I've been mugged by gypsies
I know how this psychological mechanic works, and how easy it works, but I am adament we - as humans - should be stronger than to just let ourselves be driven by it.
I hate to say it, but my own brother lets himself be taken along by that mechanic very easily, and on several occasions he has told me that if only I worked his hours and paid his taxes, I would also hate immigrants, since I would be very tired at the end of the day, and I'd see "lazy immigrants" "hanging around" from the window of my car.
He actually spelled out that last part, and is STILL not fully aware that brown people being outdoors have nothing to do with HIS tiredness from work!
First: What I just said, brown people have little to do with your tiredness after work.
Secondly: I pay the same taxes, he just assumes I don't. Fallacy of assumption.
Third: He mocks our dad for being a "bleeding heart", while guess what: He works MORE, and has a family to take care of. Which sortof just makes my brother a grumpy crybaby. The man he mocks, instead of looks up to, works MORE, is MORE tired, ends up with LESS spending money for himself, yet has MORE sympathy left over for lazy brown people he can see from his car on his way home from work. And just to hammer it in, dad often works overtime. My brother does not. Dad spends his tired time at home sober, reality crisp in his face. My brother immediately gets drunk.
Also, my mother works in a primary school, where she sees first hand the different behavior in the refugee kids. They're more wild, more "untame" as we often accuse them of being, more difficult to deal with. But my mother also has contact with their parents, who are shattered, desperate people, who show immense gratitude towards her for trying to mend their traumatized kids, AND she hears stories from the kids, about seeing shit that we, here, put "graphic warnings" on footage of, they have seen it live, right in front of their faces.
And of course, everyone would be frightened by the imaginary result of mass immigration. I don't LIKE to imagine myself swimming in a dangerous swimming pool of muggers and rapists and criminals. It's a bad image. But it's also not a REAL image, it's just my imagination.
Anyway, one thing I have always agreed with, is that integration has rarely been firmly applied, and that it needs to be. An example of good integration is what my mother does, at the primary school, by helping to raise refugee kids as norwegians, and informing their parents closely on the progress.
Formation of ghettos is not a given, and immigrants who have been integrated do indeed become "brown norwegians" who only looks different visually, but talk, think and behave like true norwegians.
That's what I find so sad, in the past we were much more accustomed to that idea, while now we only see foreigners as intruders, regardless of their effort to become one of us. Once you no longer feel included by a group, you don't even WANT to be one of them, so it becomes circular.
Those immigrants who have allready been granted a place here, should be integrated right away, or we are only increasing the problem in a self prophesizing way.
