| pearljammer said: Being from Canada, I'm a bit out of touch here - so take what I say as having as little validity to it as you wish. I think we should be taking in as many as we can regardless of any economic burden. Everyone. My only condition would be so long as Sharia does not trump the laws of their refuge. |
I'm french, and unfortunately I have to disagree. We already have problems with legal immigration because of a really difficult integration. The economy is bad here, with a lot of unemployment, and it's even harder for migrants or foreigners. They can't get a job, so they can't get a place to live other than poor districts, and the result is almost foreign cities within cities. They're not really integrated in the country, and neither are their children, and a lot of them don't consider themselves french, and have no reason to do so. They're not dying or anything, of course, but they don't live in good conditions at all and can't hope for anything more for most of them.
For illegal immigrants (like gypsies), it's worse, some of them live in slums and have to steal or beg, usually "employed" by mafia groups (for example to reimburse the travel). These camps barely have water, no electricity, and are frequently fed by associations to survive. The government is trying to destroy the slums, because they are a sanitary risk for the population.
It's useless to say "Come, come, you're welcomed here", if the result is a slum with almost worse living conditions than an UN refugees camp in the middle of nowhere. It's not worth the risk of crossing the sea, and we could easily build camps with better conditions in other countries closer to the countries at war (so, without the deadly travel).
EDIT : Of course, some immigrants have no problem at all with immigration, especially if they have a degree in something useful, but that's not possible for everyone.
