Europe Refugee Crisis

Equation said:

I agreed with your logic, but morally acts or doing good suppose to be money blind.

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Actually for a consequentialist, what is morally good is not just the act itself but consideration includes what the consequences of the act would bring into the equation. In other words, any moral actions are necessarily constrained. For example, if unconstrained actions in taking in refugees (no limit) ultimately results in breakdown of law and order or becomes a threat to the host nations, then it is questionable whether such actions on balance are doing good.

Scratch said:

Funnily (and worringly) enough, contrary to what is so often alleged here, a survey showed that the vast majority declares the regime of Assad as their main reasong for fleeing, not the IS.

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Do you have a source for this? Not that I don't trust you, but details matter, and I don't trust the "interpretation" of results by most western news organisations and prefer to make up my own mind from looking at the raw data, or a concise summary of it.

Jeff Head said:

I believe England has agreed to take some tens of thousands of refugees...but is insisting that they be children accompanied by single mothers, or orphaned children.

Simply too much risk in taking in hundreds of thousands of relatively young men, whom you cannot vet at all, from a war zone filled with militants.

Realistically...I cannot blame them.

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I can. If you want to fight you stay in Syria, where you get paid for it.

I thought Jeff was referring to England.

t2contra said:

I thought Jeff was referring to England.

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I think Delft is objecting to the stupid stereotyping and generalisations made by the British Government in treating all military age males as security threats.

If those men wanted to fight, they would have stayed in Syria, not trudge all the way to Europe.

I think that it is a frankly shocking and disgusting policy, that is, in the end, simply going to backfire.

The easiest way to make someone your enemy is to treat them as such.

Forcing families to choose between staying together and getting to safety is a cruel and unnecessary measure, that will only create resentment and hatred in both the men kept outside and the women and children allowed in.

As invariably will happen unfortunately, if a wife is assaulted, injured or even killed or just has an affair and ditches their original partner while in the UK, while the husband is kept out, or vice versa, who do you think the surviving parent and children are going to blame and hate?

The family unit, the wife, the children, they have a calming and moderating effect on hot blooded males. Take that away unnecessarily and you make all the men left behind far more susceptible to radicalisation.

I know normal human rules don't always apply to ISIS, but by and large, a terrorist is unlikely to drag his wife and children along on a suicide mission.

The security risk posed by men traveling with their families is very low, the harm, suffering and misery this policy is likely to cause is utterly disproportional to the security concerns.

I heard a woman on BBC who according to the reporter said that her husband had gone before to prepare but that he drowned between Turkey and Greece. Despite that she had taken her children and was then in Greece.
I won't comment.

Look guys, we are not going to get into the politics on one side or the other of this here on SD.

Each nation has a right to determine for itself what it thinks is or is not a security risk.

What one may call absurd, another may have very good reason for.

When you have tens of thousands of fighting age males coming into your country, and they are coming from a place where a horrible civil war is going on, and where the likes of ISIS and Al Queda have indicated that they are willing to infiltrate the refugees...and you have no way of vetting the ones coming into your country...well, then each nation has a right and a responsibility to determine what they are willing to accept.

Both ways.

The people making that determination are the elected officials, or those appointed by them.

If the people of a nation feel they are choosing wrong, then they have the opportunity to address it at their elections.

The UK has made a determination, and as I said, I cannot and will not blame them for it.

There have been studies where security professionals have estimated something that up to one in one hundred of the fighting age males could be infiltrators.

If you are bringing in 100,000 such individuals, then there is a chance you may be bringing in up to1,000 amongst them.

Heck, in a western society like the UK, Germany, the US, etc. even 100 such individuals (that's now one in a thousand)...if they came in and you did not know who they were...even 100 could cause untold mayhem.

So, nations make determinations based on what they are willing to risk.

I will not blame a nation whose elected individuals make such determinations based on what they believe is best for their nations. Germany has decided one way...which is their right. the UK has decided something different...which is their right.

As I say, if the people in those countries (or others) feel it is wrong, one way or the other, they can change things in their next election cycle.

It's how it works.

But we are not going to get into a political or cultural argument here about which is right. Or call them, or those that support them (on either side) absurd, stupid, foolish, or whatever else based on our own feelings in the matter. That will only lead to arguments, pointing fingers, etc., etc.

Brumby said:

Actually for a consequentialist, what is morally good is not just the act itself but consideration includes what the consequences of the act would bring into the equation. In other words, any moral actions are necessarily constrained. For example, if unconstrained actions in taking in refugees (no limit) ultimately results in breakdown of law and order or becomes a threat to the host nations, then it is questionable whether such actions on balance are doing good.

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That's more of a cautionary approach. What about if one takes away the consequences of the moral action regardless of the possible negative outcome?

Equation said:

That's more of a cautionary approach. What about if one takes away the consequences of the moral action regardless of the possible negative outcome?

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Actions will always have consequences. In our discussions the subject is about the moral nature of certain actions viz a viz the refugees and if we remove the moral nature as you suggest then we remove the subject matter itself. Any prescribe actions may be beneficial, detrimental, or neutral to the welfare of others relative to the refugees and is unavoidable. However a subset of the consequentialist theory is ethical egoism which some have taken on this forum that the consequences for the refugees are taken to matter more than any other result. Personally I don't agree with this view because such a position is taken as a consequence neutral observer. In other words it is a moral position grounded on air without having to deal with any fall out. A host country in extending help to the refugees is by grace and to refuse or limit is a right. It is no different from you and I in having to deal with uninvited guest to our homes.

taxiya said:

Just a question, in a much smaller scope, much closer to a person's life. How many of us are willing to give up part of their own yard, living room, bed room to a total stranger permanently?
Leave aside religion, politics, morals etc, just pure personal life and family interest.
A country/community is just a bigger sized family. Anyone has watched the movie "The Road" from 2009? Today's crisis is not the end of world like the movie, but people and countries are acting and thinking in the same way.

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This is a flawed analogy. A home is a personal, private space, a country is not. Space is not the issue here, culture is. The reluctance to accept refugees, or even immigrants for that matter, boils down to a fear of having to accept a different culture and a fear of economic competition with the newcomers.