"Yes, a foreign legionnaire may apply for French citizenship from three years of service.
"It is usually granted, subject to have a good way to serve and have proven its willingness to integrate the French Nation.
"The legionnaire who does not wish to opt for French nationality retains his foreign nationality and is just as much to stay in France at the end of his contract and once he is in possession of a residence permit.
"Obtaining a residence card is consecutive to obtaining a "certificate of good conduct" issued by the command of the Foreign Legion to each deserving legionnaire leaving active service.
Furthermore, the legionnaire wounded in operation may acquire, from right, French nationality (law called "the blood shed")."
While it’s not uncommon to give citizenship for helping the country (notably by spilled blood in the légion étrangère), this particular case is widely thought to be a staged event. A lot of things are really really strange, for instance how a small kid arrived in this position (some French scientists ruled it impossible), why the man who is holding him from the balcony don’t save it directly, why no investigation have been ordonned, etc.
Don’t forget this happened in a context of permanent terror attacks that eroded the image of immigrants. In particular, it conveniently happened less than two months after the hostage-taking of 23 March 2018 which lead to the death of lieutenant-colonel Beltrame, an episode that shocked the public opinion.
As someone who has some (immigrant) friends which try/tried to get a foothold in Germany usually the opposite is the norm: You can do everything by the book, be the perfect citizen and in the and you are thanked by daily racism and a bureaucratic maze.
To have the strength to stay a good person through all of that is a big achievement. This is why I think showing as a society doing things the right way counts.
This is the foundation of the unwritten societal contract: if you go by the rules everything will turn out well for you. If you break the rules, act egoistic etc, you might end up in a bad place.
This is why stuff like coruption, worker exploitation, tax evasion etc is worse than just stealing the people's money — it is also undermining the trust into that unwritten societal contract.
This contract is of course fiction Which means that believing into it is either optimistic or naive depending on your country. But if it breaks down thing will only get much worse
I am curious what kind of problem had or have your friends? Usually it is quite straightforward to get citizenship in Germany. Have a job for 7 years and no criminal record, and you can apply. Source: The (formerly) foreign colleagues I know had no problem with the process.
I studied in Germany and then worked there for four years. They counted my years of study toward citizenship which was awesome. This depends on which region you were in though, some regions only counted 7 years after you started working full time.
This was years ago, so things may have changed now.
A glass is seen as either half full or half empty. All that can be perceived as racist is not necessarily so. There could be a number of reasons for unpleasant outcomes, none more likely than the other.
Terrible oversimplification. It's extremely difficult to determine what negative action is motivated by racism and which isn't.
If you're not generally at risk of experiencing racism (ie. you are of the majority ethnic group), of course it is easy to rule out. It's hardly a glass half empty/half full type of problem.
I think you've interpreted your parent post a little harshly.
These statements from your comment and the parent comment to seem to mean essentially the same thing.
> All that can be perceived as racist is not necessarily so
> It's extremely difficult to determine what negative action is motivated by racism and which isn't
The difference is how likely you are to assume possible racism is actual racism. The "glass half full/empty" metaphor expresses that difference quite well.
> The difference is how likely you are to assume possible racism is actual racism. The "glass half full/empty" metaphor expresses that difference quite well.
I addressed this quite clearly:
If you're not generally at risk of experiencing racism (ie. you are of the majority ethnic group), of course it is easy to rule out. It's hardly a glass half empty/half full type of problem.
A glass half empty/half full metaphor implies that the perception is simply down to personal optimism, which as I said, is clearly a gross oversimplification.
I am not questioning the clarity of your expression, but your narrow interpretation of the metaphor. It does not imply that judgements about racism are purely a matter of optimism or pessimism. It already incorporates the fact a person's influences cause them to make those judgements.
Of course someone who is at risk of experiencing racism is more likely to judge an act to be racist, but that doesn't make them right. In fact, they may be more likely to attribute innocent acts to racism, just as someone who rarely experiences racism is likely to make the opposite judgement more often than is justified.
My point is that we are arguing about something that was already expressed by the parent under what I believe to be a more generous interpretation of their use of that metaphor.
France always had a way to citizenship called, I paraphrase here, "citizenship by blood spoiled". Quite often used in case of members of the foreign legion. It basically says, that when you get hurt or wounded while serving the French Republic you are eligible to become a French citizen. Fair enough, if you ask me.
