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Faced With Rising Temperatures, People May Seek Asylum (axios.com)
Europe is already struggling to absorb an influx of refugees from war-torn Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Africa. Germany alone has taken in more than a million people since 2015. This wave of immigration has led to political upheaval, with the rise of right-wing political parties in Germany, Poland, Austria, and Hungary, among others. Now a new study, published in the journal Science, shows that the current surge in refugees may just be a preview of what's to come due in large part to global warming. From a report: At an average growing season temperature of about 68 Fahrenheit, which is the optimum one for agriculture, the number of applications for asylum was lowest. As the average temperature rose, so did the number of people from Somalia, Bangladesh and other warmer climate countries seeking asylum. But when cooler countries -- such as Serbia and Peru -- got warmer, fewer applications were received. The acceptance rate for asylum application to the EU is less than 10%. But when there was a spike in applications tied to weather fluctuations, the admittance rate rose to about 30%, suggesting agencies who evaluate the applicants find their cause worthy.
Would be useful if this were given some numerical context. How do the numbers of refugees due to climate compare to the numbers of refugees due to war and due to oppressive governments?
Is it really climate that drives people from Somalia or Bangladesh? Or is it instead the fact those countries are pretty unstable and people want to get to a more stable area?
Especially if you are talking refugees, and not simply immigration requests. "Refugee" implies something catastrophic they are fleeing, not slightly warmer weather.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Floors be COLD in the morning yall...
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Why don't they go to Siberia if heat is really their reason for migration?
For Europe the enemy is already inside the gates.
It's absurd to call them "refugees".
Real refugees have 2 primary goals:
1) To reach the nearest location where the immediate danger they face is no longer present.
2) To return to their origin as soon as it is safe to do so.
In the case of Syrians, the locations matching those criteria would typically be within Syria itself. They could find safety without ever leaving the country.
In rare situations, some Syrians might find Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, or even Iraq to be closer. But that's as far as they'd ever need to go to reach safety, while still being able to return home as soon as possible.
There's absolutely no legitimate reason for any Syrian to have made the long journey to a Europe nation like Greece, never mind distant European nations like Germany, Sweden or the UK.
The same goes for anyone coming from Africa. At least Syrians can say there is something resembling a real war going on in their nation. That's not true for nearly all of the Africans. They conditions might not be good, but they're nothing like Syria.
It's even worse when it comes to those from Afghanistan, given how far away Afghanistan is from Europe.
Anyone traveling thousands upon thousands of miles to Europe, through numerous safe countries, and with no intent to ever leave Europe, is not a "refugee". They're illegal aliens, and that's exactly what they should be referred to as. They should also be immediately deported.
They want to let all the migrants in and then raise our taxes to pay for their benefits.
Clearly pirates used to enhale CO2 and store it in their bodies and exkrements.
This!
According to https://www.immigrationequalit...
An asylum seeker must prove that he or she has a well-founded fear of persecution based on one or more of five grounds:
Race
Religion
Nationality
Membership in a particular social group (Most LGBTQ individuals who apply for asylum qualify under this category)
Political opinion
They're not running away from slightly warmer weather, they're running away from the secondary effects of that warmer weather: Too much rain/not enough rain, crop losses due to higher temps
The truth is those factors alone are not enough to convince most people to move. Several years of bad crops and California farmers are still farming.
You aren't suffering from a lack of imagination, just a lack of understanding the overall conditions of the regions people are leaving. "Poor crop yield" is so far down the list it doesn't even register, and makes very little sense for some of the areas talked about (like Bangladesh).
In fact, it turns out that Bangladesh crop yields are going up, if you look at potatoes the output is up - in fact the real problem with crops this past year was not warmer weather, but flooding. Even so total agricultural production was up 2.9% overall, so why would people be refugees from Bangladesh based on crop yields when they are up?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Sure it does... They're coming to take yer jobs.
The US per wikipedia has a total of about 12 million illegal immigrants. That isn't including a large amount of legal immigration, which is about 700k/yr. This is merely the population who walked over the border illegally.
