Why do so many people move to the Falkland Islands? (2009)
zingar 2021-08-18 07:04:53 +0000 UTC [ - ]
That sounds like all British immigration rules. My employer had to apply for my visa and had to pay all my healthcare contributions for a year up front before I could move for a job in London. If I lose my job I have a few weeks to find a new employer (who will have to be willing to pay for a visa transfer) or I have to leave the country.
It's a bizarre system but it seems like this reporter doesn't know how normal it is. I doubt British people know how bizarre the policies that arose from their voting are either.
(Likewise for Europe and the US)
mellosouls 2021-08-18 10:07:22 +0000 UTC [ - ]
Barring exceptional circumstances, presumably the employer takes the decision to recruit externally for cost-cutting reasons; it's important then that the hidden costs of healthcare etc are not passed on to the tax payer.
pjc50 2021-08-18 10:19:21 +0000 UTC [ - ]
I'm guessing the prepaid contribution refers to the "NHS surcharge": https://www.freemovement.org.uk/what-is-the-immigration-heal...
(while Americans are probably going "hey that looks cheap at £624 a year compared to my insurance", note that it's not insurance and you still have to pay it if you have private cover)
harry8 2021-08-18 10:42:53 +0000 UTC [ - ]
I can earn $x here or $(x - y) to be in the uk. In the UK I get healthcare on the NHS. I move. I quit / am fired / co goes (creatively?) broke. And I keep the healthcare on the NHS and have time to start a family before deportation etc.
Think about large values of y or indeed kickbacks. Does the firm really want /me/? Or do they just want cash which they get by paying very low (or taking a fee from me) as I get an end run around the immigration system to get healthcare without making the contribution, queue jumping better qualified, harder working, more civic minded people with greater compassionate grounds for being accepted? As ever there's a continuum. "Clearly this person is legitimately... ...then the unexpected thing happened." ends up being harder and quite expensive to identify and enforce fairly and equitably with a public service doing so.
I say nothing of the UK's policy here or its implementation as I'm ignorant. Assuming entrepreneurs won't spring up to arbitrage any system hole they can is naive. Immigration is super-emotive at the best of times especially arbitrarily unfair treatment and those who feel like they're losing from it (rightly or wrongly).
That's the general case being made. Immigration policy is super hard and you kind of have to willfully fortify your compassion as well. More than 700 million people on this planet have no safe drinking water and would want to migrate to any wealthy country under almost any circumstance. Plenty are literally dying to do it. How can we not feel for them? Being compassionate reduces to deciding how many people your country can take easily, with effort, or the level in which society collapses. 700m immigrating in a year will probably achieve collapse.
"What then must we do?"
I haven't got a good answer or indeed a better one than fight corruption everywhere and anywhere under all circumstances.
pjc50 2021-08-18 11:06:20 +0000 UTC [ - ]
There is no queue.
I mean that: there is no requirement for cases to be processed in any kind of order, if at all, and nor is there a quota (except in the minds of Home Office managers).
> I get an end run around the immigration system to get healthcare
Hardly anyone does this, or at least there's no evidence of this. If you have money which you wish to trade for healthcare, there are usually better ways than bribing a firm to give you a fake job in the UK?
> Plenty are literally dying to do it.
See Afghanistan.
It was, allegedly, important enough to invade and spend billions on, as well as a number of Westerner lives; however, it is also a policy preference that these people die rather than reach the UK, which puts a rather hard upper bound on what they should have expected from us. This is being played out in real time as the UK decides how many of the people who the Taliban will execute as our collaborators it should allow to be rescued.
(asylum and the refugee system is technically separate from immigration in international law, but this is a distinction few people seem to care about. And this is also separate as nobody should realistically expect an Afghan translator for the British Army to find £650 to save their life)
I wonder how many Afghans we could safely relocate to the Falklands?
harry8 2021-08-18 11:22:47 +0000 UTC [ - ]
Any country that has a number of people who would like to immigrate of whom it will not accept all and will chose who to reject has a queue. How that queue is implemented, orderly, disorderly, corruptly, unjustly, ridiculously, incompetently or at various times all of the above. Some get in, some don't, it's a queue. It may not be a fantasy of an orderly queue where everyone is served in order in good time and without knowing about it, it does not surprise me to hear you say it is emphatically not that. Think of a priority queue if you must with priority being given by a random number generator tempered with both nonsense and corruption. You jump places in the queue by being designated higher priority. Have you jumped forward enough to be accepted and if not what can you do about it - this is the only question for those trying to get in.
Who are you taking vs who are you rejecting? That's if you're already in. You can't take everyone. The world is a nasty place and this is one of the emotional sharp edge of it. You will reject people whose stories break your heart. You don't get a choice about that.
pjc50 2021-08-18 11:36:45 +0000 UTC [ - ]
You cannot sensibly call this a "queue". No programmer would accept "random order" when they expected "in order".
Moreover, decisions are independent. The number of people already accepted is not a factor in individual immigration decisions! Someone else getting accepted cannot affect the outcome of your own decision.
> You will reject people whose stories break your heart. You don't get a choice about that.
Why? Who is "you" here? Who's holding a gun to "your" head? You absolutely do get a choice, and moreover if you reject someone who is subsequently killed in the way they warned you about then you, personally - the immigration agent responsible for the decision - are an accomplice in their death.
It's just that this is more apparent when it's the people clearing the runway for the last C130 out of Kabul at gunpoint than when someone's doing it with a pen.
ceejayoz 2021-08-18 14:15:23 +0000 UTC [ - ]
I see somebody never used the first iteration of AWS SQS.
harry8 2021-08-18 13:31:50 +0000 UTC [ - ]
>Why? Who is "you" here?