It seems rather lax already, to be honest. France requires five years of residency, the ability to speak French, and a basic understanding of French culture and civics. That really seems like the bare minimum for the state to take on a lifetime, irrevocable responsibility for a prospective immigrant.
It's not five years to citizenship. After five years you get to apply. Then it takes about 4 years of administrative hell (with some traps that can get you back to square one) to get there.
No one who is at all familiar with the French immigration system would tell you that it's "lax". It's generally a nightmare to navigate and it feels like it's designed to deter all but the most determined immigrants.
Source: personal experience with friends and my so.
Anecdata, but a Cuban friend of ours has a French wife. Able to apply after 5 years and more or less got his French passport immediately after handing in the necessary documents and passing interviews and language tests. All in the same year he applied. Maybe it's different because of marriage, no idea.
When you are not in France, the hardest part is to find someone to administer the necessary language test. Last time I checked there were two institutes in Germany with the proper certification, one in Frankfurt and one in Berlin. Then Covid hit I didn't check again.
Paperwork seems to be a pain in the ass, so. That being said, it seems easier than getting German citizenship.
Being married to a French citizen makes things much, much easier. You still have to apply to filter out obviously problematic cases (and convenience marriages just for the purpose of getting citizenship) but otherwise it is mostly automatic.
I think it is easier than getting German citizenship (and others: naturalisation in Switzerland is notoriously very difficult), but it’s not necessarily saying much.
Yes it's different because of marriage. It's 10 years of presence in France, that you can prove. Through marriage it's shorter, but you get the special 'white marriage' procedure to make sure you're not in it for the citizenship. Prove that you live and have been living together, that you've been a couple for some time... Didn't like this process at all.
Then I have something to look forward to, haven't I? Living abroad, outside of France, may change things again. Maybe next year, but I keep telling this myself for 3 years now. Hopefully kids and house will make that white marriage thing easier!
When was that? Today the waiting time announced is 12-18 months, and personal experience, even with Covid and two lockdowns it took a bit more than a year.
That’s the theory. Then you have appointments one year in the future. Of course you have to be there otherwise you have to wait months for another one. You also have to be there early because having an appointment does not necessarily mean that there will be someone for you, it just means that you can queue on that day. You might also have to travel quite a bit because the office to which you have to go is allocated unpredictably.
Then, add all the difficulties an administration can throw at you (you sent an uncertified copy? too bad; the document with the exact title does not exist in your country of origin? Too bad; Records were lost because of a civil war? Too bad; You did not check the box L-430-b on the cf-740 form even though you should have because you were born on a full moon from parents working for a watchamacallit factory? Too bad; etc ad nauseam).
These difficulties depend a lot on where you’re from; it’s quite different for rich Americans than for poor Malians. So yes, it’s generous on paper but the devil is in the implementation details, as with all bureaucracy.
Also, it’s quite expensive if you consider the whole process.
well that the theorical rules, in practice things can vary wildly. expescially on which prefecture/department you have to apply from.
As another commenter said the time can be reduced to 2 year before you can apply but that doesn't mean much.
From personal experience, I've been living in france for about 8 years now and everytime I have to deal with immigration services it can be a nightmare.
here is one:
after arriving when my visa comme close to an end by a few month I aplied to get a 1 year residency card, I got that card 2 years later just before I got my first diploma.
every 3 months I would have to go to the prefecture at 6/7AM wait outside in the cold only to be told every now and then at 4pm sorry you're not going to pass today try again tommorow. why did I have to go every 3 month? well to give that the exact same papers I gave them the time before, If you didn't have them on you that day because you didn't think you would need to have a copy of the papers you've already given well that too bad for you.
after 1year and a half of this, the person with whom I was having the apointement asked by I was here because apparently they can't find my folder. expect I have in my hand a document from this same prefecture aknowledging that I deposited my document and that I can legally stay for the next 3 months (and copies of the previous ones), of course I had to give them on the stop every document they needed or go back and wait for another apointement where you would have to explai the situation once a gain. this meant that every time I had to go to the prefecture I had a backpack on my back with every document I had on my house that I thought could remotly be relevant, because the official list of require documents is for indicative purposes only and they can ask you for a lot more on case to case basis.
second anecdote,
if you have a foreign driving living from a country with which france has an agreement with. you have exchange it for a french one once you start working withing the limit of 1 year. At the time I had to the only way to do it is by getting an apointement online, expect the website to get the apointement form is closed, it opne for less than 5 min while crashing continully on a sunday at midnight, after trying for I few month I sent emails explaining the situation -> no reponse and went in person to the prefecture only to be told sorry that's not our problem and was given no clue on how to try to fix this. thanks to covid the process for converting driving licenses is now fully online, I aplied when they first announced this beginning of last summer, I'm still waiting for any news positive or negative.