The refuge crisis for Europe really only moved past a trickle in 2015, which saw about 1.2m total. Now it's back down to trickle again: about 150k for all of 2017. The US gets that much in 6-8 weeks, not a year. The total numbers for the whole recent "crisis" are MUCH smaller than what the US has dealt with, and that's spread among a larger total population: 740m for Europe v 325m for the US.
Migration has been a relatively minor problem for Europe.
Faced with rejection of "refugees" from non-war-torn areas, we'll make importation of the new underclass more palatable by whining about, "But, but, it's warm where they're from!"
Real refugees have 2 primary goals 1) To reach the nearest location where the immediate danger they face is no longer present. 2) To return to their origin as soon as it is safe to do so.
In the case of Syrians, the locations matching those criteria would typically be within Syria itself. They could find safety without ever leaving the country.
I take it you know nothing about the Syrian crisis, then.
What place in Syria is it that you believe is "where the immediate danger they face is no longer present"? The few places within Syria that aren't in a war zone with boundaries that are constantly changing... are jammed to overflowing with the eight million people who are already displaced within Syria; the largest internally displaced population in the world. About six in ten Syrians are now refugees, most of them internally.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-34189117
The real problem here is that the populations in places like Africa, the Middle East and India, among others, are skyrocketing far beyond reasonable levels.
These are regions that were already lacking the necessary resources to support even small populations at the most basic of levels. We're talking about areas that have literally no suitable agricultural land, little water, and few other resources.
The solution is not to move these people to Europe, or Japan, or North America, or other civilized places.
The solution is for the people in these nations to stop reproducing.
When you're living in a UN "refugee" camp, with all of your food and water coming from UN handouts, you shouldn't be bringing children into the mix.
When you're living in a war zone like Syria or Iraq or Afghanistan or Yemen, you shouldn't be bringing children into the mix.
When the parents can't even sustain themselves in any reasonable way, it's asinine for them to reproduce.
The most absurd part of all of this is how the political left in Western nations view the situation, and even contribute to making it far worse.
The same people who claim to be the most concerned about the environment and sustainability are the same people who push the hardest to send more and more foreign aid to places like Africa and the Middle East.
Of course, as decades of evidence now shows us, this sort of aid only serves to make the problem much, much, much worse in the short term. It enables people who shouldn't be reproducing due to a lack of resources the ability to reproduce.
In the long term it will be a disaster beyond anything imaginable. If the West is ever not able to provide this aid, for whatever reason, the humanitarian disaster will be immense.
What's worse is how the political left tries to use "political correctness" and false accusations of "racism" to try to shut down any discussion regarding this extremely important issue. Or they come up with lies like, "they need to reproduce so they can have more farm workers", despite these regions not having anything resembling agriculture, and despite nearly everyone in these regions requiring handouts from the UN or other aid organizations.
The only solution to these problems is a significant decrease in the birth rates in places like Africa, the Middle East, and India. And it can't happen later. It has to happen immediately. The reproduction rate needs to be brought down to 0% in order for the situation to stabilize, and perhaps eventually improve.
Yes, but those countries are relatively more stable when climate (and thus food production) are closer to historical norms. Instability drives migration, but food shortages drive instability and climate drives food shortages.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
to watch people dying in the streets.
Fucking apocalypse cults. They will be the end of Man.
The US per wikipedia has a total of about 12 million illegal immigrants.
Which were absorbed over a long period of time and who came to work for depressingly low wages. It wasn't 12 million all at once. Many of them have been here literally for decades. The total number of illegal immigrants in the US hasn't risen for about a decade and in fact has declined somewhat from the peak.
Migration has been a relatively minor problem for Europe.
It isn't a minor problem. It's not to the scale justifying any sort of panic but any time you get a million new refugees in a relatively short time frame that creates a lot of very real problems. These people need to be fed, sheltered, to find work and school, etc. This isn't a trivial undertaking by an measure. It's made worse of course by the inevitable racists and xenophobes who want to shut the borders to keep anyone different out.
68 Fahrenheit = 20 Celsius
I know. "Just fucking Google it."
But by omitting that bit of information in the summary, something that would require msmash five seconds of work, you just made every non-US reader waste five second.
So you saved five seconds but caused a total waste of who-the-fuck-knows how many hours for everyone else not in the USA.
