Migration always means poverty migration, not wealth migration

[TarJak]

Or Australia. Migration was the key to industrial growth after WW2. I can't agree with the title however it may be playing out in Germany or Schweiz.

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by Oberon

Explain expatriates then.

Originally Posted by TarJak

Or Australia. Migration was the key to industrial growth after WW2. I can't agree with the title however it may be playing out in Germany or Schweiz.

Beaten to it....and I've been one having resided in Holland for more than two years.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by TarJak

Or Australia. Migration was the key to industrial growth after WW2. I can't agree with the title however it may be playing out in Germany or Schweiz.

There are migrants and there are migrants. Some go to build themselves - or for their children at least - a new future: that was key drive behind the European mass migration to America.

Others go with not intending to change, instead only to suck the money blood of the new haven they are in, and expecting the natives to adapt to them. Which makes the immigrant a colonist then.

Australia I know not much about, cannot comment.

The title I have chosen from this paragraph in the text I linked:

"Just as water flows downhill and hot air rises, migration—which is always poverty migration—goes from poverty to wealth. There’s no such thing as “wealthy migration,” unless we’re talking about Gerard Depardieu."

[Wolferz]

As you watch the poor migrate to the rich spots, the rich will migrate to places the poor can not go, for lack of airfare.

You can always make the best of the beggar situation by promoting bum fights.

[Tchocky]

That article hurts my head.


Put it this way - if a blog post purports to discuss economics, using the heading "STATISTICS CAN PROVE ANYTHING" is not the way to go.

Just as water flows downhill and hot air rises, migration—which is always poverty migration—goes from poverty to wealth. There’s no such thing as “wealthy migration,” unless we’re talking about Gerard Depardieu. That this more or less scientific fact is so insistently denied has to do with broken promises.

This more or less ridiculous statement is more or less rubbish.

[Wolferz]

Less is the new more.

Yup, hot topic and makes me go nuts how incredibly stupid our politicians "handle" this situation. I just can't believe it. Once again the cancer called "political correctness" is hammering another nail into Germany's coffin.

I was so glad that this country became what it is (was?) after WW2, that we got the chance to become a great nation, wealthy and peaceful, again despite the whole Third Reich thing.
Now, we destroy it all from within by making the wrong decisions, wearing pink glasses of stupidity and political correctness...

I liked this country so much. When I now look at cities like Duisburg, or single districts from cities like Berlin, Hamburg or even my small hometown Lüneburg, I get the feeling that I want to emigrate to Finland's wilderness, to escape all this crap and don't have to get angry again when I read in the paper that once more a nice foreign fellow citizen beat an old man to death over nothing in a subway, for fun.
And don't get me started on the "Roma and Sinti" problem. It is unbelievable how most, not all, of these people "live" here, let alone why.

Although, if there's a country giving away freebies like stupid, I can see why the poorest of the poor are attracted. I don't even blame them.

Nothing against a healthy cultural mix, it spices things up, I do believe that, yet people should start to worry when the "healthy mix" transforms into mighty ghettos with organized crime, corruption and less police activity due to fear of incidents.

Problem here is, for all non Germans of this board, you can't just be against that as a German in Germany. As soon as you say something critical against immigration or immigrants, you get a nice red stamp on your forehead saying: "Racist!" or "Nazi!", without anyone actually listeting or fact-checking. And some groups just use that to their advantage with a big smile on their faces, like the "Central Council of Jews in Germany", or the Muslim-equivalent of this organization...

All hail the Altlast.

/off to Finland's wilderness...

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Skybird

"Just as water flows downhill and hot air rises, migration—which is always poverty migration—goes from poverty to wealth. There’s no such thing as “wealthy migration,” unless we’re talking about Gerard Depardieu."

Then how about Britains (and Germans) who have retired to hotter climates?

[Skybird]

Millions and millions do that, yes.

Not, it is not millions and millions. And many elder people moving to other countries do so because in that country their pensions allow them a modest lifestyle they cannot support in Germany anymore.

All in all, poverty and wealth migration by numbers of individuals do not compare.