One needs to show that they have stayed in France sufficiently long to have had the “valeurs de la République” (values of the Republic) imbued in them, as well as speak a decent level of French and to have been well integrated in society.
FWIW the overall wait time to become a French citizen is much less than most other European countries.
Once you are eligible for citizenship (which can take a long time) You must
1. take an appointment to have your document checked (waiting time 1 year)
2. take an appointment to submit the actual application (1 year)
3. wait for the result, 1 1/2 year.
So by the time you are eligible, it can take 3-4 years before you know the outcome of your application. These 3-4 years don't serve any obvious purpose that I can think of.
That's the real problem in a lot of EU countries. This, coupled with highly inefficient ways of delivering results, appointment dates/locations, or inefficient locations in general (e.g. you reside in city X yet you have to appear in person in city Y that is 200km away just to submit a form).
This can be especially heartbreaking when one has to take a time off just to appear in city Y, spend money on transport, and then find out that the only person that can accept the application has not arrived to the office, and so the whole trip was for nothing (personal experience).
Countries seem to have a hard time explaining spending money on efficient dealing with immigration. The whole immigration process is highly stressful even in the EU; I can't imagine how stressful it is in the US, which treats immigrants quite poorly (in my humble opinion).
While citizenship is a privilege, not a right, decades, or maybe centuries of bureaucratic procedures pile up and are not reviewed/simplified ending up with situations like that
Add the factor that the public service does not have the same kind of incentives (and being a native of the country makes you know about the ways of making things work - foreigners don't know that usually)
Granted, not all countries are like that. And while people might complain about German bureaucracy, they at least make an effort to do things by the book (meaning: if your appointment says a certain time, you'll be seen at that time)
And American bureaucracy also has its quirks and complications when seen from outside.
It is a right for a lot of people. How could it be a democracy if citizenship weren’t a right?
The case where it isn’t is for people not born from French parents or not married to a French citizen (plus a couple of other exceptions). In this case, the criteria for naturalisation are clearly spelled out in the law. It should not be arbitrary.
The current mess is because governments want to limit immigration without touching the law to tighten the criteria, for purely political reasons. The French government actually knows how to run large administrations quite well when there are incentives to do so.
I did the procedure in arguably the préfecture under the most pressure (Paris), and from the day I applied, it took 9 months to get the interview and 6 months to get the citizenship. That was it, less than 1.5 years in total.
It took roughly the same time for almost everyone that I know that applied. The only cases that I know of that took longer were people with "exotic" statuses, e.g. people who didn't live full time in France and owned businesses in different countries that they had to visit often to physically tend to.
When was it? A few years ago, they added a new requirement that you don't apply directly to the "prefecture" but you have to go through an additional step which takes about a year.
My gf is applying for citizenship at the moment, I've described the timeline for her situation. It's been now more than 3 years since she started her application, including 14 months waiting for their decision. And she'd been living in France for more than 10 years before that and graduated from a French university.
It probably would have been easier to just get married...
BTW, congratulations for your citizenship. I'm glad it was efficient for you.
It’s really not. That is 5 years (two if you came for a degree), which is the time after which you’re supposed to be acquainted with the language and the culture (which is fair enough). The delays are after that to get appointments and stuff. These are purely a consequence of the bureaucratic process, which is quite arbitrary in its implementation (as an example, depending on your country of origin you might have to go to different offices, which process files at very different speeds).
Some comments from the pro-immigrant side astound me...
France has one of the most generous immigration policies imo. Citizenship in 5 years can easily be obtained by an highly-educated and skilled immigrant. They don't demand an exceptional knowledge of French or French customs and values.
Source:- considered it a few years back, decided against it
This isn't really true.
