Sunday, January 24, 2016

Japan shows Europe the way on refugees

Japan is a wealthy, modern nation. But it still wants to remain distinctively Japanese. Last year Japan accepted only 27 refugees.

It's a tiny number given Japan's population. Even so, it's difficult to see why Japan should even take this many. Why drop someone from Syria into the middle of Kyoto? How does that benefit anyone? The refugees won't fit into the existing culture and society and the existing culture and society won't uphold its existence by accepting those who can't fit in. It will just lead gradually to demands for a homogeneous Japanese people to give way.

Does that mean Japan shouldn't do anything about refugees? No. Japan can be a good international citizen by donating some of its wealth to rehousing Middle-Eastern refugees somewhere safe in the Middle-East. It seems that Japan has taken this logical step already:
The top five donors [to the UNHCR] in 2012 were the United States, Japan, the European Commission, Sweden and the Netherlands.

What a pity that the European nations can't be as sensible as Japan.

Finland, for instance, has been accepting large numbers of Middle-Eastern refugees, but many have left already because they find the Finnish culture too alienating and the weather too cold:
Almost 70 per cent of Iraqi asylum seekers have given up applications in Finland to go back to their war-torn country.

One Iraqi who decided to return said Finland did not live up to the expectations.

He said: "I don't know what happens to me in Iraq, but here I will die mentally."

Another Middle-Eastern arrival agreed:
"You can tell the world I hate Finland. It's too cold, there's no tea, no restaurants, no bars, nobody on the streets, only cars," 22-year-old Muhammed told AFP in Tornio, as the mercury struggled to inch above 10 degrees Celsius (50 Fahrenheit) on a recent blustery grey day.

Again, there is something absurd about dropping Muhammed into Finland in the first place. The Finnish people have created a way of life in a particular environment that they wish to keep and they should be allowed to do so. Middle-Easterners like Muhammed don't find that way of life congenial - it is logical that they be resettled somewhere more familiar to them.

3 comments:

  1. I have to wonder how long the Japanese can buy off the opinion of the "international community", and also maintain electoral support domestically. Japan is an extremely corporatist society, one with almost no tradition of labor activism that wasn't immediately suppressed as having links to communism. The younger generations may not be as devoted to preserving identity as the elders, but my knowledge of that is limited to popular culture.

    It also helps their position that none of their fertility challenged neighbors has succumbed to allowing invasion.

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  2. Does Japan have a Fifth column,like we in the West have?
    I don't think so,so thy should be pretty safe.

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    1. The main problem in the West was not so much a fifth column but the logical unfolding of the dominant political philosophy. We are living now the results of a liberalism which our own native elites have held to as a life view for many generations.

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