I say if you want to draw invisible lines on the ground and tell people in need they cant cross them, expect a war.

Golden Dawn, German skinheads, French le Pen.....same sub-human white hatred and self-loathing projected onto others who look different.

You'll find similar sentiment in France. Some of the more right wing parties are gaining popular support.

These kind of anti-immigration parties are gaining popularity all over Europe. The migrant crisis from Northern Africa, and the EU's non-response, is fanning those flames.

This isn't a mentality that is found only in the USA. Most populations don't like large amounts of immigration.

allowing a group to form arbitrary invisible lines on the land and then tell people they cant cross them.

Wars usually settle these things.

It's always been this way. Nations, people, groups, etc, have always drawn lines in the sand and said "this is our land!"

And yes, wars have started that way. And wars in the future will start that way.

And perhaps it's mother nature. Lots of animal species claim territory and will fight off rivals who try to take control of it.

After all private living space is also a social construct. Have you evolved beyond that? If not than you're being hypocritical.

got it.

I dont expect most people to be evolved yet, so we are wasting our time here

in your life to abolish the socially constructed notion of private space . Think global, act local.

Why do you want to use imaginary lines to exclude pool and sentence them to death?

you have taken no steps in your life to cast off your private space. I merely want to point out that if you as an individual see value in keeping your door locked, it's hypocritical to condemn national borders.

Then you probably also think that things like single payer healthcare, social security, and other progressive ideas are absurd as well.

Groups of people banding together to provide those things for themselves - that's what a nation state is about. It's not just about "arbitrary invisible lines."

Try getting into Canada with a chronic, expensive disease and a couple of elderly parents. You can't. Those mean Canadians. How dare they not take care of my family!

Be careful what you wish for. When the day comes that we don't have borders, that's when we will know that the corporatists have won. End of game.

whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?

Without borders, single payer healthcare goes up in smoke.

You do realize that countries with single payer healthcare control their immigration policy or those countries would be unable to provide things like healthcare for their citizens? Not to mention things like generous maternity and paternity leave subsidized by government. And free or reduced childcare for working parents. Care for the elderly. And other things that we would like to have but can't because we're paying for a freaking military to protect corporate interests around the world.

Europe. You are right.

From what I read, there are real problems with government policy. Many of the immigrants are not happy: yes they get housing and language classes and some kinds of job training, but not necessarily the life they hoped for, and they're frustrated.

Native-born Swedes are contending with problems like imported Muslim-on-Jew hate crimes, riots and gang activity in some cities, and they have reasonable concerns about how much money goes to support immigrants, and how this tide of men from a patriarchal upbringing are behaving toward Swedish women (gender equality is very important to Swedes), and what will become of all these frustrated young men who have time on their hands and a growing bitterness.

Many people are beginning to think the government policy's are poorly thought out. And they charge that the government has no answers and won't even admit to the problems - instead they are painting all criticism as racism, and encouraging public shaming of dissenters. (Which is not liberal at all.)

In sum: some SD people are just racist I am sure, but others have chosen SD because they have legitimate concerns and the folks in power keep trying to gag them.

While immigration is a good thing, it sounds like the problems that go along with it have gotten out of control. A classic culture clash between the nation's people and people from other countries who brought their baggage with them. Hard to deal with.

(or the local version of the Donald).

Even liberal government programs have to be run well with a balance of idealism and pragmatism. Typically the right will take advantage of mistakes that governments make with liberal programs to build a consensus to shut them down.

The question is whether liberals should fight right wing anti-immigration parties by becoming "RW-lite" (perhaps 'self-deportation' instead of 'mass deportation') or by defending their vigorously defending their policies (and improving them when necessary) and not pretending that conservative opposition does not exist or can be ignored as a small group of nativists who will always be with us.

roughly, "Ugh!"