There have been a few isolated cases of former members of the armed services who were convicted of a felony being deported. I don't agree with that happening either but to say they are regularly deported just isn't true.
If you serve in the armed forces and don't commit crimes, and apply for citizenship you will most likely get it.
Also the US accepts alot more immigrants than Japan, China, and many other countries.
Most of the complaints about immigration come down to this, there is much more demand than "supply".
> US accepts alot more immigrants than Japan, China, and many other countries.
The overwhelming majority of people in Japan, China, etc. hasve ancestral roots in their respective countries going back thousands of years before written history. They live in “their land”, their ancestors’ land.
On the other hand, America as we know it is a country of immigrants, practically every “native” American is an N-th generation immigrant, 2 <= N <= 25.
It’s silly to compare immigration policy without regard to historical origins of countries.
I can't vouch for everything about Japan's immigration policy, nor do I have first-hand experience with the US system. But despite Japan intaking a lot less, people who meet the "baseline requirements" (basically, college degree) can be consistently assured that they can get a work visa and not get arbitrarily kicked out of the country.
Similarly, even the smallest companies (like miniscule, 5-people startups) are able to get visas for people who meet the college degree requirement with basically no issue.
Also, they don't tie your work visa to your employer[1], so you don't get indentured servitude or the threat of getting kicked out of the country after being fired.
Meanwhile I have heard countless horror stories from many people trying to do even the most basic stuff when it comes to immigration in the US. And it sure sounds like you are, at a basic level, treated like a suspicious person who might be a criminal.
You can say "oh look at the numbers" but I have heard roughly zero positive things about the American immigration experience. And (what I think is the most important thing), I have heard many stories about the opacity and randomness of the American bureaucracy.
And, you know what? Most countries _don't_ just kick someone out on the first crime they commit. And they don't try to hold it over the head of the person. It's possible to have an immigration system that doesn't treat the people coming in as indentured servants.
[1] HSFP visa non-excepting, but if you can get HSFP you can get a standard working visa
If the US had Japan's policy you would hear a lot more complaints as relatively few people would be allowed in.
Japan has less than 3m immigrants TOTAL.
The US takes in about 1 million a Year.
"most countries _don't_ just kick someone out on the first crime they commit."
Neither does the US. Most of the time the crimes that lead to deportation are felonies. Why is the US obligated to keep non citizens who commit serious crimes?
The US is under no obligation to take anyone.
The system certainly isn't perfect, warrants criticize. But some of the complaints are ridiculous and come down to again way more demand than supply.
(Update, I don't agree with you, but I hope HNers will not downvote you as a few are)
Japan doesn't have low numbers because of immigration quotas (they are in fact _trying_ to bring in more people, for its own reasons), and they have no immigration quotas. So I think the system would be welcome to many people who want to go to the US and who can meet the college degree criteria.
Of course countries can do whatever they want (just from the notion of application of power). But I see immigration as a two way street. There's an invitation to come into a society, and a request to participate in it. Other people in society get second chances, they get opportunities to improve... I feel like extending that to everyone is the logical conclusion of a just society.
And... yeah maybe there's some abstract notions that underpin the US system. But when you look at the facts on the ground, I just don't see how you justify the draconian decisions applied to people after they've been a part of society for so long. What's the point of a bunch of theory if the practice turns into things like "ICE can lock someone up for years without them being allowed to see a judge"?
At least it's not at Australia-level cruelty, I guess...
I suspect some of the reasons you and the person responding to you are not quite seeing eye to eye is that "immigration" has wrapped up both legal and illegal immigration. It's possible the US is relatively open to legal immigration compared to some countries while also being particularly egregious in it's handling of illegal immigration.
Even beyond than that, there are multiple facets of both legal and illegal immigration. Maybe the US both accepts larger numbers of immigrants legally but is also more intolerant of certain kinds of applicants than others.
When dealing with huge issues, I think it's deceptively easy to simplify the issue more than you realize. I know I've ended up in arguments where after far too much effort I realized we both actually more or less agreed with each other, but were simply focusing on different aspects of a larger issue.
The US has the largest immigrant population in the world and one of the highest immigration rates among developed countries. I resent how casually blatantly false anti-US comments like this get voted up without any data to back them up, almost like it's a fad to talk-down America.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_Stat...