#DeleteFacebook
>>...with the rise of right-wing political parties...
This is curious to me. Are these parties rising because they see their country and identity being overrun with immigrants, or are they on the rise because they see their country becoming a (perceived, rightly or wrongly) welfare state for foreigners, or is it something else?
The implication from the summary is it's due to climate shift, but I'm not so certain that's accurate.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
Have harmed these people and should let them immigrate.
Or we didn't harm them and they still want to come live here.
They want to be your neighbor; why not just invite them in?
Give me you tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free...
Did we forget something between then and now?
capcha: thanks
Starvation is not a very ethical means of contraception. And yet that appears to be what you are advocating.
Wow, look at all these racist climate-deniers inbred right-wing retards coming out in throves and spamming this thread with their filth.
And on top of that, they have the nerve to claim that "libtards" have taken over slashdot !
Funny, but whenever a thread about Trump, or global warming, or renewable energy, etc, pops up on slashdot, the only thing I ever see taking over the comment section is cockroaches. Racist, sexist, anti-science, right-wing republitard cockroaches. They really do live in their own little version of reality, don't they. Not surprising, coming from people who believe in omnipotent invisible beings in the sky.
Come to Canada, we'll give you our snow! Just take it off our streets and it's yours!
#DeleteFacebook
Article correlates temperature to migration, i.e. farm becomes nonviable, food supply dwindles, hungry people flee. That's the *usual* catastrophic failure. They're not idiots, they know
" slightly warmer ", yeh right Super Kendall, you may not feel it but the crop yield do and the people feel the hunger.
You might look at the US corn reserves at this point, and realize you need a longer term staple that stores much better than corn. 3 months corn reserve is not enough. You need 10 years-20 years of reserves of a core staple. Corn doesn't store well, too much sugar, too much water, other crops do better.
Sure, you can say "I'm a Republican and it won't affect me" and that's probably true. Typical demographic of a Republican is an old person who will die soon. But as a nation, USA should probably look at food reserves.
I suspect the timing of this article is because the Trump presidency has decided global warming isn't to be considered as a national security threat. But the reality there is they'll still consider it, they'll just classify it differently to get it past Trump. At the end of the day, millions of Americans can die, and their duty is to Americans, to *people*. They know the majority didn't vote for Trump and their duty is to protect the country and its people, and Trump is an old man who will die soon but the problem of global warming won't die with him. So they'll do their job and consider the threat of global warming to the US food supplies.
We only need to look to Sweden to see what happens when illegal aliens (commonly, and wrongly, referred to as "refugees" by some) are allowed to violate the borders of a civilized Western nation.
Sweden has seen a huge increase in grenade attacks, of all things, since the start of the illegal alien disaster around 2014. During 2015 and 2016 there was a grenade attack almost every week!
It has been particularly bad in the city of Malmö, which has a large population of third-worlders from terrible places like Iraq and Somalia.
Keep in mind that Sweden has a relatively small population, with official figures putting it at just over 10 million people. To put that in perspective, New York City alone has almost that many people living in it!
Until recent years, Sweden was also historically one of the safest, most highly developed nations in the world.
Yet a relatively small number of foreigners from some of the worst places on Earth have managed to ruin Sweden's standard of living, along with Sweden's reputation, within a span of only 4 to 5 years.
These illegal aliens are destroying Europe.
Just as they were in the United States in the past when "those Jews/Irish/Chinese" were "flooding" in and going to destroy our country if we didn't keep them out. Our country was fine - and arguably better for absorbing new groups of people - and this "wave" of immigrants (in quotes because immigration is actually down) won't destroy our country either. However, racist xenophobes in the US might destroy our country in their efforts to protect us from those scary immigrants.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
it's because refugees aren't immigrants. They didn't move for a better life, they moved because they got kicked out. So they don't integrate with the host society. This is a big problem in Europe right now. It's giving their far right ammunition. It's also put the Jews in a bind as they're sandwiched between a far right that hates them and Muslim refugees that aren't exactly crazy about them either. Meanwhile demagogues are using all this social friction to rise to power.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
You mean progressive policies that hurt the middle class, and then calling them names for pointing it out is costing them elections. And they can't figure out the real cause why?
