Economic freedom of movement

[Admiral Piett]

My question would be, why is it any nation's responsibility on this earth to keep their borders open? Why is there some non-codified mandate that nation's have to respect some imagined freedom of movement. The irony is its very difficult for an American to immigrate to one of these Scandinavian countries that is interested in assimilating and respecting the laws of the country, but it's been made easy for people from impoverished, radically conservative war torn regions to enter.

Posts moved from the "Sexual assaults in Sweden" thread. ~Abdülmecid I
Additional posts moved from the "Israel's Unwanted African Migrants, sent to Europe?" thread. -chriscase

[Love Mountain]

My question would be, why is it any nation's responsibility on this earth to keep their borders open? Why is there some non-codified mandate that nation's have to respect some imagined freedom of movement. The irony is its very difficult for an American to immigrate to one of these Scandinavian countries that is interested in assimilating and respecting the laws of the country, but it's been made easy for people from impoverished, radically conservative war torn regions to enter.

There's a big difference between refugee inflows due to war and poverty, and lawful immigration. While I think that it should be easier for me to immigrate to other countries as an American, I also think it's a good thing that so many European countries readily accepted many refugees. The implementation was botched of course, but the sentiment is honorable.

[Aexodus]

There's a big difference between refugee inflows due to war and poverty, and lawful immigration. While I think that it should be easier for me to immigrate to other countries as an American, I also think it's a good thing that so many European countries readily accepted many refugees. The implementation was botched of course, but the sentiment is honorable.

What responsibility does Scandinavia have to take 'refugees' from another continent that pass by plenty of livable countries, who lets be honest, are coming primarily to Sweden for the high standards of living a welfare state brings and not much else.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I say 'refugees' as in my opinion once you pass by the first few safe countries, you're now an economic migrant. But I digress, this isn't something I really want to debate

[Love Mountain]

They don't but they chose to open the borders, and there is little reason to close them. The intent of spreading refugees around is to alleviate the burden on border countries who are economically less fortunate than Sweden.

[Aexodus]

'Fortunate'

So Sweden just 'happens' to be a more developed country, definitely not down to the Swedish people who now have to give refugees their tax money.

I mean, it's kinda hard for Swedes to close their borders when they're labelled as xenophobic Nazis, and the Swedish government is paying for propaganda like this with Swedish taxes



'blanda upp' = 'mix it up'

[Love Mountain]

The economic impact is minuscule. Even the worst critics would be hard pressed to make a substantial case for the economic impact.

[Aexodus]

What concrete moral reason does Europe have to take these migrants more than anywhere else.

Minuscule? Why, why should the Swedish working-class have to take any depression in their wages at all as they now have to compete with a large influx of unskilled labour. https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/ge...FULLTEXT01.pdf

Between 2001 and 2012, immigrationincreased the labor supply by 9.5%; our analysis implies that this immigrant influx reduced thewage of the native worker by 3.4%. The wage impact differed across education groups, withwage falling by 3.6% for post-secondary graduates and 3.3% for post graduates.

As you can see in the above, the depression affects the more highly educated less than those who aren't.

Why should Sweden have to change, and not the other way round https://www.economist.com/blogs/econ...st-explains-20

But it's easy for the cushioned middle classes in all western countries not to care about the damage their virtue signalling is causing, as these changes simply don't affect them as much.

[Gigantus]

'blanda upp' = 'mix it up'

Grotesco - a Swedish Satire\Humor group (governments are usually not in the habit to pay those that criticize their policies)

You forgot this section from your linked report:

The findings of the impact of immigration on the relative wages of native workers should be complemented with the benefits that would arise from high-skilled immigrants. This type of immigrants could lead to technological change in Sweden and have a positive impact in the economic growth, fact that should also be considered when doing public policy.

How does the minuscule drop in wages for the 'natives' relate to the topic? Last I checked it was "Swedish statistics over sexual assaults revealed"
Never mind that the drop isn't really supported by the table on page 13 to start with. Or that the report is already five years old.