And that is their decision. I think it is best for each country to decide for themselves, based on their culture, objectives, history, and values. France has a way of doing it, Canada has a way of doing it, China has a way of doing it, and the US has a way of doing it. One size fits all is least applicable when it comes to nation states.
This is a motte and bailey fallacy and doesnt even merit a response. Why dont you start with a good faith argument for how the US is anti immigrant, since the numbers clearly dont agree with that statement.
There have always been limits to immigration. Almost no one is saying no immigration. Needs change. What the country needs now might not be the same as 150 years ago.
Absolute numbers seems legitimate. The US per capita immigration rate is largely the result of the high absolute number of immigrants taken in over US history.
Absolute numbers are heavily dependent on country size and most countries are tiny. Vatican City at the extreme end is formed 100% from immigrants, but has a tiny and self limiting population.
The Vatican is not a migrant friendly destination, despite being made up entirely of immigrants. If I were to try and migrate I would try to migrate to the States. All of a few hundred people worldwide are trying to migrate to the Vatican.
It is a fad to talk-down America. It’s soft power in politics, something the US has been losing for many years now. Anti-Americanism and its rise is something extensively covered in academia over the past two decades, this is just 2020: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_ylo=2020&q=anti+americ...
one is that USA for being the world superpower and through their media monopoly is always in the spotlight.
The second is that USA spend too much time saying how wonderful they are (that if you look to history with a little objectivity is not so wonderful). Reaction to this is almost inevitable.
I would like to present a trivial recent example: as you know, USA retired from the climate Paris agreement and, in general, is not doing so much like other nations despite being the worst in per capita terms.
Well, it seems that the new president want to go back to the Paris agreements and is framing it like "going back to led the world" in climate change. Going back to led the world? really?
I know, I know, this a sentence for internal consumption but still, how do you think it sounds in other countries?
I didn't touch the little fact of invasions of third countries and military bases all around the world.
So, maybe there is something to this fad? Maybe take it like feedback to correct a few things?
> in general, is not doing so much like other nations despite being the worst in per capita terms.
Do you have sources to back any part of this statement? It would be surprising to see US doing less and being worth that, for example, Germany and its coal or China and its industrial complex. Otherwise it seems to be another example of "blatantly false anti-US comments like this get voted up without any data to back them up".
Actually I have to correct that because the USA is not the worst per capita (my apologies), but it's up there with the top worst (Canada, Australia, Saudi Arabia and a bunch of smaller countries) and, of course, more important because of the size of its population (1).
It seems that what it's in dispute is the "not doing so much like other nations". I would say there are two ways to look at it: pledges and historical data.
I don't think is necessary to demonstrate that the USA current pledges are below the Paris agreement countries.
For historical I just will take 2019 that was a specially good year for USA CO2 reductions.
>>"It’s true that, according to the IEA’s February 2020 report, the U.S. achieved a greater absolute reduction in CO2 emissions than any other country, in 2019. However, claims that the U.S. therefore “led the entire world” or was a “global leader” in CO2 emissions were belied by the fact that other countries (including Germany, Japan, and likely others) achieved a superior rate of reduction in CO2 emissions. Although not a country, the European Union achieved both a larger absolute reduction and a greater rate of reduction in CO2 emissions than the US did. "
Which policy? The latest H1-B bill which lifts per-country caps passed unanimously in the senate and with a strong majority in the house.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/1044
Certainly different people will have different opinions on what the "right" number of immigrants is but this is not an anti-immigrant country.
That's because it's designed to let in more rich Asians and less poor Latin Americans and Africans.
In terms of popular political support I would say that the United States is very anti-immigrant, and has been for a very long time. The reason the U.S. continues to let in so many immigrants is because of business interests, which have always held considerable political power. And the reason the U.S. has such diversity of immigrants is because of the peculiarity of our laws (e.g. by promoting so-called chain migration, a term Trump has turned into a pejorative), which have largely stayed the same because of inertia and political deadlock, but as you pointed out this is likely to change soon.
Also, the U.S. is no longer unique in terms of its large foreign born population. The U.K., for example, has roughly the same percentage. Brexit is no coincidence. Ditto for Germany. Though AFAIU German anti-immigration sentiment is mostly focused on immigrants from outside the E.U. (e.g. Turkey), whereas a large part of the sentiment in the U.K. is focused on Eastern European immigrants. Thus Angela Merkel has managed to placate voters by tacitly supporting harsher restrictions at the E.U. border, the short-lived Syrian influx notwithstanding. Brexit was driven in part by, e.g., people being pissed at low-wage Polish migrants.
