>
> The US is not much different as most brown skin people seeking legal status
> can attest.
>
well, you don't have to look far. i am a brown skinned person who did seek legal status in the US and obtained it with not much difficulty, and with a system that was quite simple and user-friendly. AFAIK, there is no such process to immigrate to germany.
>
>>india is overpopulated. bangladesh is overpopulated (i think). sweden is
>>not!
>
> It is a bit more complicated, see the following population density stats:
>
> http://www.photius.com/wfb1999/rankings/population_density_2.html
>
> For example, Belgium and the Netherlands are more overpopulated than India,
> but not as much as Bangladesh. Germany is more overpopulated than China.
> Sweden and Canada are among the least populated countries in the world, but
> that would change dramatically if you exclude from the equation the
> inhabitable areas that comprise large shares of these countries'
> territories. Ditto about Russia.
but large parts of india are uninhabitable also. also, consider this: new jersey has a higher population density than india, but does considerably better. but it is also part of a larger economic/military/social system and derives benefits from that. ultimately, though, if higher population density does not affect these regions, why do they need to be "protected from immigration"?
> The US has one of the lowest population density in the world, but unlike
> Sweden, Canada or Russia - most of its territory is habitable. In fact, the
> Netherlands is over 15 times more densely populated than the US, the UK and
> Germany - eight times, Denmark and France - 4 times. Yet, these countries
> collectively take more immigrants than the US!
not accusing you of lying, but can you provide a source please. it would help if the numbers were broken down by origin. if france took in a whole lot of algerians, that should ideally not count.
> Of course, the issue of immigration is far more complex than the physical
> capacity to accept newcomers. Few people would argue that immigrants can
> vastly enrich the recipient's country culture - but it can also threaten its
> most basic institutions. It is one thing when immigrants open, say, a
> Mediterranean restaurant or publish books grounded in Mediterranean literary
> tradition - but it is a very different thing when immigrants demand that
> "their" women be exempt from western laws and subjected to Islamic law
> instead or when they start assassinating writers whose writings they find
> objectionable.
so, in the words of rumsfeld, the world is a messy place. in the larger scheme of things, why should western laws or mediterranean culture enjoy protections? for a theo van gogh that got killed by some muslim, there is also a pim fortyn who assassinated by a local animal rights activist.
> Immigrant Islamo-fascism is a real threat in Europe (unlike in the US, which
> is threatened by the home-grown variety of Christo-fascism that controls
> most public institutions) and most reasonable and open-minded people expect
> their governments to do protect them from that threat. Their attempts to
> limit immigration are quite understandable, even though they may appear
> unfair to bona fide immigrants.
even if we accept your argument, what does it have to do with an indian wishing to immigrate to europe? also, AFAIK, these restrictive european immigration policies predate islamo-fascism by decades.
> And then - why does any country, rich or poor, have any moral or legal
> obligation to accept immigrants?
if by country you mean the current residents, then why not pose the question in reverse? what moral or legal ground exists for current squatters to deny access to a shared resource to others?
>>also, surely you see that european colonialism of the third world
>>was a form of terrorism too!
>
> I do not think European colonialism was any different form any other
> conquest of one culture by another - which make the history of humankind. A
> case can be even made that European colonialism had a net benefit effect by
> undoing the negative effect of prior colonisations.
>
am i really hearing a variant of the white man's burden argument?!!! tell me it isnt so!
> The bottom line is that blaming the North for all the ills of the South
> might be popular, but it usually serves as a scapegoat story to exonerate
> local elites and has little factual basis or explanatory power.
i am afraid you are getting off track. this has nothing to do with the general debate about the north or the south or the ills of either. many of the points you present above [seem to] rest on arguing from self-interest. this sub-thread is about the self-interested actions of an immigrant: should he support the european welfare state and strong labour standards, despite his being excluded from them, or support the US model which is less labour friendly but provides him an opportunity to better his material life?
--ravi