Call for an International Panel on Migration and Asylum

[bgmt]

Call for an International Panel on Migration and Asylum to guide European policies and global migration governanceThis text seems to me entirely adequate. It addresses real long-term issues, it does not give easy solutions, it calls just for opening one's eyes and seeing that there is a problem that cannot be addressed on a short-term basis. One

Comments

[chaource]

I found the text duplicitous. There is "urgency" now, but there was no urgency 2 years ago when more than a million migrants arrived? I can only see one explanation: it is only now that political opposition to open borders has actually materialized in a number of European countries, and people have voted for anti-immigration parties and governments. So, I can only explain the main thrust of this text by assuming that the author of the text is of the opinion that closed-borders policy is "confused" or "ideologically driven", while open-borders policy is what is needed. To the author, the "migrant crisis" seems to consist not in the arrival of millions of immigrants from countries with sharply incompatible cultures, but in the partial closing of the borders that some countries are now about to put into effect. The author alludes to people who are against immigration as "confused" or "ideologically driven"; and apparently we need a "solution" that will be supra-national because the national governments are too "confused". Some global government should override the will of the people in the individual countries? If people voted for the correct opinion, it is democracy, but if they voted for an incorrect opinion, they need to vote again because democracy is then "in danger"? People are "confused" when they are concerned about their safety in their little countries? Facts about the negative impact of mass immigration are "controversial" and due to "fear-mongering", but closing the borders is an "attack on asylum rights"? To me, this text is very clearly anti-democratic and anti-humanist. This is precisely what most Europeans are opposed to, right now. This position is precisely why right-wing parties gain popularity in a number of countries.

The text treats European citizens as dim-witted, provincial simpletons who can't understand the complexity of the big world, and whose political will needs to be supplanted by the opinions of "scientists, policy makers, activists" who are actually called the "stakeholders" in the text. Are not European citizens the main stakeholders in the future of their countries? No, to the author of this text, apparently, the stakeholders who "urgently" need to discuss the migration crisis are the enlightened experts who will dictate correct opinions and policy decisions to the lowly European citizens.

[prosto_vitjok]

As for the asylum agenda in Germany, politics is currently stuck in a blind alley. Any constructive discussion on migration has been overlayed by power retention plots and schemes between government factions, and the political output is rather & at best a homeopathic dilution of people's political will (should the latter exist as such). Recall that the Merkel's CDU got 26.8% of the secondary votes at the election to the Bundestag, and the eternal CDU/CSU union, which is about to fall apart now, got 32.9% only, many of those votes being desperate no-alternative / incompetent out-of-habit decisions. It took them half a year to build a "government", an inept patchwork of groups involved in ferocious internal battles. In this situation, an international panel of subject matter experts should really be given a try.

[chaource]

German people should decide their own future, - as should the people of all other countries. Political struggle is normal and healthy, as it is within the German system and according to the shared understanding of how the balance of power should be regulated. "It may be a bad system, but it's better than all others." On the other hand, an international group of unaccountable and unelected Euro-bureaucrats, who masquerade as "experts" and are perfectly insulated from the consequences of their decisions, is a known recipe for disaster. To call such an international group "stakeholders", as does the author of the text, is revealing of the real agenda of these people - to seize more power without accountability. European citizens are waking up to this now.

[prosto_vitjok]

You know, there is no empirical evidence to substantiate the assertion that one system be better than another in the very concrete task to resolve this particular asylum crisis. The efficiency of the present governments in face of the current situation is low, in the meantime those guys who came 2014 to Germany aged 16 are now aged 20, that's it, and what our German democracy has delivered during that time is nothing else than "short-term and inadequate political solutions", to take the formulation of the posting above. Political struggle of the governing elites is nothing about maximazing the functional of the public wellbeing, their accountability is more a wish and desire than reality. This German government does not work, democracy or not. How long should one accept their erratic ad-hoc actions for the only reason it is formally a democracy whatever this means nowadays? Besides this, a founded solution to this refugee issue cannot be elaborated on the level of individual nations, it is about broad region matters.