Perhaps when the progressives realize having "refuges" killing and raping their own population and that IS a problem, they can change their policies. But it doesn't appear to be happening anytime soon. Blaming the victims and calling them names is probably the best way to get them to vote for you, said no one who is sane ever.
From your link, the headline:
"Bangladesh’s food production [i.e. in total] dropped by 943,000 tonnes in fiscal 2016-17"
"past year was not warmer weather, but flooding"
Yeh right, flooding, the predicted affect of global warming, so what's your point?
" so why would people be refugees from Bangladesh based on crop yields when they are up"
Because they're hungry, and your attempt to mislead people here by lying doesn't fill their stomachs. I mean really SuperKendall, were you hoping nobody would google the actual stats or read the link you provided?
>http://www.newsweek.com/2017/03/31/egypt-population-birth-rate-food-water-shortage-isis-terrorism-sissi-570953.html
Oh my, it seems the Egyptian population growth was sustainable for most of the 2000s, until 2008. Anything significant happen in 2008?
You fail at basic math.
If each person working can produce enough food for 0.9 people, having a thousand times as many people will NOT help everyone suddenly not be hungry.
If there isn't enough food or capacity for growing enough food for everyone NOW, the solution is to have less people, not more.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
This shit is not true and doesn't matter..
1850s America was a different country. It was possible to have a family and move forward just by having a strong back. That is nowhere near possible today, anywhere, but you already know that don't you. So you types rely on your fulminate of 'racist xenophobes' to shutdown vigorous debate. Pot meet kettle.
> Starvation is not a very ethical means of contraception
It's effective.
Depends on what ethics you subscribe to in pursuit of moral relativism.
This isn't really news. Climate refugees will outnumber other refugees (war, economical, social) within two to four decades. This has been suspected for 2,5 decades and since was proven to be a correct assumption.
Scientists also pretty much agree that certain parts of earth will be inhabitable at the end of this century. Central india and large areas in africa are on that list. Global heat wave death rates are rising by the year and this will only get worse.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Slashdot has changed from "News for nerds, stuff that matters" to "Only stuff we are politically for".
Comment removed based on user account deletion
And laugh over our stockpiles of fresh water you no longer have a right to buy after scrapping NAFTA because youre morons.
Don't quote a poem as a source of your national stance. That's just stupid. Stupid also is to let in those who vocally call for the destruction of your country, refuse to assimilate and *become* your neighbor and who actively call for *their* law (you know, from where they came) to replace *your* law.
Nice wall of text.
No one read it bud.
Time you up your meds.
Let's blame everything on climate change, because why not?
Good advice to those people.
Now, let's talk about everyone else, the people who don't live in those places. Let's say someone over there ignores your advice and brings children into the mix. What should you do about it?
Kill them? That would fix the problem.
Leave them alone, but kill them if they come to our, more-inhabitable area?
Let them migrate with all the same freedom that we have to migrate, and compete with them in a free market? (e.g. Me and my children might lose out and suffer the consequences of living in an uninhabitable area, because someone over there came and "took my job" so I have to move. But that's fair, because I had no more rights to this region of the world than anyone else, and my terms from birth were always "may the best man win" and I just happened to not measure up.)
Dump money into technological development and/or military force, to try to cause those less habitable places to become more habitable? (Thereby relieving the pressure on the people over there, to move over here.)
Fight against mysticism and anything else that persuades people to eschew birth control?
Something else? There are people over there with incentive to come here. They shouldn't make more people, but for whatever reason they do and we have to deal with the consequences that has on us. You can't just give "don't have kids" advice and then pretend that you magically got people to follow it. If they ignore your advice, you can blame them but that doesn't solve anything. You have to do something, or else accept the consequences of not doing something. You can't get out of it.
Republicans and Democrats have both shown they don't have a clue what to do. Do you?
There is no evidence that these "political left" people that you're talking about, have successfully made any credible move to shut down any discussion. If you are convinced that they have really tried to do this, then you must be laughing your ass off right now, since you know for sure that they definitely failed and didn't achieve even 1% of their goal. Because here we are, talking about it. Complete mission failure, "political left"!!
