The Swiss referendum #CHvote to cap the number of EU migrants has sparked strong reactions across Europe. But would other European people vote differently if they were to be asked? An Infratest dimap poll for Deutsche Welle from Wednesday suggests that a relative majority of Germans would like to restrict immigration as well. 48% say they are in favour of capping migration, while 46% are not. A very close call. Note though, that the question was about "immigration" in general rather than "EU migration".
When broken down by party affiliation breakdown, it's clear where these views are most concentrated: 84% of Alternative für Deutschland's supporters say they want a cap on migration. 51% of Angela Merkel's CDU/CSU say the same. Meanwhile, the Greens are least keen, with only 29% supporting the cap.
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| Courtesy of Deutsche Welle |
In France, the picture might be even more distinct. A TNS Sofres/Le Monde poll recently showed that 34% of French “agree with the ideas” of Marine Le Pen’s Front National. Greens MEP Danile Cohn-Bendit estimates that 60% of French would vote in favour of limiting immigration.
6 comments:
As said with the GenFood item immigration is not an issue that one should decide via the 50%+1 method. And not along party lines on top of it.
This kind of issues should always be handled very carefully by any government as it creates a huge risk that large groups within a society feel alienated by it oitherwise. With immigration that has already happened.
Food worries were one of the main reasons behind of the Green parties and immigration caused much of the rise of the populist parties.
By chance the Green thing worked much better out. They got their own parties in a lot of places. Plus alot of their worries could be incorporated in the system and with that the problem was largely solved.
With immigration it is different. Basically the immigration problem is much more an integration problem than a strict immigration one. It is also much more directed at mass 3rd world immigration than to immigration in general.
At the end of the day the main issue is the integration of relatively uneducated low earning people. With a stress of the groups that are visibly coming from incompatible cultures and show culturally little adjustment skills. In normal English largely Muslims and Blacks.
So you could legally stop immigration and even if that would work the problems created before that will still be visibly there for many decades to come.
This has now got to a point that looking as being a part of those groups simply labels a person, beforehand basically as a social and economic problem. Made worse that in order to give them a sense of identity these groups are stressing their differentness.
Pyamas, Burquas, beards, gangsta rappa hair and teeth and before trousers held up via their kness iso their waist. Fortunately not all but so many that it is enough to negatively label these groups in the eyes of many.
Whatever you call it re these groups immigration has simply been a complete failure and seen the often silent/not outspoken labelling one that will last for several generations. It simply created (on group level) social and economic dysfunctional groups.
Which is a complete disaster especially in a high tax welfarestate even worse in one with the current demographics (aging). Next to the elderly there is simply a huge problem to pay for other social (people that require considerably more government expenditure than they bring in on tax etc revenue)cases.
Part 2
The current issue Rums and Bulgs has simply 2 main sides:
-ordinary people fear that these will behave in a similar way as earlier low end immigrants. It will largely compare them with Poles. However seen the state of development of Poland and of say Bulgaria, Poles look far better equipped to make the jump (but nevertheless it went hardly without problems);
-financially you will import as group future nett receivers not nett contributors (while there is already a problem in that respect).
The issue is basically that if it looks like 3rd world, moves like 3rd world it likely will behave like 3rd world. No absolute certainty but a clear and considerable risk.
The pro-arguments in the Rums/Bulgs discussion are largely BS imho. One has to look at the longer term integration issue more than at say the year of immigration as all of them seem to do.
People come alone and have the best hopes and are motivated to find a job.
However after that they bring often considerable families with integration and educational issues.
And the percentage of people on welfare etc is rapidly rising. Rumenians one year ago were roughly as often unemployed as Germans. Only after 1 year it has gotten nearly double that. A trend which could have been easily predicted.
It is hard to see anyway how a group that largely works at the bottom of the labourmarket where even in Germany there are high unemployment rates contributes to a developed country. Well clearly there is demand for this kind of labour. But that is mainly caused by the dysfunctionality of the own groups in that part of the labourmarket another issue that is conveniently brushed under the carpet and is coming now into the open.
Anyway these groups next to being a huge future financial worry are the main ones that causes social issues. Just look at th papers a lot of the funny stuff (human trafficking, slavery, female circumcission, terrorism is dominated by these groups of immigrants. Not in particularly the Rumenians (although they appear to be big in small crime, according Utrecht University if I am not mistaken) but over the whole board of low end immigration. And crime is just one of the social issues that plays.
On a political level.
Immigration is one of the main reasons why people feel abandoned by their own governments.
Everywhere in the West government face a credibility crisis partly as a consequence of that.
A lot of people simply donot see the traditional parties as representing them.
This is the background in which this plays.
The defense strategy for most of the policies was also appalingly stupid. And has clearly gone way over its 'use by date'. Which has made things even worse as traditional parties basically seem not able to come up with a convincing story on a lot of issues (of which immigration is only one). In a nutshell: try to BS yourself out one dossier you f-ed up via namecalling and stupid spin simply reflects on the complete credibility and trustworthyness of the politician that does that.
