line approach to the boats and sent a clear message that those who arrived illegally would be deported. So the boats stopped coming, saving countless lives.

>Why not give them a chance?

Why should we?

Who are you to determine whether someone is worthy or not?

Well we did almost entirely outsourced this decision to people smugglers and the Mediterranean sea itself which is about the worst possible option.

I don't see why a stupid stunt like this should give you a right to bypass immigration laws.

Anyway I was just curious.

You say stupid stunt, they say an attempt at finding a better life.

Seeking asylum does not "bypass immigration laws". The right to do so is enshrined in those laws.

And if denied, they get sent back, as it should be.

To you below

https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/15priu2/germany_...

As it should be.

> And if denied, they get sent back, as it should be.

I don't know aboit Brazil. But in Europe that usually does not happen.

Sweden rejects thousands of asylum cases each year.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/697824/rejected-asylum-a...

You don't know about Europe either.

I live in Germany.

My point remains.

It's called compassion.

I agree it's stupid. But how do you look at someone who did this and send them back to where they came from, the place they were so desperate to leave?

As a compassionate person, why don't you pay for people to immigrate over legally and then pay for their bills until they get settled in and find a job? Why do we all have to be forced to pay for your compassion through our taxes?

Why is your immediate assumption that immigrants cannot work and support themselves and their families just like natural born citizens?

Statistics. The refugee crisis happened in 2016 still 50% of Syrians are payed for by the state.

Denmark did a study where they found that immigrants from poor countries are a drain on public finances for almost their entire lives and I have no reason to believe it would be different elsewhere.

https://www.economist.com/europe/2021/12/18/why-have-danes-t... (disable JS to bypass paywall)

Because we are rich and can afford it. Because bringing more people to our country that needs labor will keep the economy churning. Because your ancestors got here somehow.

Not sure if you've looked at your country's national debt to GDP ratio or unfunded liabilities lately, but no first world country can afford immigrants, esoecially ones with no job skills, no language skills, and most likely illiterate coming into a job market that is quickly automating all lower wage jobs.

No european country is in need for unskilled labor. Especially if that unskilled "labour" just gets on welfare, because working for minimum wage in a western country is really stupid.

If that's the case why not create a legal and transparent process which would allow these people to com here instead of encouraging to them to risk their lives to come here illegally?

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

I understand why one wouldn't want to accept them despite their predicament; these stowaways are generally unskilled and don't speak the language of their host country. There's social integration and investment to consider and inviting even one sets a precedence for others to follow.

> It's called compassion

So you're fine if by doing this you encourage another N people to try and do the same and a non insignificant proportion are guaranteed to die while trying?

It's not stated in the BBC article, but other news sources say the ones who did not return applied for asylum.

No, they entered the country legally as asylum seekers.

Baiting people to risk their lives on idiotic trips for a chance to become a welfare recipient is the standard migration policy of most western/western aligned countries.

Much more prominent on the Mediterranean though. Governments set up schemes where everyone who manages to enter the country gets free money/housing/food, but, after having invited billions of people in that way, set up no actual routes to enter their countries. Leaving the creation of the routes to human trafficers and NGOs for extremely dangerous trips across the Mediterranean.

Proof required that people make these trips to become “welfare recipients”. Sounds like a “just so” story to me.

It's a fact that allowing people who came to your country illegally is encouraging more people to risk their lives doing the same.

For every 1000 of people who get to stay a significant proportion drown in the Mediterranean, end up being slaves in North Africa, are outright murder or die due to other reason while try to take this extremely dangerous trip.

Supporting a system like this just because you can ignore the people who didn't make seems quite perverse?

>Proof required that people make these trips to become “welfare recipients”.

Over 50% of Syrians who have come to Germany are welfare recipients, the migrant crisis came in 2016.

I also do not get why anyone in Germany would work minimum wage, seems really dumb. You can just get the state to pay for everything.

here you go:

https://www.economist.com/europe/2021/12/18/why-have-danes-t... (disable JS to bypass paywall)

"No actual routes"? The UK has taken in nearly 200,000 refugees from Ukraine alone.

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