Therefore, what you just said is completely irrelevent. That's like someone is attacking an enemy infantry position with howitzers and the guy in charge of the artillery says "they are trying to train mosquitos to block the incoming artillery shells." It's a hilarious thing to say, but that's what you're saying. If someone is doing what you're saying they're doing, every single person knows that plan wouldn't ever have a chance of working even a little bit.
Maybe just stop worrying about it, and learn to enjoy their utterly futile attempts. Or accept that maybe you're wrong, and nobody is really trying to stop discussion, precisely because attempting to stop it is so futile. As you can see above, they didn't stop me. And I don't have some kind of magic keyboard. They didn't stop you, either.
Ok, here's the problem. We know for sure, without any speculation or guesswork or mysticism, that asking people to decrease their birth rates has failed. Past perfect tense, got it? This isn't something you're suggesting we try; it is a think we have tried but for some reason, we didn't get the result we wanted. They didn't take your "don't reproduce"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I like how the early 1980s is repeating itself. Reagan was decried as an "idiot who would get us into a nuclear war" and the Japanese were buying up real estate left and right. Today, Trump is going to say Mean Things that will make him somehow responsible for the Norks going off the deep end and the Chinese are the ones buying property. We're going to be fine.
You sound like a pussy.
People pick up and move to new jobs all the time. Some of them even cross whole oceans to do it.
You ancestors piss on you for your lazy 21st century excuses. "muh noritites" indeed Jimbo. KYS.
Enough already. I/we get it, the world is warming & changes will happen but dressing up opinion as science doesn't get you 'buy in' it simply pisses the masses off. Seriously we aren't dumb. There is no way in their current geopolitical context to claim that any migrations of people is due to 'global warming' rather than simply people trying to get out from under oppressive regimes, away from wars caused by stupidity etc.
The additional propaganda built in to this is that it's looking only at migrations to the EU. There is a SERIOUS amount of open land in Canada & Russia. Canada alone could house all of the world's population & give everyone ~550 square miles! Currently, alot of the land is uninhabitable (well with modern technology you could live in the north but it wouldn't be all that comfortable). IF the world warms considerably much of that land will become not just habitable but arable. And there's probably a piss pot of minerals and other shit we like to dig up for use in a modern economy.
Enough with doomsday proclamations dressed up as 'science'. This kind of shit should NEVER be accepted for publishing in a supposed 'scientific journal'.
There is no comparison between Mexicans coming into the US, and Africans and Middle Easterners flooding into Western Europe.
Mexicans come for jobs and are productive. Many of them already have family here. A very large chuck of the US was once Mexico. Our nations are very intertwined.
The refugees in Europe on the other hand have zero context there. They are strangers, and immediately land in slums and start looking for handouts.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Ever notice how they're leaving all muslim countries that are by all accounts pretty shitty because they're sharia'd lawed up and then they pass through moderately wealthy Muslim places like Turkey, UAE, Saudi Arabia and still go to Europe?
It's because they're looking for handouts from the overly generous European welfare programs and don't want to work.
I don't blame them. If Europe is that stupid to give out free money without any plan to get you on your feet that's their own fault.
All I hear about is how hardworking immigrants are so they're clearly taking SOMEBODY'S job.
Have you seen the Daily Mail song?
Unfortunately media hasn't entirely caught on to this yet but a lot of refugees flooding into Europe are actually from Africa and it isn't because of war. This has unfortunately been going on for more years than when things blew up in Syria. Basically there are places in Africa who haven't seen rain in years and farmers who are unable to grow anything. Folks might argue California has suffered the same but folks are forgetting that these folks weren't "rich" farmers to begin with and there's no social safety net. Unfortunately it's also these same countries that have seen the rise of ISIS as well. When you can't make money, don't have food or water and your family's starving and it looks like you're going to die from starvation or thirst, radical religions which give you a sliver of hope starts to sound unfortunately sane.
You really don't get the temporal nature of population dynamics do you.
"pussy"
Nice touch professor.
Bullshit story, it's getting colder here in Europe, and still they come, it's mostly only for the money that they come. Germany, Netherlands, France, and such, that's where they get more money. But hey if they keep coming, maybe we can go southwards...