[Aexodus]

Grotesco - a Swedish Satire\Humor group (governments are usually not in the habit to pay those that criticize their policies)

It was still government funded, doesn't matter if they're a humour group, of course this was a satire, that still represents encouragement to have a certain partner, there's nothing remotely wrong with an inter-racial couple, but it's when people start specifically presenting it as something especially 'cool' that it gets creepy.

You forgot this section from your linked report:

The findings of the impact of immigration on the relative wages of native workers should be complemented with the benefits that would arise from high-skilled immigrants. This type of immigrants could lead to technological change in Sweden and have a positive impact in the economic growth, fact that should also be considered when doing public policy.

How does the minuscule drop in wages for the 'natives' relate to the topic? Last I checked it was "Swedish statistics over sexual assaults revealed"
Never mind that the drop isn't really supported by the table on page 13 to start with. Or that the report is already five years old.

But that's not their overall conclusion, the overall data suggested that wages had dropped. It's not minuscule, 3% is 990 Krona from the average wage of 33,000. Page 13 is just one of many sources they had, it isn't the be all and end all. Higher economic growth =/= higher wages necessarily, and they only said there was a possibility for it. The concrete evidence still shows a drop in wages, as it almost always does when there's a bloated supply of labour in a country. And do you really think that the majority of people from the Middle East and central Africa are 'high-skilled immigrants'.

And no, 'natives' doesn't mean ethnic Swedes, it's not a Nazi survey guys

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

VI. Conclusions The analysis is based on skill groups which are defined in terms of educational attainment, workexperience, county and year. Immigrations had a large effect in the wages of workers with lessexperience in both educational groups. The evidence in this paper suggests that immigrationreduces the wage of native workers. Our estimates of the own factor elasticity vary from -0.06 to-0.08. These estimates imply that the influx of immigrant workers into the labor market hasworsened the opportunities of the native workers. Between 2001 and 2012, immigrationincreased the labor supply by 9.5%; our analysis implies that this immigrant influx reduced thewage of the native worker by 3.4%. The wage impact differed across education groups, withwage falling by 3.6% for post-secondary graduates and 3.3% for post graduates.
Although the analysis found a negative relationship between wages and immigration, the modelignored the long-run adjustment of capital as a consequence of immigration, it also assumed aCobb-Douglas production function and share of labor equal to 0.75 and perfect substitutabilitybetween immigrants and natives with the same education and experience. A more complexanalysis should take into account the interactions between capital and labor and not only assumethat capital is fixed. Relaxing the assumption of a Cobb-Douglas production function would havea different outcome; in the case of the model used the impact would be more negative. Finally,less than perfect substitutability between immigrants and natives in the same cell could beassumed to differentiate the skills from these two types of workers because experience andeducation acquired outside Sweden could have a different value for employers.



The findings of the impact of immigration on the relative wages of native workers should becomplemented with the benefits that would arise from high-skilled immigrants. This type ofimmigrants could lead to technological change in Sweden and have a positive impact in theeconomic growth, fact that should also be considered when doing public policy.

The point of showing that was that other detriments to Swedish society are also consistently ignored as being 'miniscule'

The girl at 1:07 in the Blanda Upp video was later murdered by an African immigrant.

[Gigantus]

It was still government funded [...]

I am sure you will provide a source for this statement, won't you?

The point of showing that was that other detriments to Swedish society are also consistently ignored as being 'miniscule'

You realize that's pretty lame, right? You countered a minuscule economic impact report from 2016 by providing an example of a wages impact from 2011, about the latter you said: 'It's not minuscule, 3% is[..].
Maybe make up your mind if the wages impact was minuscule or not, before making that claim?

[Aexodus]

I am sure you will provide a source for this statement, won't you?

SVT is the national broadcaster, funded by license fees.