"You" is anyone putting themselves in the shoes of coming up with an immigration policy. Spare a thought for any decent human being who actually has to get their hands properly dirty and do it. I may not be a decent human because I think I would run from that opportunity without hesitation. I doubt I have the psychological strength to try for a least worse policy that will bring about misery. There is no stroke of my pen where I wouldn't be seeing millions of people dying any one of whom I could have saved with a different stroke. I'm not sure I can live with that. But I can't really absolve myself of the responsibility for what happens as a voting eligible person in a democracy. On that basis I have to at least consider what current policies are and competing ones that might be somehow a little less horrific. They will all be horrific on a personal level in people's lives. A large number of people.
There are 700 million people on this planet who do not have access to safe drinking water. One would think all of them would happily relocate to any wealthy country where their children have a better chance of a reasonable future. The number who would want to relocate to the UK is probably considerably north of that number as you don't have to be on the lowest rung on the ladder of this planet to see the wealth of the UK and think that's worth moving to. There are people with clean drinking water who are utterly desperate. Have any immigration policy at all - imagine your decree is law and implemented with resources and vigor. If the one decided on involves a scale of migration measured in hundreds of millions in a year societal collapse seems very likely. If one accepts that then one embraces the necessity of rejecting worthy people with heartbreaking stories. By the million.
Who to reject? How many to reject? There is no good answer in my opinion. What is your estimate of the number of people on the planet who will die if you reject them? Know they are being rejected. A tiny fraction of utterly desperate people on this planet will be accepted as immigrants in all the rich countries combined.
I say /nothing/ about Afghanistan and refugees. I say literally nothing because I don't know about it. I point out if the immigration policy arrived at is to take everyone from Afghanistan who wants to move and that policy works (hurrah!) and has manageable costs (again hurrah! and again I have no clue), it's not the end of it. There are literally hundreds of millions more people in dire straits for whom moving their family to any rich country would save them. It's f&^king horrible. Every bit as horrible as scenes being televised. This is not an argument I'm making for rejecting any refugees from any country including Afghanistan. As soon as anyone with any kind of heart starts looking at a rich countries immigration policy and its results it is heartbreaking and horrible with no good answers, only ones you hate and loathe slightly less than others. Again this is not an excuse for being as evil as possible or eschewing all compassion or anything of the sort.
"No more horrific than necessary" is a reasonable goal because immigration policy, any policy, whatever it is, will be horrific. It sucks.
pjc50 2021-08-18 15:26:36 +0000 UTC [ - ]
It is clear that there is high political prioritization of rejecting as many applications as possible, despite what the criteria actually say and whether the criteria are met. Once people manage to appeal to the real courts, rather than the politically controlled asylum process, most of the decisions are overturned. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/sep/03/inhumane-thr...
The number could be significantly increased by simply taking their own stated rules at face value rather than rejecting valid applications.
lmm 2021-08-18 13:29:21 +0000 UTC [ - ]
> I mean that: there is no requirement for cases to be processed in any kind of order, if at all, and nor is there a quota (except in the minds of Home Office managers).
That's an if-I-close-my-eyes-the-room-will-be-empty way of looking at it. There's a backlog of cases waiting to be processed and a finite processing capacity, so adding more applications is necessarily going to, on average, delay existing (legitimate) applications.
> Hardly anyone does this, or at least there's no evidence of this. If you have money which you wish to trade for healthcare, there are usually better ways than bribing a firm to give you a fake job in the UK?
If there's a loophole that lets someone get NHS healthcare for significantly less than the market price of equivalent healthcare, it seems absurd on its face to imagine that no-one in the world would want to exploit it. Most people are honourable, but there are enough desperate people, and frankly if were that easy then I wouldn't blame them for taking advantage of the system.
> See Afghanistan.
> It was, allegedly, important enough to invade and spend billions on, as well as a number of Westerner lives
Pure whataboutism.
ben_w 2021-08-18 11:36:34 +0000 UTC [ - ]
If they all go to the same destination, sure, but there’s no reason to even expect that collective behaviour and plenty of examples to doubt it (most people go short distances, e.g. 80% of the Syrian refugees went to the countries that share a land border with Syria).
Though I absolutely agree with the point that immigration is super-emotive even at the best of times, and likewise I don’t have a good answer to the troubles which cause a need for asylum (very separate in nature from other causes of migration but often blurred together politically) — best I’ve got is seeing that things are getting less bad, so more of what’s currently happening in aggregate is probably good even though we can clearly see specific examples of places and groups where that’s not good enough, like Afghanistan, Syria, Darfur, the Uyghurs, the Rohingya, and the Yazidi.
antihero 2021-08-18 11:33:08 +0000 UTC [ - ]
Though it is kind of dumb.
pjc50 2021-08-18 11:39:37 +0000 UTC [ - ]
(Obviously not, that's nonsense, but that's the conclusion that would follow from the false premise of predicating healthcare on length of payments. It's pensions that are dependent on payins of National Insurance.)
lmm 2021-08-18 07:15:42 +0000 UTC [ - ]
zerr 2021-08-18 11:20:51 +0000 UTC [ - ]
lmm 2021-08-18 13:48:48 +0000 UTC [ - ]
zerr 2021-08-18 14:54:19 +0000 UTC [ - ]
ben_w 2021-08-18 10:27:46 +0000 UTC [ - ]
> pay all my healthcare contributions for a year up front
Is fine by itself, at least assuming you then get a discount on the PAYE taxes that you’re essentially pre-paying here.
> If I lose my job I have a few weeks to find a new employer (who will have to be willing to pay for a visa transfer) or I have to leave the country.
Paying to transfer the visa seems a bit strange to me (though I’m conscious of my own naïveté), but otherwise this is also fine by itself.
Both together? Not so much.
Nursie 2021-08-18 11:03:24 +0000 UTC [ - ]
There's a bureaucracy to support, so fees for everything they do.
MichaelZuo 2021-08-18 13:41:08 +0000 UTC [ - ]
yodsanklai 2021-08-18 12:06:05 +0000 UTC [ - ]
> I doubt British people know how bizarre the policies that arose from their voting are either.
