What Refugees Bring When They Run for Their Lives
On a personal note, I'm more likely to investigate anti-refugee arguments because I feel like they're underrated. I agree with the sentiment that we should understand that we're dealing with humans here, not numbers; but just like statistics has its weakness in that it can cause us to over-generalize, picking out the stories of individuals can allow a narrative to be crafted that is overfitted away from the whole.<p>Big picture: most refugees going across the Mediterranean are Syrian, male (like 72% male!), young, and poor.[0] Like unless they have families that they're hoping to have evacuated (why didn't they bring them over in the first place?), we're talking about a recipe for complete stupidity. Language barriers exist, education barriers exist; I don't know how the Europeans intend to get all of these refugee adults up to economic snuff at the same grade of Europeans who were trained in the ways of the West from birth.<p>This is going to be a demographic shock to countries with more balanced gender ratios, and in the case of Europe, upside-down aging pyramids. Men without solid economic recourse and lack of cultural integration are going to resort to crime. They will upset the local sex market through strong male competition for women (rape town!). Politics in Europe will never be the same as the majority of the young do not carry any of the previous generation's values.<p>I'm really open to being proved wrong, I really am. But I'm not counting on it.<p>[0] <a href="http://data.unhcr.org/mediterranean/regional.php" rel="nofollow">http://data.unhcr.org/mediterranean/regional.php</a>