You realize that's pretty lame, right? You countered a minuscule economic impact report from 2016 by providing an example of a wages impact from 2011, about the latter you said: 'It's not minuscule, 3% is[..].
Maybe make up your mind if the wages impact was minuscule or not, before making that claim?

That report made little to no mention of wages, so that depressive effect needed pointing out... Since when was a 3% pay cut miniscule? I never said that. The fact is that the current immigration levels are unprecedented, and the direct benefits to Swedish citizens regardless of race seem difficult to determine.

[Gigantus]

SVT is the national broadcaster, funded by license fees.

Valiant attempt. Airing something doesn't make it funded by the station, or by way of license fee, the government in this case.

Since when was a 3% pay cut miniscule? I never said that.

3% of anything is minuscule by definition. May I suggest to choose a different adjective (which however would negate your reasoning why you posted this in the first place)?

The fact is that the current immigration levels are unprecedented, and the direct benefits to Swedish citizens regardless of race seem difficult to determine.

Agreed on both counts.

[Love Mountain]

What concrete moral reason does Europe have to take these migrants more than anywhere else.

Minuscule? Why, why should the Swedish working-class have to take any depression in their wages at all as they now have to compete with a large influx of unskilled labour. https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/ge...FULLTEXT01.pdf

I think applying a Cobb-Douglas elasticity model in an attempt to predict possible effects of immigrant labor on the labor market is a mistake as there are far more factors that determine wages than labor supply. In United States, there is arguably full employment and a shortage of labor yet there is a stagnation (if not a deflation in real terms in some sectors) of wages regardless. I hesitate to take this article seriously as calculating wages by modeling a simple 3-4 layer preference bundle is... far too simplistic to say the least. This paper is meant to give a rough estimate. A result of ~3% would be prone to a margin of error, I'd argue a significant one as wages and labor elasticity are inherently hard to predict despite the relative wealth of data. These aren't financial instruments that behave in a relatively rational manner. In short, we can consider 3% to be essentially close to zero considering the issues with the accuracy of this paper. Essentially non-existent. In fact, as your next article you posted mentions, the root of the issue isn't really an expanding labor supply.

As you can see in the above, the depression affects the more highly educated less than those who aren't.

Why should Sweden have to change, and not the other way round https://www.economist.com/blogs/econ...st-explains-20

But it's easy for the cushioned middle classes in all western countries not to care about the damage their virtue signalling is causing, as these changes simply don't affect them as much.

Yet the system has long been in need of reform. Like much of Europe, Sweden has an ageing workforce. Decades of under-construction has sent house prices soaring in Stockholm and other cities. High wages leave many unskilled workers, both Swedish and foreign-born, on the fringes of the labour market.

The issue of unemployment, stagnant wages for lower skilled workers and such seem to stem not from an expansion of the labor supply, but from structural deficits in the Swedish economy. Not that any of this is a particular big deal. All economies have winners and losers, and the Swedish model helps out their "losers" far more than most countries. The immigrant inflows seem to have, as stated, minimal effects on exacerbating underlying phenomena, and as such if these things are a major concern for Swedes, they'd be better off addressing the structure of their welfare state rather than any border policy. This is aside from the fact that I really don't think Sweden is significantly economically impacted anyway and they can just keep going on the course they have been going. In my opinion, Sweden has a fantastic economy that gets a lot of benefits in these economic tradeoffs.

For the record, if you are genuinely more interested in the methodology and modeling they use, I would recommend an Intermediate Microeconomics textbook where the first half of the book typically goes over the methodology fairly well. Later chapters will go in to detail about the mechanics of Cobb-Douglas equations and models. These are particularly useful when we want to measure or model preferences for any "limited" resources and how these preferences change as the variables change. In short, it's a great way to model substitution effects. They are also used in various statistics for analysis as well. For this case however, I think relying on such methods to try to predict wages is crude. If this method is to be employed you need to isolate this study down to either municipalities, or cities at the very least.