I assumed this actually was a consequence of their voting (seems in line with Brexit).
nicoburns 2021-08-18 13:28:49 +0000 UTC [ - ]
jollybean 2021-08-18 16:06:39 +0000 UTC [ - ]
Here's data showing national attitudes towards migrants [1], the UK has consistently one of, if not the most positive view in Europe towards migrants. It's always been a fairly pluralistic place relative to most places on the continent. The notion of reducing migration or having some control over it is fundamentally different that views of migrants themselves, much like there's a big distinction between regular migrants and undocumented migrants, which is sometimes conveniently ignored for political reasons.
The rules for migrants are varied in every country, they are similar on the Continent in many ways where they have their own bits of weirdness.
The Falkland Islands have a population of 3000, which is really, really small. Every 'small nation' especially the really tiny one's are going to have a really peculiar take on basically everything. There's either one person, or not even one person the kinds of jobs for which we take for granted.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2019/03/14/around-the-wor...
conductr 2021-08-18 15:35:44 +0000 UTC [ - ]
monkeynotes 2021-08-18 16:39:04 +0000 UTC [ - ]
elliekelly 2021-08-18 16:34:53 +0000 UTC [ - ]
[1]https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/06/lolas-s...
conductr 2021-08-19 16:15:47 +0000 UTC [ - ]
While true. What’s also interesting is “exploitative” is often through the modern western lens. It’s also a sliding scale where it is quite often seen as a good deal from labor’s perspective. In my previous example, the Filipino’s generally loved the arrangement. They got to travel and send a good deal of money home. It was a highly sought after position from their perspective. My experience is limited to about 10 days in the region and what I heard from American expats, but the hard labor forces also generally liked the arrangement. It offered opportunities that did not exist wherever they immigrated from. It was not without risks as no/low worker safety or OSHA concepts are in effect. Also just what we would consider fair labor practices, just didn’t exist. I’m sure slavery does exist as well because the opportunity is very present.
alibarber 2021-08-18 13:08:45 +0000 UTC [ - ]
I was surprised because unless I went to the immigration office to prove to them that I either had 'enough' (never really defined) money to support myself, or had a permanent employment contract - I would not have any state coverage for anything (health etc). The UK would of course not support my health care in a different country on a permanent basis. This was within the EU, so free movement and that - so I was indeed surprised, that other countries did something similar within the EU.
cataphract 2021-08-18 14:19:11 +0000 UTC [ - ]
> [...] Without prejudice to the dispositions in chapter VII, Union citizens or their family shall never be removed in the following circumstances:
> a) [...]
> b) When the Union citizens entered Portugal to seek employment and they prove that they continue to keep seeking employment.
Chapter VII only says people who joined to country to look for employment are not entitled to social security even after 3 months (which applies across the board).
And when I registered in the Netherlands I don't remember having to provide proof of employment too, though they might have had that information on file. In any case, it was not a permanent contract.
DoreenMichele 2021-08-18 07:23:02 +0000 UTC [ - ]
If you don't have to pass through a military base to get somewhere, there is a bit of wiggle room. You are supposed to do X, Y or Z but there end up being some exceptions.
In this case, the military base has a stranglehold on entry so you aren't likely to see folks bending the rules a tad.
aww_dang 2021-08-18 08:58:00 +0000 UTC [ - ]
DoreenMichele 2021-08-18 14:24:07 +0000 UTC [ - ]
Much easier if you have a land border for illegal immigrants to wander in, as the US can attest to with it's ridiculous scheme to "build a wall" to resolve the issue.
Symbiote 2021-08-18 13:25:01 +0000 UTC [ - ]
meowtimemania 2021-08-18 07:42:33 +0000 UTC [ - ]
MomoXenosaga 2021-08-18 09:58:53 +0000 UTC [ - ]
neither_color 2021-08-18 13:13:12 +0000 UTC [ - ]
Speaking of bizarre, why are there zero barriers for a Finnish person to move to Portugal, but major barriers for a Brazilian, culturally more proximate due Portuguese colonialism to do the same? Why are there zero barriers for a Greek or Estonian to live and work in Spain but tough immigration rules for the spawn of their 15+ latin american colonies, who speak the same language and have the same religion?
FooBarBizBazz 2021-08-18 14:02:20 +0000 UTC [ - ]
Asian countries are also notoriously hard to get citizenship in.
> Why are there zero barriers for a Greek or Estonian to live and work in Spain but tough immigration rules for the spawn of their 15+ latin american colonies, who speak the same language and have the same religion?
Could be worth exploring for Spain and Portugal.
There's a "transitive property" issue, however. It'd be hard to do this without, effectively, adding the former Spanish and Portuguese empires to the EU.
This would also run into the Monroe Doctrine, if you carried it far enough.
But it is an interesting idea.
BurningFrog 2021-08-18 13:55:44 +0000 UTC [ - ]
Insurance works when a large group of people pay premiums to protect against some condition that has not happened yet. If you could sign up for a fire insurance once your house is burning, the system would collapse.
For similar reasons, modern states need to keep poor people out since, on average, they will be a large net burden on their welfare systems.
ciceryadam 2021-08-18 15:26:24 +0000 UTC [ - ]
Out of these 11% only a third were from EU (including Great Britain), 6.5% of the foreign nationals were from Latin America, taking 5 out of the 15 countries from which most Immigrants come from, and the biggest year to year increase in immigration is from Venezuela (39.8%), Colombia (31.3%) and Honduras (29.4%).
noiwillnot 2021-08-18 16:27:11 +0000 UTC [ - ]
wodenokoto 2021-08-18 10:05:31 +0000 UTC [ - ]
barry-cotter 2021-08-18 10:39:53 +0000 UTC [ - ]
throw0101a 2021-08-18 11:22:48 +0000 UTC [ - ]
If you are not aware, then you haven't looked very hard:
> Subsection 3(2) of the Citizenship Act states that Canadian citizenship by birth in Canada – including Canadian airspace and territorial waters – is granted to a child born in Canada even if neither parent was a Canadian citizen or permanent resident except if either parent was a diplomat, in service to a diplomat, or employed by an international agency of equal status to a diplomat. However, if neither parent was a diplomat, the nationality or immigration status of the parents do not matter.[28]
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jus_soli#Continental_North_Ame...