I'll agree that the U.S. isn't worse than other countries. And I suppose our history as being a melting pot relatively unique unto the world is still worth something. (Though many parts of Latin America also saw similar migration flows at the turn of the 18th century. There are still German speaking towns in Brazil, Welsh speaking towns in Argentina, and a curious number of ethnic Japanese all over South America.) But we don't really stand out anymore one way or the other.
Immigration cap? Without a cap on H1B the US would have 10 or 50 times the level of incoming immigrants.
Plus H1B is limited to having degrees (or a lot of work experience) in a small subset of occupations.
The US could bring over 1 million doctors in one year if it were legal.
H1B is only one specific case of immigration: generally speaking the developed world allows for unconstrained immigration if you have a job offer. Americans are particularly restricted in hiring foreigners, which is also one reason why it has so much illegal immigration.
...whereas three years of service in French Foreign Legion allows you to apply for citizenship, or immediately after you are wounded in battle ("French by spilled blood")
Indeed no... Légion étrangère is very often front-line, opex, desert, jungle... A very special and strange military corps that meddled with politics in the 1960s...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algiers_putsch_of_1961
And nowadays they select at the entrance.
If it’s anything like COVID tests, they will ask for insurance and if you don’t have that they’ll just give you your doses for free. Might depend on the state, however.
This sounds nice but whenever I hear something like this or any kind of philanthropy, I always think of all the people who missed out because of some technicality. What about people who were in the final stages of studying to be a nurse and were waiting for the government to send back some paperwork to begin work on the front line and they missed out on the citizenship by a few weeks... Or people who lost their job through no fault of their own and were sent back to their country just before the pandemic.
I don't like philanthropy because it creates more cracks for people to fall through and more inequality based on luck. Citizenship is a very big gift. Kind of like a lottery. It's a huge deal for many people. I hope it went to very deserving people.
Random acts of philanthropy like this are just that -- random and benefiting a very small number of random people. While there is no problem with that per se, people should have access to a decent life through fair, well defined systems rather than having to depend on some arbitrary system of lottery.
What's good for some people is often bad for some other people. Win-win scenarios are very rare.
As a thought experiment, if you gave half the population 1 million dollars, then that would drive house prices through the roof and the unlucky half of the population would be enslaved to the lucky half paying high rents. The lives of the unlucky half would be absolutely ruined. There is no good there. It's zero-sum but in a way it's worse because it was 100% luck and those who worked hard were punished.
To have real equality, you need equality of opportunity. Equality of outcomes is not equality; otherwise it's not equal if someone sacrifices less and gets more rewards; they are privileged, they are fortunate.
I'm talking about France, not Africa. This is basically the same thing that white supremacists say: "Europe for Europeans".
The sooner there is no longer even a concept of 'European' or 'French', the sooner humanity can move beyond racist policies such as in the related link.
> The sooner there is no longer even a concept of '(Arab|Jew)' or '(Yemeni|Israelite)', the sooner humanity can move beyond racist policies such as in the related link.
> It must remain Jewish or our identity will be erased.
Splendid, so this does not apply to European identity and culture?
If the unlimited immigration that you demand happens in Europe, we'll have Islamic states in no time. I'm sure that'll be totally fine and beneficial for Israel...
So this means that someone who is algerian could have french parents, but not be eligible for french citizenship. However if I as an EU citizen wanted to live in france, there is nothing stopping me.
In the same way that up to the 70s an english "colonial" had the right to a british passport. Until it was decided that it wasn't acceptable to have too many "colonials" about the place.
Only Algeria was actually part of France, the rest had different statuses.
Locals definitely did not have french citizenship, not even in Algeria (they had an intermediate partial citizenship)
Also, anyone with (at least one) French parent, is eligible to citizenship.
The reason people migrate is to take advantage of the institutions and wealth built by French people, not because they specifically enjoy the climate there (although that's, to a small extent, one possible reason for migrating).