[NosPortatArma]

The economic impact is minuscule. Even the worst critics would be hard pressed to make a substantial case for the economic impact.

the economic impact sweden's mass immigration of low skilled third worlders is not miniscule however. It is often said that we need these people, because our population is aging and these immigrants will pay for the pensions. This is false. half of them don't even work and instead drain welfare resources, and those that do work have so much lower wages (because of less education) that they pay very little in taxes. And this is true even though the immigrants are as a group younger than swedes, and thus have a larger % of able-bodied workers. The swedish system with generous benefits works because the average swede is highly productive, due to primarily to education. Our economy has very little demand for low skilled workers. One can make the case that sweden would benefit from immigration of skilled people, but this is not what sweden is doing right now. Most immigrants are asylum seekers and their relatives, which have much lower education. These people are not a benefit, but yet another burden, because they cost far more than they contribute, and these people will also grow old and need the same support which old native born people do.

there simply is no economic argument in favour of this kind of immigration. What we are doing is essentially charity, letting people from around the world have free access to our welfare regardless of how much they will contribute to it. the immigrants are simply not productive enough.

[NosPortatArma]

The issue of unemployment, stagnant wages for lower skilled workers and such seem to stem not from an expansion of the labor supply, but from structural deficits in the Swedish economy. Not that any of this is a particular big deal. All economies have winners and losers, and the Swedish model helps out their "losers" far more than most countries. The immigrant inflows seem to have, as stated, minimal effects on exacerbating underlying phenomena, and as such if these things are a major concern for Swedes, they'd be better off addressing the structure of their welfare state rather than any border policy. This is aside from the fact that I really don't think Sweden is significantly economically impacted anyway and they can just keep going on the course they have been going. In my opinion, Sweden has a fantastic economy that gets a lot of benefits in these economic tradeoffs.

The kind of immigration we have to sweden now -id est, large scale immigration of low skilled people- has been going on from about the 90's. Prior to that we had labour-immigration based on what our economy actually needed, and unsuprisingly immigration was actually beneficial. Yes, all economies have winners and losers. Problem is, Sweden is importing lots of new losers. There is no reason why we need to do this. It's not a structural "deficit" that we have a hard time getting jobs to all these low-skilled people: It's intentional. Sweden has a highly productive economy which can support very generous benefits. Yes, it's true that we could make these people more employable if we made structural changes, but that would mean we'd have to essentially dismantle our welfare system so that the cost of welfare matches the lowered tax income, because you simply cannot continue to have such generous benefits with a less productive economy. The consequence of that would be that Sweden would no longer be able to take care of their "losers" as well.

Now, some people might be perfectly okay with dismantling the world's (once) most sophisticated welfare system for the sake of making third worlders employable. I'm not, but it's fair to disagree. I just want people to be honest about the cost of large scale lowskill immigration. You can't keep the current welfare system AND have this kind of immigration. It's simply impossible. I'd rather save the welfare, thus I want to limit the immigration. People who want immigration must be honest and admit that it means the end of the current welfare system.

[Ziltoid]

It seems anything not portraying immigration and immigrants in positive light automatically becomes xenophobic to DaVince, that much ive noticed reading your posts. Perhaps you could start topic about positive aspects of 3rd world immigration, im sure there are lots of points to be made in their favour too. Especially in exotic food matters and for those who like smoking shisha.