And to think, Sweden has been a leader in assimilating invandrare (immigrants, lit. "invaders&quot into society. For one thing, they all get taught the Swedish language. Cities like Goteborg have large communities of invandrare that have seen less unrest than, say, those in Rotterdam or Paris. So where's the hatred coming from?

their country can handle. They don't have open borders.

Nor does Sweden have a large developing country on its doorstep, as we do.

There's no simple solution.

Also as Sweden is to the far left in their social democracy the more people you let in
to become citizens that can vote, the more the country "reverts to the mean".

a country can have open borders and work towards a strong social welfare system at the same time.

The UK is having problems with this right now. I was listening to a report on BBC that was quite interesting. Apparently, after living in the UK for a minimum period of time, one can move to another country in the EU, the UK has to pay for that person's medical care in the foreign country. I would imagine that it's not for an open-ended period of time, but the figure quoted that the UK spent on money sent to other countries for immigrant healthcare was pretty high.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3191557/Foreigners-charge-NHS-care-country-Loophole-lets-thousands-migrants-free-treatment-card-GP.html

Ministers order urgent investigation into 'completely unacceptable' revelations foreigners are charging the NHS for care in their OWN country

NHS handing out five million European Health Insurance Cards per year

They allow Britons to charge emergency treatment abroad back to NHS

But cards are being given to any EU citizens who says they are living in UK

Eastern Europeans using them in home country to make NHS cover costs

Undercover Hungarian journalist Ani Horvath obtained card after visiting UK for one day


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3191557/Foreigners-charge-NHS-care-country-Loophole-lets-thousands-migrants-free-treatment-card-GP.html#ixzz3jVXjkXgA
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

Then, there's the actual health tourism where people come into the country purposely to get healthcare.

It's kind of a mess.

And it's completely unnecessary. Free trade, too. They are both failed, delusional mindsets similar to trickle-down economics.

Open borders is the fastest race to the bottom and a corporatist's wet dream.

Unfortunately, compassion on its own is not a functioning, political system.

Also, people who support open borders often wish they had the ability to migrate freely elsewhere.

How many people here have said they would move to Canada or France if they could?

http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/6/sweden-refugees-racismstockholm.html

June 9, 2014 12:30AM ET
by Sam Piranty

...are mostly perpetrated by Muslim immigrants. That's your first clue that this snippet is oversimplifying a complex problem.

The government promised housing and support to many refugees (including everyone who makes the long trip from Syria). That's noble. But despite high taxes, it doesn't have unlimited houses and unlimited money and unlimited jobs to offer - and of course new immigrants want to settle near people of their own background - so immigrant neighborhoods have developed on the edge of town. And in some of those communities there are gangs and riots (for various reasons).

In a recent event, a black immigrant said an Arab youth gang beat him up and tried to throw him from a bridge. How do fix that? "Give them more money"? "Teach them tolerance"? It's hard.

That's what a lot if people are saying: The immigration policies are not working. The Swedish government is steadfastly saying that any criticism is racism. Which is a nice way to deflect responsibility and kick the van down the road as the problems just grow larger.

I don't know the best solution. Neither does Sweden's government.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/07/sweden-farright-plans-gay-pride-muslim-area-lgbt-150728180328656.html

then there's a problem. Soecifically, a problem for Sweden's gay people, who deserve to be accepted and respected on any street they choose to walk on.

The government is saying that a gay pride parade is bad because, "Immigrants should not be provoked!"

They are admitting that some of these immigrants will hate seeing gay people walk down a street.

But they aren't demanding the immigrants do better; they are demanding gays stay off those streets.

Shouldn't they be saying, "gays have a right to celebrate gayness all over Sweden. All residents, immigrant or not, must respect Swedish values."??