On EU level several things are coming together now:
-economic mismanagement (aka the Euro);
-ignoring the voterbase;
-immigration.
These are basically the 3 main issues of our times. And in each of them the EU is in the middle.
Another issue we see in Germany for instance is that political parties have all moved to the middle and a lot of the top of the agenda issues are simply all dealt within the same way.
With the traditional parties in Germany:
-all are basically pro-integration at worst integration neutral;
-same sort of economic policies (welfarestate);
-look immigration positive in the eyes of many (probably more that they can get no grip on it).
-Euro membership is hardly questioned.
In a nutshell issues on which around 50% of the electorate think different from the political communis opinio are not represented in parliament.
That can work when these are minor issues but if this becomes top of the agenda and longer term it is simply a new alternative generator.
P2 on this one political level.
Therefor the further rise of populist parties.
These parties now able to attracked the 'normal' vote as well (like In France and even Holland with very outspoken Wilders).
Simply a not sustainable situation.
A crap successor of Merkel (a real possibility as she seems the work all talent out of the door) and an appealing leader in say the AfD and he can wipe up half the vote on the right.
Problem being for the EU, they clearly show they like to continue to defend a lost cause and are big fans of multi-front wars, that the thing is ready for change. An ideal climate for change as said.
The trigger, Brexit, populists in EP, country going fully populist etc difficult to predict. But it is hard to see this will blow over. Simply too many issues in too many countries and a structure that makes a problem of this kind in one essential country an existential issue for the complete organisation.
The problems are here to stay and defense is simply worse than crap. And if it tumbles on one nearly certain the rest will follow. With management simply looking completely unable to properly things when it happens. Probably Mrs Reding will tell the world that these people shouldnot have been given the right to vote.
Anyway it looks 1 before 12 for the traditional parties at national level (at least in most of the countries to come with in this case immigration policies that are acceptable for a large majority of the population or things will happen also at national level, especially when the Balkan sub dossier would run out of control.
The fact that everytime all over Europe when something like this happens (now even in Switzerland) is simply a clear indication that they are running out of time.
Re the UK. As said many times immigration will nearly certain be one of the main drivers of EU change. Whether one likes that or not, it simply is in the nature of things. Referendum means via popular vote and this is probably top of the popular agenda. Thinking that the popular vote can be surpressed look complete wishful thinking as thinking that it simply can be used as the driver for business reform and later can be dumped in the process. That would be basically making the same mistake traditional parties have made (and are still making).
So whether one likes it or not part of any reform will need to be the immigration issue.
@OE
You are missing imho a very relevant development in Germany.
Die Linke have put now the Euro issue on their agenda. Party agenda for the time being. But it got massive media attention more than the rest of the party congress in fact.
1. Sara (with an h at a funny spot) W is the brains of that party. Great analyst (only limited by being a bit stuck in her political convictions).
2. The arguments against her pov were beyond moronic (summarised it is not politically convenient). Argumentation that simply hardly ever does the job when things get in the public domain. And hard to see it will do that here as it is the view of roughly half (or more) of the ,population that is completely underrepresented politically.
This (being politically inconvenient is not a way this discussion will be stopped there not with 'know everything better lefties'.
3. If Die Linke move in that direction it would create a lot pressure on the SPD in particular. Merkel has the AfD, this looks like the Left could be the SPD's AfD.
Made worse by the fact that Sahrhah W can hold her position in any political discussion as she simply is a awful lot smarter than the average German politician.
4. These things move the political landscape. Dutchy Timmermans simply moved to the reform camp because his party got butchered in the polls by the Euro-sceptic SP.
5. Looking at that party (Dutch SP) it is also highly questionable if becoming Euro-sceptic would be politically inconvenient. Inconvenient for the Linke that is. It simply looks like when one sees the Dutch situation that it would be very politically inconvenient but mainly for the SPD (and the Greens).
For the SP it is a big vote catcher (basically as it is a substantial part of the eroding credibility of the Dutch SPD equivalent). Moving Dutch Labour itself into more Eurosceptic waters (as damage limitation) and simply giving the SP the size that makes it much more difficult to avoid in coalition talks.
In other words for the SP is was politically very convenient to be Euro-sceptic. And was a substantial part of the strategy that made them now the largest player on the left a position taken over from Dutch Labour seen the polls. And impossible to ignore in left coalition discussions.
Hard to see why things would be much different in Germany (situation looks very similar and the reactions of all players were very similar as well).
SPD looks like post-Merkel CDU simply for the take. Basically outdated parties with huge problems to adjust to the 21st century.
the Swiss vote has not upset anyone in Europe except the self-appointed, globalizing global elite and their political and corporate minions.
And who gives a rat's rear end about them, anyway?
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