Anyways i think economic/wages are slightly related in sense that its likely majority of these sexual assaulters have certainly not been in well paid job, likely one of the many muslim ghetto school dropouts or recent immigrants without education, so for them Swedish society has only menial work jobs to offer. Welfare policies are also related as its like honey pot to flies to poor uneducated people from 3rd world countries, which is why Sweden is such popular target for these people while they avoid countries that do not provide such. And while im generally supporter of scandinavian socialist welfare and equality system, it cannot really co-exist with uncontrolled migration and open borders simultaneously without eventually taxing the system with so many 3rd world freeloaders that it will collapse or have to be diminished to shadow of what it used to be. So you could say im basicly leaning left-socialist when it comes to welfare state and free education, leaning right when it comes to immigration policies, latter so that the first one can stay sustainable and survive. Currently still Sweden is in such economically good state (thanks to big companies like Volvo, Ericsson, H&M, IKEA) despite immigrants causing huge tax on the system, but if recession ever hits, i can foresee some really harsh riots and disorder in the society then as immigrants and 2nd gen immigrants will be the ones losing out the most, and their majority neighborhoods already are notorious for stoning authorities and burning cars.

[Aexodus]

3% of anything is minuscule by definition. May I suggest to choose a different adjective (which however would negate your reasoning why you posted this in the first place)?

Just wanted to say that hundreds of pounds, krona, euros or dollars is a large amount of money for someone to lose out on their salary, by any measure.

[hehehe]

The economic impact is minuscule. Even the worst critics would be hard pressed to make a substantial case for the economic impact.

Even your own link says that refugees are a net drain:

All told, it is estimated that refugees accounted for 5.6% of total public spending, a share not drastically out of line with their share of the population. However, they performed much worse than the rest of the population on the revenue side, where they contributed only an estimated 3.4% of total public revenue, essentially through direct and payroll taxes. The reason is clear: The employment rate among adult refugees was 20 percentage points lower than that among all adults.

[Copperknickers II]

My question would be, why is it any nation's responsibility on this earth to keep their borders open? Why is there some non-codified mandate that nation's have to respect some imagined freedom of movement. The irony is its very difficult for an American to immigrate to one of these Scandinavian countries that is interested in assimilating and respecting the laws of the country, but it's been made easy for people from impoverished, radically conservative war torn regions to enter.

There is a codified mandate, it's called the European Charter for Human Rights which has been ratified by all members of the Council of Europe iirc. It means that any migrant who arrives in an EU country has the right to apply for asylum, and EU countries have the legal responsibility to fairly consider their case and grant them residence as a refugee if they are found to have grounds for refugee status, as set out in the legal framework.

In practice, since the refugee crisis a lot of migrants have ended up staying in Europe illegally, or even legally in the case of the German amnesty. It's ironic that the US criticises Europe so much for this considering we are actually following the American model, since America is many many years ahead of the EU in terms of migrant flow: what happened in the EU this past few years has been happening for decades in the US, to the point where even a hard right-wing American president supports the 'Dreamers' legislation which is the type of mass amnesty which would be quite controversial even among the centre right in much of Europe. There have for decades been 'sanctuary cities' in the US which have literally refused to enforce federal law and tolerate vast populations of illegals living and working in their area on a scale that dwarfs anything happening in Europe. Latino migrants and their descendants make up something like 20% of the total US population, compared to non-Europeans who make up something like 7% of the EU population.

Ultimately it does all come down to border control. It's a moot point as to whether mass migration from third world countries is a good thing: personally I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing if managed correctly and I do think we have a responsibility to welcome refugees, but as long as our borders are totally porous there's little point arguing about it, it's not a matter of policy to accept hundreds of thousands of people into Europe or the USA but simply a reality that that is what has happened whether we like it or not, and will continue to happen until borders are tightened up.

[hellheaven1987]

There is a codified mandate, it's called the European Charter for Human Rights which has been ratified by all members of the Council of Europe iirc. It means that any migrant who arrives in an EU country has the right to apply for asylum, and EU countries have the legal responsibility to fairly consider their case and grant them residence as a refugee if they are found to have grounds for refugee status, as set out in the legal framework.

And unsurprisingly most refugees came from Middle East and Africa, so Italy and Greece become the two that have to handle most of asylum application and other EU members are too happy they don't need to pay a penny for it.

No wonder why Greek and Italian are pissed.