Freedom Riders provoked white racists. That's how they shone a light on racism. That's how they changed it. I am sure it was quite inconvenient for the US governemnt! So much easier if blacks (gays, Muslims, Jews, women, whomever) just know their place and stay in their place. Why make trouble? (sarcasm)

It's easy to be tolerant when your country is 99% white.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=7090569

It's a similar situation to Germany, but population-wise, Sweden has more immigration. They may learn the language, but the Swedes have also allowed organized crime from Eastern Europe and the Balkans to flourish, and the authorities have, for whatever reason, been too "tolerant" or too helpless to do anything about it. Either way, the backlash was pre-programmed. My wife as a social worker in Germany. For the longest time, her job was to help long-term unemployed people acquire skills and place them back into the workforce. Some of them were German social misfits, usually alcoholics. Most of them were immigrants from either eastern Europe, North Africa or the Middle East. Many of them were quite happy with their "temporary" status that gave them income, a free apartment, cell phones, and generous food money. She used to say the government was "blowing powdered sugar in their asses" and removing every incentive to let her find them a job. These guys got better benefits from coming with their hands outstretched and saying "me poor Russian, no understand," than a German got after taxes as a working stiff. What did the government expect the normal citizenry to say?

She had sympathy for those who were really trying to find a job, and hated the ones who were there to game the system. She would score a victory for herself when an immigrant or former alcoholic got a job and left her care. However, there were plenty of cases of young Russians showing up, complaining of fictitious backaches and language problems. Once she called up a lazy newly-arrived Russian kid, maybe 22 years old, who understood German perfectly except when he was required to keep an appointment. My wife told him one Friday to be in her office at 8:00 next Monday morning. "Me think understand," said the kid. She called him at home that night and handed the phone to me. I told the kid in Russian that he was expected to be in my wife's office at 8:00 the next Monday morning. Having no more excuses, he showed up, and within a year he was out of her program and working at a full time job. She had another case, this time a Lebanese "refugee" who spoke passable English but never learned German. He said his back was so badly hurt, he couldn't work, but he DID have enough energy to father 15 children while in Germany and cash in the "Kindergeld," or money for child support that the German government pays out to poor families so their children don't go hungry or unclothed. The guy's kids never saw much or any of the benefits of this money, but time when she visited him at home, he did have enough money for the latest plasma flat-screen wide picture TV. She went ballistic, but couldn't do anything about it except report it.

The whole refugee program came from a genuine desire to help out less fortunate people. West Germany, especially, got with the program as a way of atoning for their ancestors' (i.e. the Nazis') sins. East Germany washed their hands of it, saying "no Nazis here!" Now, of course, that all the whitewashing is gone, guess which part of Germany has the most neo-Nazis? But also in Scandinavia and the Netherlands, the high taxes were designed to have resources available to citizens who really needed help. It worked, as long as help was there for disadvantaged locals. Add a population influx of 1% of non-German speakers, mostly male, many Muslim or Eastern European (some criminal, some ex-military, some both), especially at a time when Germans alone are bleeding a couple of thousand euros for every German alive just to keep Greece afloat, and it's easy to see why a right-wing backlash would ensue if it wasn't headed off at the pass.

Predictable as it was, it happened almost everywhere. Politicians want to show their good intentions, then wash their hands of the mechanics of it by telling their states and towns, "make it so." Then they wonder why people are angry when the states and towns don't have the room, the money, nor the personnel to take care of these people, whom they are not allowed to punish or send away when their inevitable frustration sets in. This is pouring water on seeds of right-wing sentiment that had remained freeze-dried for decades. How the hell did they expect their voters to react?

There is only so much to go around and when people immigrate to do nothing but sponge off the generous social programs and contribute nothing in return, I can see why the native population would want to stem the tide. I don't always think its just because they are horrible, racist jerks.

about immigrant men bringing in multiple wives and fathering numerous children while the German government is supporting them all.

Yeah, that's going over real well.

The trouble is that the horrible racist jerks, who used to be nothing more than an insignificant nuisance on street corners on weekends, now have an audience. That is an ugly thing, and they won't go away quickly.

