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In reply to the discussion: Donny Deutsch says Medicare for All would turn America into 'f***ing Denmark.' Danish Millionaire sh [View all]Celerity
(42,668 posts)level of immigration from the Islamic world and increased mor in terms of a percentage than anyother type. Racist hate crimes still make up the vast majority however.
Hate crimes increase in Sweden: Here's a breakdown of the stats
We had an extraordinarily success rate of taking in and integrating refugees for decades (often coming from US started wars and coups d'état such as Iran in 1953 (Operation Ajax where Mohammad Mosaddegh was overthrown and Shah Reza Phlavi installed) and Chile in 1973 when Salvador Allende was overthrown and murdered. There were 2 main differences between the previous influxes and the ones that have taken place over the past 20 years (especially the last 16 or 17 or so.)
The first is obviously the scale. One can but imagine the social upheaval that would have occurred in the US if it had taken in around 50 million or so refugees since the turn of the millennium. In the past here, the numbers were far, far smaller, and there was often longer periods of time between the flows, during which the country was able to more or less (nothing is perfect obviously) successfully absorb and integrate the newcomers. The last 15 or 20 years has not been the case. The system has been overwhelmed, with multiple shocks to the system, ofttimes with partial breakdown results and socio-cultural, socio-economic negative inflection points. This has now extended to the political sphere with the rise of the far right hyper nationalist Sweden Democrats Party (SD). They have, on occasion polled as high as 30% or so, although they had unexpectedly poor (but still by far their all-time high of 17.53%, but they were expected to hit 25 to 27%) in the 2018 elections.
The second main difference has been the socio-economic typology difference between previous groups and the groups of the past 20 or so years. Afar greater percent in the early flows were from a much higher socio-economic class, with many of them (but NOT all) power elites and bourgeoisie who simple were on the losing side in the coups and wars. They brought, in many cases, multiple generations (in the case of some, literally hundreds of years) of familial and social set success in terms of business and political outcomes. They were able to much more quickly adapt and thrive within the Swedish overall zeitgeist.
This has not been the case with the vast majority of the refugees over the past 15 to 20 years. They have arrived here with decades of war/conflict shattered family lives, and very little long term histories (compared to the previous waves) of social and economic successes. Sweden has been, post WWII, always amongst the most equal nations (often number 1) for decades in terms of wealth equality (the number one overarching statistic in determining the overall well being of nation-state) as well as upward social mobility. The Nordic nations have long ago surpassed the US in terms of social mobility. In fact, the the US has a large social mobility (especially in terms of income elasticity) problem, in some measures only superseded by the UK when it comes to other western nations.
This in now changing in Sweden as we are seeing a pretty substantial downturn now in both our wealth equality (GINI coefficient) as well as social mobility, much of it due to the rise (for the first time in ages) of a much more entrenched semi-permanent (trending towards permanency, unfortunately, although this CAN be addressed and is a major focus of mine atm) underclass, often correlated with the huge influx of refugee and other types of lower socioeconomic immigration. I am positive that given time we can overcome all these major structural issues, but is is so not going to be a smooth ride. It is so important that we do work on it and work on it successfully, as SD is now once again polling much highers than they have any right to. I am so glad we are far more tolerant than Denmark and Finland have become (and Norway to a lesser extent) but we simply cannot take in another wave of around 1.5 million refugees over the next 10, 15 or so years.
We at present only have 10.1 million people here and we are are now more diverse than the US itself in terms of population percentage of non European foreign born and their first 2 gens (some studies show we are approaching 27, 28, even 30%.) IF Rump starts a ME-wide major war (Iran, Syria, etc etc etc) and we were to take in another 1.5 million, the results will be extremely deleterious at a multiplicity of levels. Imagine the US taking in (from 2000 to 2030) close to 100 million refugees from the most war-torn parts of the world, the vast, vast majority coming from basically ZERO traditions of a pluralist western democratic society, and the vast majority following a religion that is not at all judeo-christian or secular atheist/agnostic in orientation. As bad as it can get here, THAT would cause America to explode, unfortunately.