Hallucinaut 2021-08-18 20:46:51 +0000 UTC [ - ]
yardie 2021-08-18 10:50:19 +0000 UTC [ - ]
lizknope 2021-08-18 23:42:32 +0000 UTC [ - ]
xjlin0 2021-08-18 16:12:30 +0000 UTC [ - ]
dangerbird2 2021-08-18 16:23:21 +0000 UTC [ - ]
lizknope 2021-08-18 11:45:43 +0000 UTC [ - ]
Zababa 2021-08-18 10:11:58 +0000 UTC [ - ]
Ichthypresbyter 2021-08-18 10:27:31 +0000 UTC [ - ]
Children born in France only get French citizenship from birth if at least one parent either is a French citizen or was born in France. Otherwise, there are various processes for them to acquire citizenship later in life if they spend enough of their childhood in France.
In contrast, almost any child born in the US, regardless of the nationality or immigration status of the parents, is a citizen automatically from birth. The only exceptions are children of foreign diplomats and (hypothetically) children of members of an invading army. Even if the parents are visiting as tourists and the child leaves two weeks after birth and never returns, it's still a citizen.
British law is somewhere in between the two- a child born in the UK is a citizen if at least one parent has "settled status" (in other words is a citizen, permanent resident, or otherwise has an unrestricted right to live in the UK).
bbarnett 2021-08-18 12:41:40 +0000 UTC [ - ]
Imagine being a sperm donor, but in dozens of countries.
Now your progeny will have a large range of citizenship, and locations, from which they may thrive during disaster.
Better than sailors and ports, for one can travel, experience sunny and interesting destinations, make a deposit, and... success!
I see a new startup, which combines cruise ships and pre-arranged donation instructions / locations.
Looking for a co-founder...
FooBarBizBazz 2021-08-18 14:19:38 +0000 UTC [ - ]
Though, if the goal is to maximize the donor's entertainment, I don't see why we're using artificial insemination.
...
Have you ever seen a stud bull get shipped to a farm?
...
I feel this could end very badly. Like,
Form AirBnB.
...many years later...
All real estate is unaffordable.
Like, there'd be throngs of George Clooneys and Barack Obamas with weird recessive diseases.
And a bizarre fan-club in China of Vladimir Putin babymommas.
...
Didn't Stephen Colbert have a product like this? (I swear, if it had been real, some people would have bought and used it.)
...
We'd recreate that unexplained prehistoric situation, preserved in the genetic record, where a population bottleneck shows up only on the Y chromosome.
sidewndr46 2021-08-18 14:22:45 +0000 UTC [ - ]
triceratops 2021-08-18 17:06:51 +0000 UTC [ - ]
nbevans 2021-08-18 07:46:21 +0000 UTC [ - ]
arcticbull 2021-08-18 06:48:01 +0000 UTC [ - ]
chrisseaton 2021-08-18 09:38:07 +0000 UTC [ - ]
ShroudedNight 2021-08-18 10:54:04 +0000 UTC [ - ]
Exploring this rabbit hole evoked vague memories of Canadians holding British passports until around the time my parents were born.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Canadian_nationalit...
ceejayoz 2021-08-18 14:17:30 +0000 UTC [ - ]
arcticbull 2021-08-18 16:59:56 +0000 UTC [ - ]
BoxOfRain 2021-08-18 10:30:42 +0000 UTC [ - ]
arcticbull 2021-08-18 17:01:17 +0000 UTC [ - ]
AlbertCory 2021-08-18 05:22:35 +0000 UTC [ - ]
Never saw it. But Wellington, NZ has an accurate copy of the House of Commons for its own Parliament, so at least I saw that.
secondcoming 2021-08-18 09:58:55 +0000 UTC [ - ]
Maybe that was the case back then but, last I looked, these days you need to write to your local MP to get you on the entry list.
emmanueloga_ 2021-08-18 08:43:21 +0000 UTC [ - ]
chronolitus 2021-08-18 10:23:20 +0000 UTC [ - ]
emmanueloga_ 2021-08-18 20:17:25 +0000 UTC [ - ]
I may have, to be honest.
> Does the discussion have to take a form of geopolitical virtue signalling [...]
It may be virtue signaling for you, but if you were from Argentina you would know that war is still an open wound, that it happened during a de-facto government and that it was one of many atrocities that happened during that period.
dang 2021-08-19 06:01:54 +0000 UTC [ - ]
You'd probably explain that the war looked very different from the other side, and give them information that helped them understand your point of view. You wouldn't overinterpret someone's simple comment about a trip they'd made as if it were some sort of political provocation. AlbertCory wasn't comparing his vacation anecdote with war deaths in any way.
If you had included the context you gave here ("if you were from Argentina you would know that war is still an open wound, that it happened during a de-facto government and that it was one of many atrocities that happened during that period") in your original reply, that already would have been enough to bridge the gap and create understanding. I think everyone here would benefit from learning more about the Argentinian experience.
dang 2021-08-18 09:33:43 +0000 UTC [ - ]
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
With a comment like the GP, it's actually the upvotes that cause the greater problem (unintentionally), because being at the top of a thread puts a spotlight on a post which brings out things that people otherwise wouldn't notice, or at least wouldn't attack them for.
AlbertCory 2021-08-18 22:24:31 +0000 UTC [ - ]
At the time I sent it, there was only one other comment on this post, and I didn't expect to see many more.
And no, no apologies will be forthcoming.
disabled 2021-08-18 04:56:07 +0000 UTC [ - ]
sbacic 2021-08-18 05:51:26 +0000 UTC [ - ]
moonchrome 2021-08-18 06:21:14 +0000 UTC [ - ]
Late spring and early autumn are still gorgeous.