It's either starvation or actual contraception, which the right can't get behind because it would upset the "every sperm is sacred" crowd. So they ignore the contraception option...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
War.
Bioweapons.
Massive reduction in the populations of the third world and developing nations.
Sucks to be them, but better them than my decendants.
so says ANONYMOUS hiding are we?
Humans are very adaptable to their environment, global warming is about a vague 1 degree C rise since the cold period during the 1970's, there has been a 20 year "pause" in global warming in the later half of that period. Long term, our planet is actually cooling since the Holocene climatic optimum according to all climate scientists.
It can be ruled out that anyone is seeking asylum due to a tiny temperature measurement on a global scale.
There is nothing wrong with immigration, people seeking asylum should be accepted with open arms regardless of their reason. Immigrants need to understand that the country accepting them expects them to integrate into their society and peacefully coexist.
Mass immigration, the rape and pillage of a society is a tactic of warfare. There is a difference...
Just be aware and mindful of the facts ;)
The real punchline here is that nobody has a clue of what climate change will really bring. In fact, it may make areas that are currently deserts into lush, tropical paradises. And where the people are flocking to now could become deserts.
Just to pile on: This is a humanitarian catastrophe in the making, no matter what. Due to the rapid population growth in the last 25 years, the demographics in Africa are such that even if the growth is somehow halted, the population will stay at unsustainable levels for at least several decades. That's not the bad part. The catastrophe is that the only two (mutually exclusive) options are 1) stop population growth and 2) maintain a demographic development that won't become extremely top heavy (i.e. many old people with few young people to support them). European societies experienced a comparatively slow decline to reproductive rates that can just about sustain the population or cause a slow decrease in population count. Even this slow change has caused significant problems in pension and healthcare systems.
Africa's population growth has been so rapid that the current population is very young. It will take decades before the demise of people who are currently young and make up most of Africa's demographic could offset birth rates. If Africa were to limit the population to a sustainable number, it would be facing a massive "pork cycle", a boom bust development of the population count with massive swings.
If on the other hand, Africa tried to slow population growth gradually to avoid developing an extremely top-heavy demographic chart, then population growth would continue for decades. If it's unsustainable now, it will be catastrophic then.
No matter how this is going to go, it's going to be terrible. Europe, with about a third of the population of Africa, will not be able to shoulder a meaningful portion of the problem. Even just a few millions of "refugees" are testing the limits of European societies. Africa adds 40 million people to its population every year. The conclusion: This is going to end with a fight to survive, for Europe, and for Africa. People who think we should welcome these "refugees" are surrendering Europe to the Africans.
We do talk about them. In fact, there was a Slashdot submission just today entitled "Number of Births in Japan To Hit Record Low in 2017".
Pretty much every civilized nation is at, or even well under, the replacement birth rate. That means their populations are staying roughly the same, if not shrinking over time. These people are naturally acting in a very reasonable and rather sustainable way.
I'll be honest, I didn't actually read the rest of your comment. It was clear you're a lost cause by the time I got to your second sentence.
Based on my reading of that comment, the reproduction rate would be brought to zero to stop additional growth.
I'm curious how you plan on implementing this step.
If by Europe you mean the EU, then it has slightly less than 42% of Africa's population, which is closer to half than a third. If you meant all of Europe, it has over 60% of Africa's population. That's all in an area around 1/3 the size of Africa, and with an inferior growing season. Africa's population is sustainable, just not with its current poverty and lack of infrastructure.
If you provide passage to rich countries that will give you food, water, and housing for free X immigrants will always come, were X is the carrying capacity of the TRANSPORTATION.
There has always been war and there are billions of starving people every day. The only reason we have immigrants is because we have people pushing for immigration and many of them providing transportation. The wars and famine just get in the way of this and slow it down.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I don't know about zero context. Many of these countries use European languages because of past colonial activity.
It seems to me that Europe has some reparations it should make for the colonial era still and in return they get to do a more gentle export of their culture. If Europe wants to stem the flood of immigrants it can always put more effort into making life better for people in situ. Help them with farming tech, sponsor education. There's really no good reason why Africa should be abandoned.
Nullius in verba
A person fleeing their own nation should seek a nation with their own faith and culture.