One thing that I think gets overlooked, is that people from different countries have different ideas of normal. For example, both my Ukrainian friends admit that within their circle of immigrants, many people think scamming the US government is normal - because in Ukraine it was normal. Everyone tried to get away with whatever they could.

So if that's what you're used to, and you come to a country where some foolish official is dumb enough to pay you if you fake a bad back, and then throw more money for every kid you produce, well, hell - only an idiot would refuse free money! Different upbringing, different sense of right and wrong.

That sounds like an excerpt from a republican anti-welfare ad which has been morphed into an anti-immigrant ad.

At least you are casting white Ukrainians, not African Americans or Hispanics, as welfare "moochers". Perhaps that is progress.

told me. As I said. And it stands to reason that in other countries (eg ones where corruption is endemic) people grow up with different standard of behavior. As I said.

Your desire to inflate your self-image by calling me racist is common. But it adds nothing to the discussion. And in Sweden, it is used to *silence* useful discussion.

Congrats on displaying the problem at hand, for all to see.

And put replaced the various nationalities with "Mexican" or simply "Illegals" your post would fit in perfectly in freeperville or on Trumps campaign website.

Think about that...

isimmigration is complex. That's the whole point of the discussion.

The guy talking about his wife's experiences in Germany was relating things that happened to her. That's part of the discussion. Why shouldntb it be? The immigrant who tells a story about being frustrated and jobless and miserable - or about being happy - also has a story that's worth listening to. It takes listening to all stories, to get a nuanced understanding of what the hell is going on.

Otherwise, all anyone knows is her own narrow experience and whatever type of propaganda she has latched on to.

The response one sometimes hears on DU - "You shouldn't say X because Republicans say X" is silly to me. It's done to shut down debate. If you disagree with an opinion, say why. If you have a different anecdote to offer, please offer it. That's why we're all here: to discuss different sides of complex issues.

Or so I imagine.

Try again. Look at a map, read some history, learn German, Russian and Turkish (for starters) and live a while over there like I've been doing for so many years, and you'll see that the so-called "tolerance" was nothing more than a misguided pouring of lighter fluid onto right wing embers that are now starting to roar out of control. Maybe that's cool with you, but to those of us who want no part of seeing neo-Nazi groups in our town squares, it's anything BUT cool. You probably live in some comfortable part of North America where the nearest thing to a neo-Nazi is a pic on your laptop. We live where they once ran things, and less than a century ago. The Anne Frank school, where my daughters went to grade school, used to be the local Gestapo HQ during the war. Go spread your high-handed theories to people who don't risk seeing neo-Nazi movements handing out flyers during Saturday market. We on the ground would rather they stay theoretical rather than become real.

Can't a healthy country take in all comers?

I suspect that the right in Sweden likes to portray the country's refugee policy as having no 'upper limit'. It sounds like the 'upper limit' that the far-right prefers is 0 refugees.

and not getting the housing, jobs, or life they wanted, it seems rational to stop taking new ones (or slow down at least) an work on fixing the problems of the ones already in Sweden.

If you have 18 kids and some are overcrowded or miserable or getting molested at home, should you keep adopting more? Who is helped and who is hurt?

Sifo (another pollster) has the Sweden Democrats at 17.8%, with a margin of 2.8 %. This would mean that the Sweden Democrats are the third biggest party, which is bad enough.

Here's a graph from that poll, the question on top is translated as "What party would you vote for if there was an election today?". The Sweden Democrats is abbreviated "SD" and is symbolized by a blue flower. The captions translate as "change since 1-11 June" and "election 2014" respectively:

Unfortunately, the graph won't show up in the post, you have to copy and paste the adress in your browser...

www.gp.se/image_processor/1.2809062.1440192004!/image/3292773088.jpg_gen/derivatives/wide/3292773088.jpg

Source: http://www.gp.se/nyheter/sverige/1.2808974-jamnt-mellan-blocken-sd-vaxer