this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2025
1316 points (96.9% liked)
Political Memes
7571 readers
3061 users here now
Welcome to politcal memes!
These are our rules:
Be civil
Jokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.
No misinformation
Don’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.
Posts should be memes
Random pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.
No bots, spam or self-promotion
Follow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
A lot of economic immigrants don't have jobs.
It's quite difficult to get a job when everything is in a language you are at most new to.
I went to 30 headhunter firms with my wife, they all showed us the door when they realised she doesn't speak Dutch.
Her job is cleaning. Subsidised 66% by the government (taxes). Client pays 10 euros, my wife gets 15 euros. The company gets 30 euros per hour.
She has a fucking law degree from a top 5% university in her country.
Immigration depends a lot on language, or the lingual infrastructure of the country.
2 ways. Either Belgium decides to turn English into an official language and creates an environment where English is the only language needed, or the immigrant learns Dutch.
Learning Dutch takes years.
My coworker her mom lives here for 30 years and doesn't speak Dutch. Her aunt speaks our language fluently.
It depends on the person, but in general it's not to be underestimated.
My wife is just going to be half time worker. Better that I work full time and that she takes care of our kid a bit more while I work full time.
My wife doesn't pay any taxes.
As I said priorly. The real deal here is the 2nd generation. Those can be educated in belgium for the Belgian economy. Big gains for the economy.
If I go to Indonesia, what am I gonna do lol. Idk anything about indonesian stuff. There my wife would have to be the breadwinner while I just look for a job in Singapore or an English company in Batam.
I'm bit lucky that accountancy is more globalised. Law is very specific. You're supposed to specialise and then make that your career.
That’s crazy: there are cleaners who speak the language? I thought this was a stereotypical job for immigrants because you don’t need special skills or credentials nor have to know the language. The skills are basic; you just need to work hard, be reliable and figure out how to get fast at it
The cleaners that know the language.. idk mate, higher education costs 1 month's minimum wage to fund a whole bachelor's.
Achieving the bachelor takes effort though. The job that you get with the bachelor also is more difficult to do. More stressful.
Doesn't really pay much more. Maybe 200 euros?
Minimum wage pays barely any taxes. While the "discount on tax" is lost as you climb the ladder.
At 3250 euros gross wage I get 2250 euros net.
At minimum wage, 2050 euros. They get 2000 euros net.
It's not a big deal. Of course my wage will keep growing, while theirs will stagnate.
But complacency is quite the drug.
A lot of natives also don't have jobs. Shall we kick those out too?
And if not, why do they get preferential treatment? They cost the country a lot more money than immigrants.
First of all, there wasn't anything said about kicking people out. Just not giving them houses, in order to make the place less attractive for future immigrants that aren't self sufficient.
Second of all. I wouldn't give a shit if the people taking advantage of our country's massive welfare would be kicked out.
I know plenty of people who prefer to have no money just so that they can keep enjoying social discounts and sick money/unemployment money/living wages.
These people are abled. They just don't give A FUCK that their kids have 0 inheritance.
In a country with median net wealth of 250k euros per adult. Fucking embarrassing. Gigantic social mobility here.
Oh no, learning the language of the country you immigrate to, the horror
Make it a requirement of continuing occupancy. Must be taking classes or working. Classes are free.
Still takes years to learn the language with those classes and these classes are social transfers to the immigrants, but a good investment with return.
The requirement is neither of those things. The requirement is self sufficiency.
If you're rich enough, then I don't care if you don't learn the language and that you don't work.
You're spending into our economy with likely passive income coming from your global investments.
Or you have family members that take care of your cost of living. All fine.
If you want to have a job, then as I priorly stated. Either in Dutch or English.
Both would work. If the infrastructure is in English, then the ability to make immigrants self sufficient becomes a lot easier. Good for our economy.
If we don't want to do these investments, then the immigrant needs to learn Dutch.
Those are the only options.
My wife speaks English at her job. Did 2 Dutch classes. Most of the people in flanders speak English so communication goes well.
Ego of natives to be spoken to by their preferred language is economically irrelevant so I ignore that.
The premise of this discussion was economic refugees, so I assumed we were only talking about those who are not self-sufficient.
These people can't legally enter the country as far as I'm aware. So yeah, they become homeless.
Giving money to economic refugees that aren't self sufficient is just.. at best, turning them into baby factories for next generation worker bees.
My country has an aging population, perhaps it's beneficial? Not sure.
Actually it's easy to see if it's beneficial. Look at social refugees. Their kids get higher education.
There's enough war in the world though. We don't need economic refugees on top of the social refugees.
But then again, need to question how easy those economic refugees are to integrate.
They aren't traumatised by war, so it should be easier.
A lot of angles to look from
I don't see why that's the case. Surely within a few years at most, they will have acquired the skills and security to get a job or start a business and become a productive taxpayer. Unless they're permanently disabled, but that's a small minority of people.
The problem usually is lack of education within their home countries. That's the difference between EU migrants and non EU migrants. I suppose.
Someone that went to school until age 14 won't have it as easy to integrate. Mostly they'll get minimum wage jobs. Which don't pay taxes.
That's why they do bad on statistics I guess.
But nowadays, places around the world have been booming education wise. Now it's pure brain drain to get young abled people to come here.
The statistics are more based on older generations, which globally, were less educated.
I'm pretty confident that even a person with no formal education can gain the training to do a skilled trade job.
Difficult.
https://www.nbb.be/nl/artikels/de-economische-impact-van-immigratie-belgie-0
The difference between first generation immigrants and locals/2nd generation is staggering.
Which is why I suggest more training and schooling for first-generation immigrants. Instead of leaving them to develop the skills on their own, proactively teach those skills to jumpstart their earning years.
From your linked study:
The part of the source you're quoting is about 2nd generation, not first generation.
We do set a high level of segregation based on school performance. But they all have education.
I'd take this with a grain of salt. We have labour, technical and general. They each have their pros and cons. I don't really like the way they choose who to put where. They put me in technical, after a few years I chose to go to general.
Kinda a mistake, technical had better teaching than general. Perhaps just the school, but with technical it felt like the education was just of a higher quality. While it's ranked lower than general based on people stereotyping it.
We definitely need to get away from that kind of thing. Streamline it. All kids in the same segment and let them choose themselves what they want at age 14 instead of being chosen for at age 12.
My source says that second generation immigrants outperform native population. Simply because they have to catch up on the ladder. They see how their parents struggle. How their family struggle. They want to make the best of it.
So then they simply put in more effort. Perhaps will develope a bit of an unhealthy relationship with money but whatever.
My point was that if greater access to education and training opportunities lowers the gap for second generation immigrants, surely that also applies to first generation.
They all have access to education. My wife can go follow a master in European and international law in the university of Antwerp right now if she wishes to do it. It's in English.
She can follow baking classes. Pretty much anything. Since she arrived here with a bachelor's degree already.
The older generation that came here without formal education. They didn't speak English. All the effort invested in them was just to teach them Dutch. There's training at vdab for jobs that are easy to get. But these jobs don't pay that much.
Our economy is based on human capital. We are quite competitive on this. So to compete with natives for jobs, you need to be educated from a young age.
That's just a reality. The best paying jobs that immigrants that can't speak the language would get would be construction.
So teach them better job skills.
How? How are you going to teach someone to be an engineer when the person can barely read?
Gradually.