If you rent a boat it can be a bit better, but even then it's a hassle with marinas, etc. Just avoid the peak months IMO.
sbacic 2021-08-18 07:12:53 +0000 UTC [ - ]
We did this as well. There were a lot less cars and a lot more children back then. Now it's the opposite.
I think that at some point we'll wake up to the cultural and environmental devastation we've wrought and do something about it. Hopefully it won't be too late by then.
MomoXenosaga 2021-08-18 10:05:33 +0000 UTC [ - ]
If you think things are bad now look at Serbia: sold to China because nobody in the EU cares.
randomopining 2021-08-18 13:22:24 +0000 UTC [ - ]
MomoXenosaga 2021-08-18 14:10:53 +0000 UTC [ - ]
randomopining 2021-08-18 15:33:06 +0000 UTC [ - ]
ceilingcorner 2021-08-18 06:17:29 +0000 UTC [ - ]
phillc73 2021-08-18 06:39:13 +0000 UTC [ - ]
I’m writing this from a small 20 tent only campsite on a Croatian island. Access is only by ferry. Facilities are limited (no large supermarkets for example). It’s our third summer here and while there have been some changes, it is very slow.
Taking a boat out for a day or two also allows for exploration of other, more remote islands. Some bays still aren’t over crowded with boats anchoring for the day.
Also, later in August and early in the week are quieter times. Yesterday, I was the only person swimming at a nice sandy beach at 14:00.
randomopining 2021-08-18 13:39:49 +0000 UTC [ - ]
phillc73 2021-08-18 15:04:36 +0000 UTC [ - ]
randomopining 2021-08-18 15:32:16 +0000 UTC [ - ]
phillc73 2021-08-18 17:16:19 +0000 UTC [ - ]
saiya-jin 2021-08-18 06:30:05 +0000 UTC [ - ]
moonchrome 2021-08-18 06:34:50 +0000 UTC [ - ]
Greece is unique in it's own way - but it's the OG tourist trap in the area.
Coast of Italy isn't really comparable on the Adriatc side (haven't been to Sicily so can't really compare)
input_sh 2021-08-18 07:18:32 +0000 UTC [ - ]
Communicating with locals over 30 is a bit challenging unless you know Albanian or Italian (I know, I was surprised too), but it's worth it for the pretty, not overcrowded beaches.
asdff 2021-08-18 16:59:28 +0000 UTC [ - ]
ceilingcorner 2021-08-18 06:38:26 +0000 UTC [ - ]
And Montenegro is 100x more overdeveloped and touristy. I’m not sure where exactly you are referring to.
kebman 2021-08-18 07:18:45 +0000 UTC [ - ]
moonchrome 2021-08-18 16:37:44 +0000 UTC [ - ]
Working as a small business freelancer (<1M Euro income/year) gets you around 70% net income (this is with healthcare and minimal retirement plan payments and without accounting and doing stuff like justifying expenses etc. which drives that much further with VAT returns). Public healthcare is inconsistent at best, but there is a healthy industry of medical tourism built for western Europeans that's easily affordable on a normal freelancer income. Likewise private childcare, schools, etc. all available and affordable. And all those beautiful places are still around and nice other 10 months a year. You can easily afford multiple properties and a comfortable lifestyle.
I spent a decent amount of time into looking for alternative places I could live in EU but really nothing looks that interesting, Spain looked attractive until I saw the taxes (and their public system is not worth that kind of money), western Europe is expensive and I would get very minimal increase in income by moving there (programming is not well paid) so I can realistically have a better standard of living here.
sbacic 2021-08-18 07:32:16 +0000 UTC [ - ]
I very much doubt it - one of the reasons we are in this mess is some 80+ years of human capital devastation - we have nowhere to draw experts or leaders from anymore.
asdff 2021-08-18 16:56:03 +0000 UTC [ - ]
sbacic 2021-08-18 19:32:56 +0000 UTC [ - ]
asdff 2021-08-18 21:10:08 +0000 UTC [ - ]
kebman 2021-08-18 07:40:26 +0000 UTC [ - ]
sbacic 2021-08-18 10:01:47 +0000 UTC [ - ]
I'm afraid we're talking into a societal, environmental and cultural catastrophe and that nothing will change until it's too late.
jokethrowaway 2021-08-18 08:08:19 +0000 UTC [ - ]
You need rich foreign expats, tired of paying 50% of their salaries in exchange for run down cities and homelessness, creating value in the country.
If tourism is your only strategy you won't go far.
mschuster91 2021-08-18 09:57:00 +0000 UTC [ - ]
Half-Croat here. What you propose would destroy what is left of the country. Public services are already shoddy as it is because Croatia doesn't have much economy outside of tourism, agriculture and a bit of heavy industry. The best and young minds have been leaving the country for well over half a century.
jokethrowaway 2021-08-18 13:48:19 +0000 UTC [ - ]
If conditions were more fiscally favourable, if there were better private schools, an english speaking expat community, I'd definitely move there.
I think Montenegro is doing pretty good in that regard. Taxation is straightforward and reasonable. That attracted private capital. Good private schools started popping out, the Tivat marina was built. It's also the first country to be in line to join the EU - which is not something I consider positive, but it's certainly a sign of the quality of the country.
Sadly Croatia is still not there and, frankly, I doubt it's going to get there anytime soon. Croatia is like a poorer version of countries in the EU: high and complex taxes, which get converted into mediocre services after passing through an inefficient government. The only difference is that European countries are richer and therefore the services are marginally better, even if they're getting worse and worse over time.