A good example of the nice institutions built by Europeans is Australia. No one really cared to migrate there until the country was all built and nice, and now it's coming from all over the world (mostly Europe and Asia). Before that it was (and to some extent it still is) a fairly hostile land.
You’re confusing the French Empire and Metropolitan France. Algeria was part of Metropolitan France, the rest of what we’d now can the Empire wasn’t. All of France’s remaining extra-European possessions have every right French in the Hexagon do, and are French citizens. Algerians had it extremely easy moving to and naturalist got in France for decades after de Gaulle left Algeria. And Algeria was treated as French in law until such time as the French left. Thus the spat between the two countries in the 70s over children of Algerian immigrants automatically being granted French citizenship at 18. That was because their parents had been born in what was then France.
France and the Empire were not legally coextensive, and Tunisia and Morocco were never legally part of France. The generation that were born in what was legally France are done having children too.
There's a lot to be said about France and other European powers treatment of their colonial troops, but North Africa certainly wasn't the main provider of soldiers.
From Wikipedia: "At the end of the war on November 11, 1918, the French had called up 8,817,000 men, including 900,000 colonial troops.".
Note that this includes all colonies as well as "French troops" stationed in the colonies (apparently half that number).
Another Wikipedia article cites around 270'000 people from Northern Africa among them 180'000 soldiers.
As a person that leans towards socialism. I want to understand from someone who leans towards capitalism, the reluctance with immigration. We have people who will travel large distances for a potential benefit (i.e risk takers), who like the articles mentioned, are happy to work hard.
This is the ideal characteristics of an entrepreneur or early employee or a start-up. More labour, lowers labour costs. What is the reluctance with immigration ?
Unlimited immigration is unsustainable (Europe can’t support 3bn people), so there have to be some limits.
Also, I value my culture (not in the “food & language” sense, but in “enlightenment values” sense), and have no interest in admitting more people who don’t value or respect this culture.
Finally, you need to correctly read the situation. Most pro-immigration people support it to lower labour costs. They will of course deny it and claim “humanitarian reasons”, but it was plainly obvious during Covid, with e.g. UK companies complaining that fruit is gonna rot on the fields without immigrant labour... like, have you considered hiring locals??
Three billion people in the current European Union would be 68 people per square km, about as dense as Mexico or Ukraine.
As far as culture goes immigrants assimilate. By the third generation it’s rare to actually be able to speak the language of their ancestors. Catholic immigrants to the US were feared as agents of Rome. Now the average American Catholic has a Protestant conception of what religion is, they’re so mixed in. Or look at Asian Americans. From the point of view of someone living in China the idea that people actually identify with this is more than a little absurd. It’s like white. This identity has no purchase in the emigrant sending countries. In the end without continuing immigration all ethnic communities that are not closed to intermarriage dissolve.
As far as humanitarian reasons go for opposing immigration controls see Fabio Rojas or Bryan Caplan. We exist.
It depends. In France, most of the terrorist attacks were committed and planned by radicalised first or second generation "immigrants"(or descendents thereof). They don't feel French, they don't feel like the origin of their parents/etc. so they pick religion.
> Unlimited immigration is unsustainable (Europe can’t support 3bn people), so there have to be some limits.
If it were just about population, why is there no concern with natural population rise due to birth rates?
> Also, I value my culture (not in the “food & language” sense, but in “enlightenment values” sense), and have no interest in admitting more people who don’t value or respect this culture.
Surely then it would be possible to institute a "cultural test" where people who do agree with "enlightenment values" are free to immigrate. I also think it is incredibly questionable for europe to lay claim to "enlightenment values", as if those are a single unified system of values that belongs solely to europe and is matched by modern european states.
> If it were just about population, why is there no concern with natural population rise due to birth rates?
Probably because in most/all Western countries birth rates are at or below replacement rates, so the only reason the population is still rising is due to immigration.
Countries are not reluctant to allow immigration, they are reluctant to allow immigration of potentially harmful people (as long as we're below immigration capacity)
Proxies for "harmfulness" are:
- different culture estimated via parent citizenship, religion, and language
- less wealth, estimated by income (having a job already), income potential (education) and/or money in the bank account
In general, power-hungry politicians should aim for obtaining higher populations because it means more power.
"lowers labour costs"
So you want to drive down wages for working people?
Better to take highly educated people who are going to compete against other highly educated people, not people who will compete against Americans who are less educated and who are not financially well off.
