I love me some karma.

Why did they even do that?

I mean yes but it’s diminishing returns. The rule kind of falls apart at these numbers.

I’d expect the number applying to the US would be hundreds of times higher than the number applying to New Zealand.

How so? Western, and especially Anglosphere, countries all get ridiculous amounts of immigrants. Also remember that New Zealand is a stone’s toss away from South East Asia. It’s a very attractive immigration destination for pacific islanders and Asians.

Pretty sure the US could let in a lot more immigrants if it wanted to.

I mean yes that’s the case for everyone. I’m saying the number of people applying to immigration to the US isn’t four times that of Germany, for example, so even if they accept people according to the exact same criteria Germany will have a bigger percentage.

Boasting that you have more immigration than random countries like Japan is just odd.

He’s not boasting; he’s saying that immigration would do a lot to solve their problems; and he’s correct. I hate Biden’s guts but he’s correct here. For context Japan is a notoriously xenophobic country and currently sits at a 2%. They’re not “a random country”.

In perms of the percentage of its population tho, 15% is somewhere in the middle of the pack, well behind countries like Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Switzerland etc.

I mean people deciding to come to your country isn’t proportional to your population, or really related at all. It’d be like expecting China to have the same 15% as the US (for context that’d be about 250 million people). That’s just not how that works.

Why hasn’t anyone in the middle east chatted shit about the Uyghurs?

Because there’s absolutely no awareness about the issue here. Or about almost anything concerning Russia and China. People here thing Russia is their friend and Ukraine deserves it for having a Zionist president while forgetting that it’s Russia behind Al Asad. Also China is, when all’s said and done, on good terms with the Middle East and general Muslim world. I don’t think anyone is too excited to damage that relation by acknowledging the Uighurs’ suffering.

I mean the US is 15% immigrants, or about 50 million people. I know we like to shit on the US but that’s a ridiculously big number.

I mean they do need to be more discriminate about their targets, but if it works it ain’t stupid.

I mean this is just Vietnam lite. We can see what happened then, but yes I do think they’ll be unsuspended. That’s why it’s a suspension.

Okay honestly as a fellow Muslim (I think you mentioned that somewhere else before???) what you’re doing right now is actually shameful. Just a week ago one man was arrested because he was advising people to not drink or smoke. Uighurs are literally sent to concentration camps and are subjected to forced labor and there you are defending their treatment because you don’t like the West. You need to rethink your priorities, seriously.

here’s an interesting fact, they are the only Turkic people who still use their centuries old script, and haven’t been secularized and westernized unlike Turks in the former USSR or Turkiye.

I mean yes that’s the problem. Islam is no longer foreign to China; again the Hui are as Chinese as the Han. Islam is not, in fact, xeno in China. The Uighurs are, being Turkic people.

Western rights groups have been mostly silent.

What? The Palestinian cause has progressed light years thanks to the work of groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. They came late to the party but they have not been silent, no way.

I mean I like the sentiment but aren’t they only suspended? I don’t think anyone will be expelled.

I mean tbf Islamophobia on an Indian subreddit isn’t surprising.

I mean he’s not wrong, but where does he expect China to get immigrants from? They’re 20% of the world.

Okay I hate the West as much as any other guy, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. China 1400 years ago isn’t in any way the same as China today. Nowadays it’s that most Muslim Chinese groups are accepted as Chinese (the Hui are about as Chinese as the Han, for example) and that’s why they can practice Islam in peace; otherwise you’re treated like the Uighurs. Also foreigners in China are absolutely treated as outsiders; that’s just a fact.

I mean tbf (at least in my case as an Egyptian) it’s not just the high salaries. Maybe Egypt is an extreme case but this country just has no future. The regime isn’t just dictatorial; it’s also dumb. There’s almost no money going to scientific research, the system as a whole was outdated 50 years ago, the military is monopolizing everything and undercutting the market because they can use slave conscript labor and don’t pay taxes, etc etc. I’m firmly of the opinion that this is at least partially caused by Britain’s unwillingness to fully decolonize in the 1920s and their godawful decolonization in the 1950s, but the fact remains that these countries have a duty to their people that they’re not fulfilling, and that’s why brain drain happens.

As a living example of said brain drain, salaries were near the bottom of my priority list when I made the decision. I was more concerned about living somewhere where I don’t need to worry about being arrested because I said my opinion on the internet (or even just complained about prices) or because I do my prayers at the mosque (I was actually told by my mother to not go to the mosque all the time because I might get arrested. It’s that bad). Below that were things like a sane administration that actually cares about things being even just barely functional, a decent education system and academia and the ability to have confidence that the country will actually exist in 20 years. Living in a wildly different country (especially as a Muslim in Japan as is my case (halal food is a pain to get here)) is such a pain you couldn’t pay me to do it, but it’s hard to turn down actually getting to have a future.

What I wanna say is that it’s not just the Global South being undercut by the West; many Global South countries are failing at fulfilling their responsibility towards their constituents, and that’s why they’re leaving. Now how much the West was involved in creating this situation is another story, but you can’t reduce it to just high salaries. Global South governments, as a rule, aren’t interesting in solving their own problems. That’s why the problem solvers go solve Western rich people’s problems.

Yeah and nobody is saying they don’t have agency. You’re preaching to… no one?

I’m not sure what you’re trying to say anymore. What’s the point you’re trying to make here?

Man no. Just… No.

That’s not it, but in many cases Western imperialism is involved in the conditions that made these people want to leave in the first place.