I understand my anarchist solution can be seen as radical and it's not going to happen, but even moving in that direction would be helpful.
higeorge13 2021-08-18 07:25:19 +0000 UTC [ - ]
randomopining 2021-08-18 13:42:45 +0000 UTC [ - ]
asdff 2021-08-18 17:06:29 +0000 UTC [ - ]
quadrifoliate 2021-08-18 14:16:49 +0000 UTC [ - ]
I agree that having a rush of tourists in a country not accustomed to them can cause problems for both the tourists and the locals that resent the sudden influx.
moonchrome 2021-08-18 16:23:14 +0000 UTC [ - ]
While I complain about it being overcrowded during peak tourist season that's just me reminiscing about the time that I grew up which was during and shortly after the civil war (naturally not a lot of tourism back then and it took years to recover). Any popular tourist place in Europe I've been to has been similar, eg. Dubrovnik is super popular and overcrowded - but so is Venice for example (if not worse).
ceilingcorner 2021-08-18 06:18:20 +0000 UTC [ - ]
PostThisTooFast 2021-08-18 07:36:06 +0000 UTC [ - ]
I don't know anyone who's moved there.
Why don't we ask Israel why they're "settling" land that isn't theirs?
Santosh83 2021-08-18 06:50:44 +0000 UTC [ - ]
There is no great mystery here. What is interesting is how this behaviour from the Western nations is tacitly ignored but somehow China asserting its claim over HK or Taiwan becomes a matter for international outrage. The outrage would be more real if Britain handed over Falkland to Argentina and then they would have better moral authority to ask China to desist from expansionism.
hef19898 2021-08-18 07:37:47 +0000 UTC [ - ]
Nursie 2021-08-18 11:04:59 +0000 UTC [ - ]
The last referendum was in 2013, AFAICT, and gave a 99.8% pro-British result, on a 92% turnout. Seems pretty definitive to me.
Huffers2 2021-08-18 09:44:08 +0000 UTC [ - ]
Keysh 2021-08-18 09:50:56 +0000 UTC [ - ]
A better way to think about this is to consider the case of Saint Pierre et Miquelon, which are two islands off the coast of Canada -- literally 19 km away, and so much closer than the Falklands are to Argentina. They are French territory, inhabited by French citizens. And (aside from occasional disagreements about who gets to explore for undersea resources in the vicinity of the islands) Canada really doesn't seem to have a problem with this, because (in this area, at least) Canada is a more mature nation than Argentina.
BoxOfRain 2021-08-18 11:16:22 +0000 UTC [ - ]
hef19898 2021-08-18 11:33:24 +0000 UTC [ - ]
acjohnson55 2021-08-18 13:00:07 +0000 UTC [ - ]
Gupie 2021-08-18 13:46:29 +0000 UTC [ - ]
Neil44 2021-08-18 09:47:49 +0000 UTC [ - ]
Huffers2 2021-08-18 15:13:23 +0000 UTC [ - ]
Ensorceled 2021-08-18 10:13:45 +0000 UTC [ - ]
How does that work? Is it some kind of algorithm? Does the USA have the right to own Canada?
00deadbeef 2021-08-18 09:51:31 +0000 UTC [ - ]
Macha 2021-08-18 12:01:30 +0000 UTC [ - ]
hef19898 2021-08-18 12:31:44 +0000 UTC [ - ]
valarauko 2021-08-18 14:35:43 +0000 UTC [ - ]
https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/coxtsv/countries_i...
Of course, there's some hand waving here - micronations are dropped, Mercator projection, etc
bruce511 2021-08-18 10:05:39 +0000 UTC [ - ]
And where does it end? New Zealand belongs to Australia? Hawaii belongs to Mexico?
In short "proximity" is not how island ownership works.
acallaghan 2021-08-18 14:19:53 +0000 UTC [ - ]
LAC-Tech 2021-08-18 07:19:09 +0000 UTC [ - ]
The vast majority of people in Taiwan do not want to be a part of the PRC. The vast majority of people in the Falklands want to remain a British Overseas Territory.
powerapple 2021-08-18 07:32:28 +0000 UTC [ - ]
hef19898 2021-08-18 07:41:07 +0000 UTC [ - ]
arcticbull 2021-08-18 07:34:35 +0000 UTC [ - ]
The challenge is in a very real way the PRC is interested in replaying the colonial era, taking over Taiwan and exerting iron-fisted control over Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Macau.
wonnage 2021-08-18 07:42:32 +0000 UTC [ - ]
arcticbull 2021-08-18 07:47:00 +0000 UTC [ - ]
IMO they're closer to the people of St. Pierre and Miquelon than they are to Shanghai. [1] The people of Hong Kong were British Citizens until 1997, and the citizens of Macau, Portuguese citizens until 1999 (it's a little more complicated there, it's ~1981-1999, depending). Just as the Miquelonians are French citizens - not British, not Canadian and not American.
A tiny island, in North America, that retains its allegiance to France and uses the Euro. Even flights to Paris are limited, to say the least.
powerapple 2021-08-18 07:58:54 +0000 UTC [ - ]
As in Sri Lanka or Bangladesh, British still owns properties legally from colonial age, and they are able to extract wealth legally. They have papers, documents and everything. Does legal papers make it right?
arcticbull 2021-08-18 08:13:59 +0000 UTC [ - ]
(2) "When returning to China, citizens are given a choice to take whichever passport they choose." - Unfortunately they were not. You could register as a BN(O), a British National (Overseas) which conveyed no right of abode anywhere on Earth - not in the UK, not in the EU - but when combined with an HKID offered you one complete 'passport.' Valid for permanent residency in Hong Kong plus consular protection of the British when traveling abroad that the PRC has chosen not to respect. Or you could be a Hong Kong (SAR) Citizen if the PRC would take you, which roughly required you to be ethnically Chinese. BN(O) registration has been closed for years I believe.
I think Macau followed a similar model, with SAR passports, but I'm not 100% sure.
