“King Frederick William I of Prussia welcomes the Salzburg Protestants, 30th April 1732”
– Painting by Konstantin Johann Franz Cretius
White rural America is very afraid, of being replaced by something else. At least a prominent Republican implied so, all while the same side associates crimes with immigrants to such an extent, that mass-deportations are supposed to solve it all. And what would the folks living their entire lives in villages and small towns know about it, when they are told by supposedly informed authorities, that foreigners are coming to get the girls – with cases, such as that Virginia Giuffre did indeed end up marrying a foreigner, after old-ish white Americans had their fun with her.
Personally, I do see things way more differentiated. In example, over here in Europe, there are sometimes violent confrontations between hooligan-fans of soccer-teams. So, when there is a soccer match, and hooligans from one town commit criminal acts in another town, i.e. 50 miles away, that could also be considered a sort of migrant criminality. Yet, to erect a wall between the two towns, that doesn’t really help about there being on both sides males, who want to be violent.
And historically, here in Berlin, there hasn’t been any problem with immigrants at large, until Nazis arrived and claimed that there is a problem. Berlin grew to a city with millions of inhabitants, by 1920 one of the largest world-wide, due to immigration from near and far. And quite a number of these were refugees.
In particular, in the year 1685, there was the Edict of Potsdam, after which approximately 20,000 Huguenot refugees settled in Prussia. Huguenots had been persecuted in France.
By 1731, many of the 20,000 Salzburg Protestants, settled in Prussia, after having been expelled due to the Counter-Reformation. Similarly, also Protestants from other places arrived, and refugees from Russia, and also folks e.g. from Turkey – in particular serving in the Prussian Army, see “Bosniak Corps” from the mid-18th century, and also i.e. diplomats, like Ali Aziz Efendi, who died in 1798 and had funeral according to Islamic rite in Berlin – and by mid-19th century, the Ottoman Empire had a plot of land in Berlin, that is since used as cemetery (now by Turkey).
And quite a number of other stories. I.e. in this picture here, Gustav Sabac el Cher in 1908, born 1868 in Berlin. He served as bandmaster in the Prussian Army.
So, to say, as some do, such as among AfD, or similarly the White House, that immigration is generally a bad thing, such notion seems quite absurd to me.
And, especially when there is humanitarian catastrophe, these days mostly man-made, it isn’t the refugees that are to blame. In example, Syria – permanent UN Security Council members seem to have fought a proxy-war over there, with also fanatics from Iraq involved – and then someone born in 2005 turned up at the border from Syria, and gets blamed for everything bad? That seems quite a ridiculous notion.
And as far as criminality by foreigners is concerned, there is also a lot to differentiate. Like, the homeless person from Poland, who somehow ended up in Berlin, and got caught stealing food or something to drink from a shop, such “simple theft” represents about 20% of all crime in Germany – and then it even differentiates further, in regard to that about a quarter of shop thefts are attributed to persons working there, and another quarter to gang criminality as such. And the homeless from abroad, when someone actually takes a look, they can see that these persons sit like in a ditch between the national Social security systems of EU member states. Like, no income whatsoever, and no local health insurance – pretty much existential poverty.
In this case, these persons may perhaps once have had a slim chance of not becoming homeless. But a wall on the border to Poland doesn’t help these people, who would likely just end up sitting in a homeless camp elsewhere, when politics in several countries are just like: “It’s everyone for themselves! Hundreds of billions in monthly profits of U.S. companies, and no dime even for our own homeless.”.
And stuff like that, where at least some humanism would be nice instead.