The US has more history to it than just the last 6 months, and some of us recall that while Trump puts on a big show with lots of heat and noise, there's rarely much light. If you look at actual deportations, he lags behind previous administrations.

So no, putting the frenzy over this administration aside, and recognizing that the US has more history and more of a future than the rule of one man, what I said holds.

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em-bee 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

having lived in the US and in europe i can confirm that. the issues with integration in the US are very different from those in europe.

the US suffers from systemic historic racism that they are struggling to get rid of, but they have always been a mix of cultures where some aspects of foreign cultures are assimilated and accepted and other aspects disappear as the immigrants adapt.

europe suffers from xenophobia and general difficulty to integrate foreign cultures. being traditionally a single culture there is very little assimilation of foreign cultures (mostly some food items) and immigrants are expected to adapt fully to the local culture, without any allowance to keep aspects of their own culture with few exceptions.

in my opinion this leads to immigrants in europe holding on to their own culture more than they would in the US making integration even more difficult.

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johnisgood 3 days ago | parent [-]

> in my opinion this leads to immigrants in europe holding on to their own culture more

Wait, what specifically does? Why do you think gypsies have not integrated yet in any countries they are in? Be it Canada, Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary, Germany, etc.

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em-bee 3 days ago | parent [-]

what specifically does?

the expectation to assimilate our culture and fully give up theirs.

Why do you think gypsies have not integrated

i'd believe this is mainly because they are nomadic, which is something that we seem to have a hard time accepting, or even tolerating. for me this is one aspect of their culture that we should celebrate and support. but we don't.

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johnisgood 3 days ago | parent [-]

Gypsies WERE nomadic, today they are not really nomadic though, so I do not think that is one of the reasons. I am asking about gypsies who have been in the country for generations yet still have not integrated. I have my theories, as I have had a lot of gypsy friends and I was part of many gypsy communities for a while across the country, and many of them have relatives who went to Canada and Germany. In fact, there are gypsies who only do prostitution in Germany, but that is besides the point I think.

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em-bee a day ago | parent [-]

i am trying to be careful with this discussion because i am not very familiar with the topic. please do correct me if i say something that doesn't make sense.

an important question is what does integration actually mean. my main argument here is that they mean different things in germany and in the US. (two of the countries that i can talk about from experience).

i talked to some friends in germany and they confirmed that the general expectation is that integration has to be 100%, and while we all agreed that this is actually not desirable, it explains that integration is hard, because, once integrated that way, you become completely invisible. which in turn leads to the reality that only those who are not fully integrated are being noticed leading to the impression that they are still not integrated and hence that gypsies are still nomadic, even though the reality is that it's only about 5% of them. but those 5% are the most visible in germany. when gypsies were in the news, it was the nomadic ones about problems perceived by the local population. i did hear about gypsy villages in romania, which i suppose is another way to stand out despite being not nomadic.

at this point i think it is also important to mention that they were/are not nomadic by choice, but because they needed to be, for economic reasons and also because they were not wanted due to prejudices that have lingered and been stoked for centuries. this may be the kind of racism that is like the general racism in the US. these prejudices push the impression that for those people integration is not even wanted. the jewish population is an obvious example. they were most certainly integrated at least to the degree we expect integration to happen in the US, while still keeping some unique characteristics, and yet their integration was denied.

a different but related example is american soldiers stationed in germany. there is little prejudice against them, but they too are not considered integrated until they speak german and become indistinguishable from locals. and even then, even as a german, if you live in a small town, and you are not born there, you are considered an outsider. happened to a friend of mine.

another comparison, in china, integration is considered impossible. foreigners will always be outsiders. even my children, with a chinese mother, are considered outsiders in school.

so a better answer to the question of why gypsies are not integrated is, because we don't let them. those that are actually integrated are invisible, and our negativity focuses on the remaining ones. i don't know any gypsies in person (my mother does though), so i can't say for sure, but i would guess that even those who are integrated feel the negativity towards their less integrated "relatives", making them too feel not actually integrated.

but to be sure that there is no misunderstanding, i can't stress this enough, this kind of integration to invisibility is not the kind of integration i want. on the contrary. i want integration through tolerance and acceptance. clearly, we have a lot of work to do to achieve that.

	▲	johnisgood a day ago \| parent [-]
		> i did hear about gypsy villages in romania, which i suppose is another way to stand out despite being not nomadic. There are a lot of gypsy villages in Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and I am sure many other countries have those as well. By gypsy villages I mean that the majority of the population is gypsies. As for the rest, we do have many gypsies who have integrated, but they did so by getting away from their family. The gypsies who have integrated here have some hatred towards the ones who didn't. Mainly because the ones who haven't integrated are still begging, being thieves (robbing people), and are responsible for a lot of violent crimes. They make up the majority of our prisons, too, and not because of racism, but because they did actually commit crimes. FWIW, there are very rich gypsies and very poor ones, and they also hate each other, yet both of them engage in illegal activities.

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9rx 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> If you look at actual deportations, he lags behind previous administrations.

Isn't that what is expected? I'm not there, but the way the story is making it to us outside of the US is that Trump has directed immigration authorities to turn their attention away from real problem cases to go on a witch hunt instead. If true, of course deportations are going to go down. But right now nobody wants to expose themselves to getting wrapped up in the hunt.

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jon-wood 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

You do you but for me “we’re building concentration camps now” kind of invalidates previous behaviour, similarly to how I can think really well of someone most of my life but if they then decided to stab someone I’d probably change my opinion.

	▲	EA-3167 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		When someone says "concentration camps" they're conjuring images of emaciated prisoners being worked to death, arbitrarily murdered, and in the worst cases systematically killed at an industrial scale. It's obviously not a valid comparison to a US migrant detention center, even if you feel that that detaining migrants is immoral. You don't strengthen your argument with that kind of hyperbole, instead my reaction is an unavoidable sense of disgust and a worry that people who do this are playing into the watering-down of history in the name of getting a short-term emotional reaction. You can easily argue against the way the US handles immigration, especially under Trump, without falling into the trap of extreme hyperbole.