Please at least make an attempt to try to understand the other side. When any immigrants come, they change the country they immigrate to. With these particular refugees, they're refugees in no small part because of shortcomings their home culture has. It's not evil to want to preserve your own culture in the face of this. You can feel empathy for the people trapped in a hellish warzone just as you can feel empathy for the girl raped by migrants. The refugee debate is not good-vs-evil; it's competing virtues.
However, it is evil to colonize people, use your economic, military and political might to support corrupt and tyrannical leaders for your economic (and military and political) gain and then be upset that the very people you helped subjugate/oppress and/or create an environment in which life and liberty is impossible shouldn't then be able to seek asylum.
Wake up. The political situation in Northern Africa, the Middle East and the Sub-Continent is DIRECTLY the result of Western actors going back over a hundred years and continuing today.
You can't perfectly preserve your culture when you let in immigrants on the scale that, say, Germany is. It's sort of a sliding scale; the more you let in, the more you change. Europe will be changed for this.
As you should be able to tell from my earlier comment, I do empathize with the migrants. It's a shitty situation, and were I in one of these war-torn country, my top priority would be getting my family out of there. But the laws and immigration policies of Western countries are crafted by the current citizens and should be moulded to their benefit, not a universal altruistic ideal. By my interpretation, that would be limiting immigration to a number that can be reasonably integrated to the host culture. Immigration to Europe currently far exceeds this.
I'm sorry if my mentioning rape offends, but I don't think we can have an encompassing discussion of migrants without at least mentioning it. I could have also mentioned migrants' attitudes towards women, LBGTs, freedom of speech, or freedom of religion. These are not views I want any sizable number of people in my democracy holding.
I'll be happy to pay more tax if it helps solve the problem.
However I see Merkels let-them-come attitude as dangerous feel-good politics.
Why?
1. Because moving that many people around creates dangerous (for us and them) conflicts.
2. Because for every refugee we help in Europe we let down 100 in the middle east. Why? Because it costs enourmously much more to help people here than to help them down there.
So - IMO - today's feel-good let-them-come policy should be replaced with a targeted approach aimed at helping them where they are or in neighbouring countries.
As I said I'll be happy to pay more a little more tax for this.
this is not wrong, but to me, its out of scale. tons of people are getting injured, dying, and unable to live anything resembling a normal life. i just think the need to address that is much greater than the risks you outline. i think we (the usa) can certainly do more to help refugees before that is thrown out of balance.
