“The result of years of immigration from societies where violence is common - the same infrastructure gets built in our backyards too. Compare how Brussels used to be versus now, and decide if this is how we want our cities to end up as.”
The problem with this statement is it assumes a lot of things that appeal to a certain mindset, but when you scrutinize them fall apart:
1)Um, for one thing, take a look at ‘our’ society, whether you mean the US or western society. We have serious violence in this society, rates of domestic abuse, violent crimes, assault, murder, shootings, stabbing, rape, we have people getting killed or left brain dead after beatings at a sports game. We have sports like MMA and Boxing, or football, that are not exactly based in passiveness. We have a popular culture that in some ways glorifies violence, you have the ‘violence porn’ movies like Hostel and Saw, or tv shows that are full of violence and so forth like Sons of Anarchy was. Does that mean everyone in our society is a bloodthirsty monster waiting to kill, main and mutilate others?
2)More importantly, talk to people who have come from these ‘violent societies’, and you want to know what they want? They don’t want to bring the violence here, they aren’t programmed monsters who take violence casually, because they have experienced it up close and personal. We have been taking in people from places like Syria (there is a large population in the Detroit area),people from war ravaged parts of Africa, Palestinians, and want to know a little bit of truth? These people came here to get away from that, and whether Muslims or Christians, Syrians or Africans, they want a better life, they don’t want to recreate the crap that goes on 'over there". People who are Iranian in descent don’t want the battles over Shia versus Sunni, mideast Christians simply want to live safely.
The biggest problem with this is it assumes evil intent of immigrants and refugees, and also quite honestly does nothing valuable in my opinion. Are there security concerns and others with having large amounts of refugees and immigrants? Of course, issues of housing and how to get them settled and turning into productive citizens or simply guests, are all very real as is issues like ISIS smuggling people in via being refugees, it is not simple.
And while I don’t love the standard line from some quarters that the blame for Paris and Belgium is the way Muslims have been treated and how we in effect shouldn’t blame those responsible, there is some truth to that, too. Put it this way, there are large Muslim populations in the US in some areas , and you don’t see the kind of problems you see in Europe, near where I live there is a large Muslim population in Paterson and Clifton, and while these are not great areas, and there are problems with crime and such,there haven’t been the kind of issues you see in Europe, because the people in these communities don’t feel the isolation from what I can tell.
Someone recently pointed out the WTC bombing in 93, but the perpetrators there were not isolated, the chief organizer worked for Honeywell as an engineer I believe and the others were not the typical description of being frustrated over lack of jobs, etc…which points out you can’t generalize either way.
It isn’t that I think we necessarily have to throw open the doors and just say “come on in”, but I also think the gross bigotry of claims like somehow ‘those people are inured to violence’ or 'those people are all like that" are not only exaggerations of the worst sort, they also feed into the very things that end up causing things like happen in Europe.
I understand people are scared, I understand that people are upset and angry about what is happening, and believe me, I have my moments. The problem is I also see the faces of women, men and children fleeing horror, and I can’t sit back and blame them for their misery or think they want anything but a bit of peace and hope. I don’t like to use references to the Holocaust, but I challenge people to go back and read about what happened when Jewish refugees fleeing the horror of the Third Reich before the war tried to get access, take a look at footage from the time, the people on the St Louis were turned away and the looks on their faces, and also read about what people in the US were saying about taking in Jewish refugees, the vitriol, the claims of all those Jewish refugees “causing problems”, the language is not all that much different…and much of the same suspects as the politicians you see grandstanding today were saying similar things back then about the Jewish refugees from Europe, and we know the outcome of that one.
