Does a strict border control (e.g. after Brexit) promote racism and/or xenophobia?

OP

What difference does it make if you know them or not? And why do you need a personal social relationship with them? I happen to know lots of people who just started university and ended up in the same flat as people of vastly different backgrounds and no social relationship. When they moved in to Halls, they did join with numerous other people - And yet, they still lock their doors.

So now that I have given examples of blocks of flats where what you said is simply not the case, can you answer my question? Why do you not let anyone at any time come in to your home? Do you lock your home? Why can't anyone just go in to your home at any time? Do you think they don't deserve a home? Are you heartless?

But you just gave an example of a flat with multiple rooms where people don't know each other, similar to a block of flats, instead of a home. And they lock their doors to their rooms not to the whole flat if there are more rooms available.

And even if you want to use this analogy of country to home you lock your door under the assumption that other people pose a threat to you or that if they move in you won't have space to live comfortably (which in the case of a country doesn't make much sense). At your house you have the right to do that because you own it and you also have the right to do that in your country because you're a citizen there and you make the decisions that are to your interest as is rational to do. That still doesn't mean you'll make an ethical decision. People might lock their homes because they want to keep others out but in the case of a country, which theoretically nobody owns, keeping people out has far bigger ethical repercussions.

Reply 81

Plagioclase

21

Original post by heri2rs

British citizens are not prioritised relative to migrants. The British people want a strong border so they can get jobs without being undercut by migrants who work for less. It has nothing to do with xenophobia. We don't have an irrational fear of foreigners. Brits just want jobs. British people wont be prioritised ahead of migrants who already live here, because that is up to employers.

What if everyone was law abiding? Should they all be able to come in?

Except that there is practically no evidence that any of this is actually true, because most foreign workers take jobs that have a supply shortage, often because British people don't want to do the jobs themselves. I'd agree with you that none of this is really because of some kind of inherent xenophobia. I'd argue it's because the British people have been sold a false narrative for years now that their jobs are being threatened by foreigners to draw attention away from domestic failures (and the fact that British people are not as good as they think they are).

Reply 82

nulli tertius

21

Original post by thecsstudent

Decisions in democratic countries are made based on what the majority votes.

Democratic countries create structures in which people can have political influence through those the structures.

More people voted for Hillary Clinton than Donald Trump.

The majority in Northern Ireland certainly didn't want McGuiness to be Deputy First Minister.

The majority in the UK didn't want a change in our relationship with the EU.

A majority of Americans want more control on handguns.

But those weren't the democratic structures that were created.

The USA has an electoral college that gives more weight to voters in certain small historical organised areas.

The Northern Ireland electoral system is designed to give a measure of power to a minority group.

The EU referendum (unlike the 1979 devolution referendums) did not require a specific proportion of the electorate to vote to change the status quo, it merely required "leave" to beat "remain" or vice versa.

Removing the right to bear arms from the US Constitution requires a very onerous specific super-majority.

Reply 83

jape

16

Original post by nulli tertius

Democratic countries create structures in which people can have political influence through those the structures.

More people voted for Hillary Clinton than Donald Trump.

Which is irrelevant.

The majority in Northern Ireland certainly didn't want McGuiness to be Deputy First Minister.

Don't really know anything about Norn Iron.

The majority in the UK didn't want a change in our relationship with the EU.

Evidently untrue.

A majority of Americans want more control on handguns.

Really depends on how you phrase the question, but you imply later on that most Americans want the Second Amendment gone. Which isn't true by a long shot.

Reply 84

heri2rs

5

Original post by Plagioclase

Except that there is practically no evidence that any of this is actually true, because most foreign workers take jobs that have a supply shortage, often because British people don't want to do the jobs themselves. I'd agree with you that none of this is really because of some kind of inherent xenophobia. I'd argue it's because the British people have been sold a false narrative for years now that their jobs are being threatened by foreigners to draw attention away from domestic failures (and the fact that British people are not as good as they think they are).

Whilst you are correct to some extent about Brits not taking jobs that migrants will do, I'm sure they'd be rushing towards them if we slash their welfare

Reply 85

jape

16

Original post by heri2rs

Whilst you are correct to some extent about Brits not taking jobs that migrants will do, I'm sure they'd be rushing towards them if we slash their welfare

Abolish the welfare state and give people £1000 pcm with Negative Income Tax. They'll work.

Reply 86

heri2rs

5

Original post by jape

Abolish the welfare state and give people £1000 pcm with Negative Income Tax. They'll work.

