Why let in just a bit of a problem when you can let in none of it at all?
Countries like Sweden have a collapsing social system that is dying under the weight of a greying populace. Germany has a similar problem. If they don't let in these immigrants (because that's what they are even if they act like refugees) their country will need to adapt to a greying population and change their social system and that'd be pretty bad because of path dependency.
There's a good reason to let them in, it's just a shame that they're forcing the others that don't have that reason to do the same. For example the Netherlands has no need for immigrants because we already have too many people and too few houses as it is.
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Gotcha.
Yeah, it's inefficient. Still... I mean let's stick with ocean analogies. There are not a whole lot of shark attacks in a given year -- but we still try to protect ocean-goers from sharks. If the lifeguard blows that shark-whistle (do they have shark whistles? Shark alarms? Shark cowbells, I bet it's cowbells). If the lifeguard rings that shark-cowbell, you get your butt out of the damn water.
I think the government has to be a little paranoid -- it's their job. NSA phone monitoring is a LOT paranoid, and it's probably a violation of civil liberties, and I'd like it to stop. Browsing facebook is a happier medium, and like I said I'm still not crazy about it -- but I understand why it's happening, and they're not literally insane for thinking it up.
Sorry for the late reply, it kinda slipped my mind.
Yeah, you're right, there's not a whole lot of shark attacks in a year but if you get attacked, you obviously think 'man this sucks.' I'm not denying that, it's absolutely true and we should do what we can to prevent shark attacks. But I feel like in most cases we're not really looking at shark attacks (shark attacks being the few and far between large attacks like 9/11, Nice, Stockholm, etc.) but more so at a smaller stream of fish that might have similar sized, similarly colored fish in them that are predatory in nature. They're hard to find, naturally, and even if you find one, there are ten more for that one you just caught.
That doesn't mean we should try, but things are a bit different than many people think. You seem to be aware of that though.
As for paranoia, I also agree, it's the job to be a bit paranoid of the government. But... I should explain that I study safety and security management so my position in this is a bit different perhaps. This thing you're describing is the paradox of security versus privacy. It's a really standard thing but the rule is that you always trade like so; security <-----------------> privacy. For every step towards security you take, your citizens will have less privacy, and for every step towards privacy.. you get the point. There are things that suddenly push a country to either side, for example the 9/11 attacks pushed America and its' citizens HEAVILY towards the security, resulting in PATRIOT act which Americans are still suffering from because as it turns out that act was supposed to last just during the war, but then they thought 'oh shit we can use this to monitor our own people.. nice' and kept it. It was never meant for that but here we are.
It's smart though, I'll give them that. As a citizen, I'm naturally against these kind of malpractices, but if I were them? Holy shit, I'd be rolling in the transcripts from everyone's facebook feeds, emails, phonecalls, etc. It's genius.
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