What we have in Germany is a growing trend that families and children send their old parents to old-age homes in Poland, Czech Republic, Thailand and some other places in Asia, because they cannot pay for places in homes for the elderly in Germany, the costs become too high for many. I take it that this also is not what you mean by "wealth migration"...?

[Oberon]

But we're not talking about comparisons here. The title you used makes a definition that migration always means poverty migration, not wealth migration, and yet this is not the case. Similarly the quote in which you ended your reply to Tarjak with states that migration is always poverty migration, but as you have admitted just now, that there is wealth migration, although because of the ratio of rich to poor in just about every nation on this planet, the ratio between wealth and poverty migration is helplessly one-sided.
Furthermore, the simplification of the term 'migration' discounts internal country migration, not everyone in Germany and the UK moves from richer parts of the country to poorer parts, generally movements congregate where there is a greater chance of employment, and so it is internationally, as equally as it is intranationally.

EDIT: Didn't know about the old-age home exportation...that is pretty grim, but equally in a manner of speaking it is a form of wealth migration, since it is people from one country exploiting the inequality in relative economic strength to benefit their own financial existence, for good or for ill. People come from Eastern Europe to earn more money than they can back home, and we go to Eastern Europe to make the money we've earnt go further.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Oberon

But we're not talking about comparisons here. The title you used makes a definition that migration always means poverty migration, not wealth migration, and yet this is not the case. Similarly the quote in which you ended your reply to Tarjak with states that migration is always poverty migration, but as you have admitted just now, that there is wealth migration, although because of the ratio of rich to poor in just about every nation on this planet, the ratio between wealth and poverty migration is helplessly one-sided.
Furthermore, the simplification of the term 'migration' discounts internal country migration, not everyone in Germany and the UK moves from richer parts of the country to poorer parts, generally movements congregate where there is a greater chance of employment, and so it is internationally, as equally as it is intranationally.

EDIT: Didn't know about the old-age home exportation...that is pretty grim, but equally in a manner of speaking it is a form of wealth migration, since it is people from one country exploiting the inequality in relative economic strength to benefit their own financial existence, for good or for ill. People come from Eastern Europe to earn more money than they can back home, and we go to Eastern Europe to make the money we've earnt go further.

The great migration movements in the history of the past 2000 years, and before, all were moving-outs by tribes and people due to poverty and grim living conditions in the places where these tribes originally came from. 'Sometimes climate changes played a role, an erosion of once fertile farming grounds, or wars, or oppression.

Also, migration as a term is used today almost exclusively for mass movements caused by the need for people to move elsewhere. People moving somewhere because they< are millionaires and like to go there usually are not tagged as "migrants". Migrants go where they hope for a better life or/and hope to find better work.

If we would follow a less popular understanding of the term, then think of summer vacancies in the Western world - and understand tourists to be part-time-migrants. They move by the millions across the European continents and beyond indeed. Numerically, that is what in German would be called a "Völkerwanderung", and bigger in size than the "Völkerwanderungen" of the past 2 thousand years.

Most people have a sense for feeling home in their homeland, homeplace, home culture. Most people only move when they have very pressing, urgent material needs to move away from their homes. People who are so rich that they just read in a tourist magazine and then chose between the lovely resort they saw on the Bahamas, the Florida Keys or a godforsaken lonely island in the Chinese Sea, not really match the modern understanding of the term "migrant".

Aren't we needlessly splitting hairs here? How many rich Poles have moved to Spain and Britain in the past years? How many Turkish millionaires came to Germany? Hoiw many social upper class Mexicvans move illegally into the US? How many rich Chinese enter the South Eastern areas of Russia without permission? The greek and Spanish young people moving from their homelands to Germany currently - are they really that happy to leave their homes and seek a chance in a foreign place - or aren't they do it because they see no chance for a life in their home countries?

Migrants are migrants, you cannot just change the definition of the word because your opening piece makes no sense and is easily proved contrary to fact.

[Aktungbby]

Originally Posted by Oberon

The title you used makes a definition that migration always means poverty migration, not wealth migration, and yet this is not the case.

Precisely! I give le cause celébrée: M. Gérard Depardieu, lately of France. http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013...ssian-citizens