What would Calvin Coolidge have done? Negative income tax is just a savvy way of working tax credits to be fair

Reply 87

nulli tertius

21

Original post by jape

Evidently untrue.

Hardly. Of an electorate of 46,500,001, 17,410,742 voted for leave. That is 37.4% of the electorate. If the Brexit referendum had been conducted according to the rules of the 1979 Scottish and Welsh Devolution Referendum, Remain won, as less than 40% of the electorate voted in favour of Brexit. Those weren't the rules in 2016, but that illustrates the point you have ignorantly dismissed as irrelevant which is that democracy
is a collection of rules not a a simple universal truth.

Really depends on how you phrase the question, but you imply later on that most Americans want the Second Amendment gone. Which isn't true by a long shot.

No I didn't. I said that most Americans want more gun control. All polling shows that. That inevitably means a change to the Second Amendment and there is not the right support in the right places to achieve that.

Reply 88

BobBobson

3

Original post by nulli tertius

No I didn't. I said that most Americans want more gun control. All polling shows that.

Are these the same polls that showed Trump as having a 2% chance of winning?

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Reply 89

nulli tertius

21

Original post by BobBobson

Are these the same polls that showed Trump as having a 2% chance of winning?

Do you understand what having a 2% chance of winning means?

It doesn't mean having a 0% chance of winning. It means if you run the election with the candidates having a particular level of support 50 times, Clinton wins 49 times and Trump wins once.

The actual result was Clinton 48% Trump 46% Johnson 3% Stein 1%

If you compare that to the opinion poll results, you will see that they were all pretty damn close and well within a reasonable margin of error.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationwide_opinion_polling_for_the_United_States_presidential_election,_2016

This just happened to be the election where all the pieces fell in the right place for a Trump win.

Reply 90

BobBobson

3

I'm not talking about the popular vote polls, I'm talking about the state polls which aggregated together showed Trump losing by a big margain. If Trump had a 2% chance of winning, then if he won, he would've won just barely, but he didn't. He won by a big margain (in terms of state votes, which are how the result is decided, not by popular vote). If the polls were simply wrong within a margain of error, surely that would've mean that maybe Trump would win an extra state, and Hillary would win an extra state, but no. Every single state was off, with Trump winning a higher percentage than predicted. That's not a coincidence. That's an error in polling. It's just a whole big coincidence that Trump said that the polls were wrong, and they were wrong. Not just wrong, but wrong bigly.

Original post by nulli tertius

Do you understand what having a 2% chance of winning means?

It doesn't mean having a 0% chance of winning. It means if you run the election with the candidates having a particular level of support 50 times, Clinton wins 49 times and Trump wins once.

The actual result was Clinton 48% Trump 46% Johnson 3% Stein 1%

If you compare that to the opinion poll results, you will see that they were all pretty damn close and well within a reasonable margin of error.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationwide_opinion_polling_for_the_United_States_presidential_election,_2016

This just happened to be the election where all the pieces fell in the right place for a Trump win.

Reply 91

nulli tertius

21

Original post by BobBobson

I'm not talking about the popular vote polls, I'm talking about the state polls which aggregated together showed Trump losing by a big margain. If Trump had a 2% chance of winning, then if he won, he would've won just barely, but he didn't. He won by a big margain (in terms of state votes, which are how the result is decided, not by popular vote). If the polls were simply wrong within a margain of error, surely that would've mean that maybe Trump would win an extra state, and Hillary would win an extra state, but no. Every single state was off, with Trump winning a higher percentage than predicted. That's not a coincidence. That's an error in polling. It's just a whole big coincidence that Trump said that the polls were wrong, and they were wrong. Not just wrong, but wrong bigly.

Even on the basis you are referring to, there is a fundamental misunderstanding of statistics. I see it at work.

"What are my chances of success in my claim Mr Tertius?"

"About 60%"

You see it in their eyes. They have decided that they have won.

So I say to them:

"That means if your case is tried by 5 judges, you will win three times and lose twice"

"Is it possible to settle out of court Mr Tertius?"

2% means run the election based on that data 50 times and Trump wins once. Was this that once? I do think the polls were off, so 2% wasn't right, but they weren't off off by much. Trump needed the deck to fall in a particularly unlikely way to win. It did fall that way and he won. An accurate percentage assessment of his chances of success might not have been 2% but I doubt it was as high as 8%.

(edited 7 years ago)

Does a strict border control (e.g. after Brexit) promote racism and/or xenophobia?

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