(3) "To fix a colonial problem, you need to have the power to confront them, British left Hong Kong, and Portuguese left Macau not because those details, because they couldn't hold on to it." - Do you think the French could defend St Pierre and Miequelon? From America? I agree that Portugal could not defend Macau and the UK could not defend Hong Kong but that’s not really all there is to it - see Taiwan.
hef19898 2021-08-18 11:49:05 +0000 UTC [ - ]
lmm 2021-08-18 07:47:54 +0000 UTC [ - ]
nradov 2021-08-18 14:08:15 +0000 UTC [ - ]
lmm 2021-08-19 04:18:35 +0000 UTC [ - ]
Going to war with the seceding states over their endemic human rights abuses is more arguable. Personally I despise the holier-than-thou attitude of so many northern states, who had tolerated those same human rights abuses for centuries and then suddenly decided that they were utterly unconscionable, coincidentally just after the northern economy became able to manage without them. But maybe that's ultimately how moral progress gets made.
ceejayoz 2021-08-18 14:23:22 +0000 UTC [ - ]
powerapple 2021-08-18 07:50:57 +0000 UTC [ - ]
I don't like to predict, but I have to say a war will happen. Ever since PRC was founded, unifying China is part of its mission. There was a hope for a peaceful unification of some sort, it is long gone now. It is the reality now.
Anon4Now 2021-08-18 07:45:50 +0000 UTC [ - ]
Anyway, I dislike analogies for political discourse because they over simplify the issues at hand.
hef19898 2021-08-18 07:51:34 +0000 UTC [ - ]
hef19898 2021-08-18 11:28:40 +0000 UTC [ - ]
hong_kong 2021-08-18 13:55:40 +0000 UTC [ - ]
whoaisme 2021-08-18 07:45:55 +0000 UTC [ - ]
BoxOfRain 2021-08-18 11:08:20 +0000 UTC [ - ]
Invading was a footgun of international proportions, once Argentina forcefully occupied British territory any hope of a diplomatic solution (which may well have happened) went directly down the toilet because it turned the Falklands from an inconvenience to Britain into a military matter no country could simply shy away from without an enormous loss of prestige. Nobody loses prestige by selling some neglected islands to another country, but having them forcefully taken in a war of aggression is another matter entirely and could have invited no other reponse. It also turned a place that was more or less ignored by Westminster into a place that would be very, very difficult to invade again because of the increased military presence in the region.
Nobody who's remotely literate denies the British Empire did many terrible things in its history, but in this specific case for once it actually wasn't in the wrong. The Falklands never had a native population to oppress or enslave, they simply had a small series of competing European colonists who in my 21st century eyes never seemed that committed to the place to begin with. I realise there's a lot of arguments around whose claim from the 19th century is most legitimate, but the fact of the matter is that the people who actually live there now have zero interest in becoming Argentinian and unlike the imperial powers of yore we actually tend to believe in self-determination these days.
carnitine 2021-08-18 07:31:52 +0000 UTC [ - ]
fiftyacorn 2021-08-18 09:59:08 +0000 UTC [ - ]
hef19898 2021-08-18 10:13:58 +0000 UTC [ - ]
That would be like basing territorial claims everywhere based on borders from 200 years ago. Or worse, picking the borders from a period that suits best. And we are talking about the Spanish Empire here, not modern day independent Argentina.
fiftyacorn 2021-08-18 10:58:52 +0000 UTC [ - ]
dragonwriter 2021-08-18 11:05:42 +0000 UTC [ - ]
Aside from specific agreements between states, there wasn't really international law at the time.
hef19898 2021-08-18 11:10:04 +0000 UTC [ - ]
scyzoryk_xyz 2021-08-18 06:54:58 +0000 UTC [ - ]
arcticbull 2021-08-18 07:10:48 +0000 UTC [ - ]
KingOfCoders 2021-08-18 07:15:36 +0000 UTC [ - ]
arcticbull 2021-08-18 07:21:15 +0000 UTC [ - ]
It's interesting, such far-flung territories with limited resources, limited space and limited connections seem to be positioned to benefit the most from the largesse of a parent nation. Especially with European powers eager to distance themselves from their colonial past and ready to give their dependent territories maximum latitutde.
[1] https://theculturetrip.com/pacific/wallis-futuna/articles/fr...
[2] https://www.vinci-construction-projets.com/en/realisations/n...
wwtrv 2021-08-18 07:32:28 +0000 UTC [ - ]
KingOfCoders 2021-08-18 08:48:35 +0000 UTC [ - ]
hef19898 2021-08-18 10:16:53 +0000 UTC [ - ]
smcl 2021-08-18 07:27:27 +0000 UTC [ - ]
eitland 2021-08-18 06:57:07 +0000 UTC [ - ]
Britain has already given up Hong Kong, i.e. (edit-->) according to how I understand you(<--edit) done the right thing there.
The problem with China is they have broken the agreement on how they should rule Hong Kong during the first 50 years, isn't it?
arcticbull 2021-08-18 06:59:03 +0000 UTC [ - ]
The really interesting one is Macau, which was Portuguese for almost 450 years - from 1557, but was ceded to China in 1999. So, for long before the United States even existed. It's a lot like ceding Roanoke colony to the UK in 1999. But worse, since they don't even speak the same language (Cantonese/Traditional and Portuguese vs. Mandarin).
[edit] But yes, the next wrong was that the CCP broke their agreement regarding the autonomy of their Special Administrative Regions and the effective dissolution of the "One Country, Two Systems" model.
dongping 2021-08-18 08:23:41 +0000 UTC [ - ]
This is plainly wrong. The population distribution of Cantonese speakers shows that Hong Kong is only a small part of the Cantonese speaking region. [1]
And although the situation apparently has changed, at 1997, 40 percent of Hong Kong people identified themselves as "Hong Konger and Chinese", together with the 20 percent identifying themselves solely as Chinese, makes up the majority. [2] I would think that at 1997, there were far less than 60 percent of Californian consider themselves as Spaniard at all.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantonese#/media/File:Ping_and...