[bgmt]

I have already said once, in the thread that ends with https://bgmt.livejournal.com/1174817.html?edit=18113569#body, that in my opinion we live in worlds perpendicular to each other. I see no possibility of any meaningful consensus on politically (and, possibly, broader than politically) important issues, Accidental consensus on small details that may occur is not interesting. This view of the matters gets confirmed, in my eyes, by your comment. I personally see no reason to try and answer your objections; if others (like prosto_vityok) are willing, ok, on the condition that I do not participate.

[chaource]

You see, that's the weird thing - some 15-20 years ago, when I worked as a young academic researcher at a university, I used to share your point of view on pretty much all political issues. I used to support feminism, abortion rights, gay rights, and affirmative action. I supported these positions not just in words but in some volunteer community work I did back then. I used to view anything "right-wing" with deep suspicion, and I thought that "conservatives" are simply rich and evil people. I canceled my subscription to the "National Review" (initially I didn't know it was a conservative publication) when I found an article there that openly praised capitalism. I used to think that politically correct speech codes (e.g. to say "African-American" instead of "black", or to say "his/her" or "they" instead of "his" when the gender is indefinite, etc.) are a good thing, a sign of necessary respect towards oppressed minorities, and so on.

My point of view has started to change about 10 years ago, and now it's quite different, as you correctly observe. However, the mainstream media's position has not changed - it's still the same politically correct, far-left progressive ideology I know very well. I know all their arguments and all their political positions, and I could argue their side with my eyes closed. It's just that now I don't think those arguments are correct, I don't think those political positions are based on empirical evidence, and I don't think any longer that those policies (e.g. affirmative action or gay rights) bring happiness to anyone at all (minorities and immigrants included). I learned the arguments from the conservative side, and I know that there are many good, common-sense, and empirically solid arguments in favor of economically conservative, socially conservative, and even nationalist conservative viewpoints, - arguments that are empirically based and free of racist, sexist, or other prejudice. The kind of arguments that I, as a scientist, would have accepted 20 years ago, had I seen them anywhere in the media. Conservatives want to improve life, just as the left liberals do. And there are good, solid arguments for adopting certain conservative policies because these policies do demonstrably improve everyone's life. Now that I understand these arguments and positions, I can't possibly accept the left-wing talk at face value as I did 20 years ago.

But I can still discuss things with people who have a different point of view, if the discussion is "in good faith" - i.e. if both sides honestly want to agree on policies that will tangibly improve people's lives. Then there is a solid shared ground, regardless of philosophical and ideological differences. Then the discussion can be productive - it will be about empirical evidence, about the expected consequences of this or that proposed policy, and this is the kind of discussion people need today.

But we live in a world where an ordinary software developer and the president of Harvard University are fired equally easily for supposedly being "prejudiced" - because they dared to mention in public some small portion of empirical data that contradicts the mainstream feminist ideology. An explicitly color-blind policy is nowadays called "racist", an "unfair privilege" actually means "earned reward"; a "harmful prejudice" means "empirical data that contradicts our chosen ideology", and "we need to have a discussion" means "our despicable opponents must be silenced".

In this "call for international panel", I couldn't avoid seeing this kind of Orwellian distortion of language. There, "confused" means "disagreeing with the politically correct point of view"; the "stakeholders" in the immigration crisis are not the European (or foreign) citizens but some unnamed "international experts". "Our" opponents are wrong because their policy is "ideology-driven", and yet at the same time "we" shouldn't look at empirical data - instead "we" must follow a certain "correct" ideology when formulating policy.

The immigration crisis must be discussed, but a discussion can't possibly be productive if the issues are formulated in such a heavily distorted language. The first step towards a productive discussion is to stop the Orwellian newspeak.

[agasfer]

One should only engage in a productive dialogue with good, smart people. And good, smart people can't disagree with you 'cause they share your views, naturally ;)