Not too many changes and the laws and faith share something in common their own nation.
If the West needs workers short term why not look for the best workers other more advanced nations have to offer? Why just accept lot of very random people with no skills that will need looking after for generations?
If all the USA wanted good workers why not bring in legal guest workers who are educated from nations that have something in common with the USA?
Good people who share common democratic values and who want to work in the USA.
Many nations have educated people who speak english and who share US values.
People who really like Americana and would like to work in the USA.
They have passports are real and they understand that they will be guest workers in the USA for a set time.
Their governments function and can ensure the person who has the passport is the person who is getting into the USA.
No problems with a faith that hates the West, lack of english, no having to support lots of new random people with average IQ of 85 or lower.
Guest workers with jobs to fill in the USA would solve problems with the short term jobs market legally.
In the long term educate people in the USA without jobs who can work in the USA to fill the jobs.
No random migrants needed. Use guest workers that are educated for the work in the USA and then focus on educating people all over the USA.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
What you may not know is that european countries have sent develepment aids ranging in the billion dollars for decades already. Did it change anything? No, because of the ultra-corrupt leaders in almost all of the african countries. This will never change, no matter how much money they pump into these shitholes.
Wake and smell the stench of the raw sewage from the refugee camps. Food shortages that result from climate change is raising temperature and temperaments all over. There are other factors, but this is is a feedback loop in the worse way. This not a "may?" situation. This is NOW!
I really don't like Trump but he is right on with the fake news bit. This could be one of the most ridiculous climate change stories ever.
I like how the early 1980s is repeating itself.
Speaking as someone who was around during the early 80s that statement is nonsensical. The political environment today bears almost no resemblance to the one in the early 80s. If you think it does then you either have a very selective memory or you weren't there.
Reagan was decried as an "idiot who would get us into a nuclear war" and the Japanese were buying up real estate left and right.
It is true that there was a lot of angst about Japan during the 80s but your assertion about Reagan was not widely held outside of a few far left kooks. Bear in mind that the Cold War was in full swing so Reagan building up our military substantially did bring a lot of justifiable concern about how the Soviets would respond. But love him or hate him, Reagan bore little resemblance to Trump and he certainly was a more decent human being and a far better president than Trump. (I say this as someone who doesn't particularly like Reagan or his politics) Trump is easily the least competent and worst performing president during my lifetime and that includes Nixon and W.
Today, Trump is going to say Mean Things that will make him somehow responsible for the Norks going off the deep end and the Chinese are the ones buying property. We're going to be fine.
China is a different animal than Japan. Japan is a smaller country than the US with limited natural resources. China has around 4X the people the US has and comparable natural resources. Japan has sort of reached a natural limit on their ability to grow. China has the second largest economy in the world and they have a HUGE amount of room to grow. All other things being equal one one expect China to be the dominant force the in the world economy. Yes the US will probably be fine but baring some catastrophe China is going to make a much bigger splash than Japan could ever hope to.
As for Trump, I think it is a very real concern that he does or says something stupid to get us into another shooting war needlessly. He clearly doesn't understand or have the patience to learn the intricacies of foreign policy. He already has managed to get the UN General Assembly to condemn his policy on Jerusalem. He also seems depressingly enthusiastic to get a fight started on the Korean peninsula which will be a huge problem if the shells start flying.
In your fantasy world, the Religious Right still has firm control of the Republican Party.
The rest of us have moved on. Like Trump or not, he is the leader of the GOP right now and he's not a bible thumper. Its one of the best things about him being elected. Another is that in the Election Process he killed both the Bush and the Clinton dynasties.
Firm control? No, but an essential part of control, certainly. Trump or not, the Republicans can't afford to lose the support of the religious right. They need every vote they can get, on top of the electoral college advantage and gerrymandering, to retain power with a minority of voters supporting them. Politically, the Republicans are living on reclaimed land and a break in any part of any dam will let in a tidal wave of leftism. They've been very lucky that the religious right has been able to look past the fact that the candidate they were given to vote for is a human avatar of sinful behavior compared to the typical politician, and they'd be wise not to strain their support further.
Look at the VP pick, why pick an ultra-homophobic pious theocrat if not to please the religious right?
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