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Comment by greggoB | Hacker News Reader

> The island of Ireland has had pretty low immigration

Seems like you just validated my point - a place without open borders is where a major outbreak of xenophobic violence is occurring, as opposed to mainland Europe.

> if that's where you mean by "here"

It's not, I live in Switzerland, which has one of the highest rates of migration in the EU

> there was a palpable uptick in xenophobia when Romania and Bulgaria were admitted into the EU

I'd be curious to know what this looked like at the time. Regardless, even if we accept it as an example, that doesn't set the rule or show a general causation between open borders and xenophobia

> Pre-1902; one could haggle over the exact date depending on what one considers an open border.

Omegalol - you might want to look up what modern day xenophobia in SA looks like (as well as the current socioeconomic situation) so you can see why that probably wasn't a concern pre-20th century

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> Seems like you just validated my point - a place without open borders is where a major outbreak of xenophobic violence is occurring, as opposed to mainland Europe.

We know exactly what caused this outbreak of xenophobic violence, it's in direct response to a dramatically brutal attempted murder by an immigrant caught on video (one who had been granted a refugee visa, on legitimate grounds or otherwise). That's hardly an argument for open borders - if anything it's an argument for stricter screening of asylum seekers.

> I'd be curious to know what this looked like at the time.

A shift in sentiment, certain kinds of comments being heard more and more, ultimately Brexit.

> even if we accept it as an example, that doesn't set the rule or show a general causation between open borders and xenophobia

At a certain point you experience enough correlations that you have to trust the evidence of your own eyes.

> That's hardly an argument for open borders - if anything it's an argument for stricter screening of asylum seekers.

If you follow this thread from the top, you'll see I didn't make the claim that open borders make things better; rather, the burden is for the opposing side to show that they make things worse. I would argue this hasn't been accomplished.

> A shift in sentiment, certain kinds of comments being heard more and more, ultimately Brexit.

Ah, you meant specifically in the UK (I thought across Europe in general, upon their entry). In that case, whether British people were already somewhat racist towards Eastern Europeans or became so as a result of freedom of movement sort of depends on who you ask. I suspect it was the former. And ofc now the UK is mourning the loss of said (white) Eastern Europeans as it's having to bring in an increased number of people from (non-white) Africa and India as a result of Brexit, especially in the care industry. For sure nothing will go wrong from here.

> At a certain point you experience enough correlations that you have to trust the evidence of your own eyes.

From my observation, the real underlying problems are economics and integration - when you have a ridiculously high unemployment rate (think 30%+) like in South Africa, the black South Africans direct that towards the the other Africans. When people from other cultures aren't integrated properly (think the UK, France, as opposed to Switzerland, Denmark maybe), you can get the same (i.e. what's happening in Belfast now).

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