[2] https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2019/08/26/almost-n...
sampo 2021-08-18 13:58:08 +0000 UTC [ - ]
dongping 2021-08-18 09:07:43 +0000 UTC [ - ]
The data from a 2001 census shows that 94.9% of the population was ethnic Chinese. This ethnic classification may give you a different perspective, as this is not influenced by different political views.
https://www.censtatd.gov.hk/en/EIndexbySubject.html?pcode=D5...
hong_kong 2021-08-18 13:59:26 +0000 UTC [ - ]
heavenlyblue 2021-08-18 11:04:22 +0000 UTC [ - ]
scbrg 2021-08-18 12:15:40 +0000 UTC [ - ]
wonnage 2021-08-18 07:45:49 +0000 UTC [ - ]
arcticbull 2021-08-18 07:56:03 +0000 UTC [ - ]
At that point I suspect there'd be quite a lot of resistance to breaking them away from the mainland too.
hkthrowaway88 2021-08-18 07:48:12 +0000 UTC [ - ]
Neil44 2021-08-18 07:59:58 +0000 UTC [ - ]
aww_dang 2021-08-18 08:55:30 +0000 UTC [ - ]
If there's a common thread here, it might be the use of an external crisis by the Argentine gov to deflect from domestic problems. Of course that depends on your perception of the CCP. Some regard the CCP's governance as non-problematic and wouldn't agree.
The whole thing seems off-topic.
JoeAltmaier 2021-08-18 12:00:55 +0000 UTC [ - ]
My young friend went on contract for a year, doing fishery research. After a few months they said "We aren't going to pay you any more. You can't leave because the boat won't come back until {whenever}. And if you say anything, we won't give you the recommendation you need as a young researcher doing a PhD."
She had to stay for months working for nothing. It's slavery, and they know it, and that's how it works.
Don't go.
AlbertCory 2021-08-18 15:38:58 +0000 UTC [ - ]
The horror stories of things they endure would fill hundreds of volumes. One told me another prof just stole her dissertation topic, and she lost two years. Innumerable others get caught in academic politics because another prof doesn't like theirs.
As many people say below, being a whistleblower brings a heavy personal cost, and no one should say "you should publicize this" without being aware of that.
BurningFrog 2021-08-18 13:44:15 +0000 UTC [ - ]
skrtskrt 2021-08-18 17:01:14 +0000 UTC [ - ]
The ratio of people that can make a living doing research to people that are entering PhD programs is way, way off, which naturally produces a zero-sum hypercompetition "market" among PhD students that can only end in "success" by people able and willing to work crazy hard for no money for years on end - aka the already-rich, the desperate true believers, the delusional, or some combination of those three.
To make things worse, all the money in universities is being sucked up by the explosion of the self-licking ice cream cone of middle management catering to the "student experience" or whatever else.
Look up the absolute explosion of management salaries in universities in the last 20 years.
cookieswumchorr 2021-08-18 12:27:12 +0000 UTC [ - ]
JoeAltmaier 2021-08-18 12:56:38 +0000 UTC [ - ]
gruez 2021-08-18 13:39:37 +0000 UTC [ - ]
dasudasu 2021-08-18 13:15:18 +0000 UTC [ - ]
Kluny 2021-08-18 16:30:31 +0000 UTC [ - ]
JoeAltmaier 2021-08-18 18:22:53 +0000 UTC [ - ]
Workaccount2 2021-08-18 14:11:50 +0000 UTC [ - ]
midev 2021-08-18 15:11:08 +0000 UTC [ - ]
That's criminal, and it's worrying you're justifying it under an account named "Workaccount2"
ctvo 2021-08-18 14:31:37 +0000 UTC [ - ]
2021-08-18 12:31:33 +0000 UTC [ - ]
aww_dang 2021-08-18 12:23:33 +0000 UTC [ - ]
bbarnett 2021-08-18 12:29:36 +0000 UTC [ - ]
And after their hold on her was over, she should have screamed to the hills.
While I get the reluctance, at the same time, not yelling about it means others get burned.
That's just plain wrong.
pessimizer 2021-08-18 14:11:11 +0000 UTC [ - ]
I recommend against it in almost all cases for people I care about, because people have this natural infatuation for victims that is obviously prurient (whether it's love, reverence, hate, or even disgust) and you yourself are going to end up the center of the storm.
If they decide to do it anyway because they're better people than me. I try to make sure they don't do it stupidly, and work with them on a careful plan that minimizes their personal danger and has the best chance of succeeding.
nradov 2021-08-18 19:03:26 +0000 UTC [ - ]
https://stratiskas.com/closecalls/
JoeAltmaier 2021-08-18 12:57:59 +0000 UTC [ - ]
A PhD student is hostage against the system.
gnopgnip 2021-08-18 16:21:51 +0000 UTC [ - ]
bbarnett 2021-08-18 13:23:53 +0000 UTC [ - ]
Sounds like she should wait until after she gets her phd, then scream. And, while leveling accusations at the professor too.
He's as guilty as they are.
HappySweeney 2021-08-18 13:36:27 +0000 UTC [ - ]
2021-08-18 14:09:51 +0000 UTC [ - ]
bbarnett 2021-08-18 13:27:06 +0000 UTC [ - ]
Don't let time, let scum win.
JoeAltmaier 2021-08-18 13:54:49 +0000 UTC [ - ]
2021-08-19 10:14:29 +0000 UTC [ - ]
pc86 2021-08-18 14:12:53 +0000 UTC [ - ]
throwaway98797 2021-08-18 13:48:56 +0000 UTC [ - ]
Yes, you may save others but I cant blame someone for makinf the pragmatic choice for their lives and family.
morpheos137 2021-08-18 12:40:23 +0000 UTC [ - ]
ghola2k5 2021-08-18 12:42:13 +0000 UTC [ - ]
JoeAltmaier 2021-08-18 12:58:09 +0000 UTC [ - ]
Kihashi 2021-08-18 13:42:46 +0000 UTC [ - ]
hungryforcodes 2021-08-18 12:53:51 +0000 UTC [ - ]
JoeAltmaier 2021-08-18 12:56:13 +0000 UTC [ - ]
She's now an officer in my son's startup.
defaulty 2021-08-18 13:05:10 +0000 UTC [ - ]
JoeAltmaier 2021-08-18 13:52:48 +0000 UTC [ - ]