Capitalists(financial elite,landowners entrepreneurs and the politicians they buy)love immigrant workers.
The less they pay, the better for them. Don't like the misery salary? Look at the queue of people looking for the job willing to work for less.
It is middle and lower class workers who hate competition from low income workers. The miserable salary in the "rich" country is being rich in a poor country.
It is the middle and lower class those that suffer from the higher criminal rates because they are the ones who are being stolen or their houses occupied.
The rich live isolated in good places, with private security.
There are additional problems like the cultural one. Islam religion demands that their believers do not integrate ever in a non Muslim society so bringing millions of them to a non Muslim society means fragmenting it over time, like in Albania or Georgia(from Europe, not the American one).
Isn’t the religion of Albanians Albanianism? Don’t Adjarians get along well with other Georgians? You picked the two least supportive examples for your thesis.
As a french, mostly left wing who understand right wing people: enconomy is not the only thing. migrants can (do) bring some part of their culture that may be unwanted.
Like the way they see / treat women to start with... People who want to be "nice" to migrants don't realize how bad that can be.
If you are so curious, maybe you should do some more research.
I suggest visiting some suburbs of Paris, or Stockholm. Furthermore, we are already in the EU, which is a trade-block only, favoring capitalists ( and driving down labor costs ).
edit: If you want hard numbers, look up the labor participation for NL.
The free market libertarian position is very pro immigration (open minds, open markets, open borders) for the same reasons you mentioned. I would argue that many conservatives aren't really pro capitalism when it comes down to the details.
Also, I noticed that the more socialist a country leans the more difficult it is to immigrate largely due to the potential burden that person may place on society (they require you to have skills or capital, not have certain diseases, certifications, ect).
I'd argue that most people aren't anti-capitalist either. Capitalism is mostly about individual property rights and the implications that fall out of it.
Most people who are critical of capitalism are conflating capitalism and corporatism. The essence of capitalism is hard to argue against without rejecting individual rights or currency or something similarly non-controversial and ingrained in society.
Low-skill immigration, like the shop workers and cleaners cited in the article, is an example of private industry obtaining a small benefit (lower wages) at the cost of a significantly larger externality imposed on the government and society as a whole [0]. In an ideal capitalist system, these externalities would be properly factored into the cost of the outputs that use immigrant labor, likely making them uncompetitive.
> I want to understand from someone who leans towards capitalism, the reluctance with immigration.
They are almost entirely orthogonal.
The intersection is in the relationship between "free trade" and immigration. That is, why should goods be free to trade but not labor, not that I'm advocating either way in this comment.
You have to look at what uncontrolled migration actually did to some parts of the world. Take a look at some of the “mega” cities in Southeast Asia, where unfettered migration to the cities lead to something unlivable. There is also a massive lack of opportunity since everyone saturates the same professions (or simply just too many people). The city might already have the right amount Rickshaw drivers, but now it’s got 10x more because of mass migration from villages to cities. Now do that across the board for everything, software, retail, etc. I won’t even mention how housing and infrastructure are impacted. This kind of unfettered pipe opening will just lead to more unemployed, higher housing prices, and so on. You have to consider these things or else you get an unlivable disaster (India, Bangladesh - just take look at their mega cities as case studies, total disasters).
Oddly, a little bit of gate keeping would actually help. Everything in moderation, a little bit of open borders, a little bit of gate keeping, a little bit of everything - but not too much. Japan might be on the opposite side of things with a little too much gate keeping. We need vigilant balance (constantly reassess, and calculate the impact of a batch immigrants across say ... 30 years, and project how we need to adjust the pipeline to maintain a healthy growth/quality of life balance).
I’ll tell you what I can’t stand though. I can’t stand people that minimize the logistical element of increasing the population of a region to a moral and emotional argument. If you don’t carefully consider capacity, and reduce the argument to platitudes of ‘this has always been a land of immigrants’, you will certainly fuck us by adding to already growing issues of a hyper competitive economy where people are fighting tooth and nail for unstable low wage gig jobs, competitive and costly higher education, hyper competitive knowledge industries, and of course the hyper hyper hyper fucked and competitive housing market.
I want us to seriously consider why we want to add more to a pot where we are already getting cramped in a variety of ways.
