[Fuxy]

I found the quote “tourists go home, refugees welcome” quite funny.

So what their basically saying is they would rather kick out tourists that bring in and spend quite a lot of money effectively boosting the economy in favour of some refugees the government will have to spend a large amount of money on... and you wonder why the contry's economy is in such a bad shape when the citizens advocate shooting themselves in the foot.

[Daishiman]

So... it's not all about money. You can refuse to accept money from sources which are really not all that cracked up (because the margins in tourism are not great actually) and accept people for humanitarian reasons.

If you're not 14 or completely driven by greed you can understand the reasoning behind this.

[Fuxy]

Being a humanitarian is admirable but at the end of the day it's a luxury that may or may not pay off in the long run.

Just the same way you don't give your money to a beggar on the street when you can barely afford to survives yourself the employment of personal boundaries is important for humans and countries.

So given that Italy is not doing so well at the moment I kind of have to question their thinking reducing their revenue stream in favour if immigrants.

The assumption that all immigration is good immigration is not true.

[TangoTrotFox]

On the other hand, you also have to understand that humanitarianism must have limits. The resources of nations are not infinite and individuals that are unable to provide for themselves are a tremendous burden on society. And when you accept people that fail to integrate you risk imperiling the very policies that you hold to be worthwhile. For instance, Sweden will be a phenomenal test case. The Globe and Mail ran an interesting piece on their situation here [1]. 16% of Sweden is now made up of individuals that come from quite different ideological backgrounds in Africa and the Mideast. And those numbers continue to rapidly increase.

The ideal was that as these people are treated with decency and respect and given a life not unlike any other Swede might receive, they would be able to integrate and ultimately just becomes Swedes. But this ideal did not really turn out to be justified. So what will happen to Sweden as these individuals begin to be one of the most relevant voting blocs? It's not a rhetorical question, since I don't think anybody really knows the answer. This scale of migration with people of such sharply contrasting worldviews is something relatively novel in the modern developed world. However, in my opinion Sweden's experiment is more likely to end up being seen as a cautionary tale than a model of humanitarianism.

[1] - https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/swedens-ugly-immigra...

[bantunes]

Maybe the citizens find that, if they have to put up with someone, they prefer to put up with people escaping dire living conditions (that will, statistically, go on to strengthen their economy in the long term). What does that tell you about what citizens think of tourists?

I can tell you that loud AirBnB hosts or the foreigners using my country as a landfill for their money, pricing people out of the inner cities, are not welcome.

[Aunche]

Tourism dollars do a lot less for the local economy than one might expect. Tourist destinations like the Caribbean and Bali have some of the worst income disparity in the world. Tourism provides utility to the tourists, but nothing in return for the locals. Doctors and electricians get paid more to serve tourists than their home communities. Worst of all is that a lot of children are incentivized to sell things to tourists than to finish school.

[Dirlewanger]

Sounds like a great thing for the government to solve, to institute some sort of incentive to families to send their kids to school. Where are those funds coming from? Probably tourism, which makes up a majority of their tax revenue...and now we see how difficult the problem is.

[thinkingemote]

To understand it better, there is a similarity in the USA. In San Francisco there are similar signs saying "tech workers out, refugees welcome!"

[knieveltech]

What is good for the economy (short term) and what is good for people (long term) are frequently not the same things.

[Fuxy]

As far as I'm aware tourism is not a short term thing there will always be tourists coming and leaving this is an constant revenue steam in its own right.

So I don't get what you mean.

[empath75]

> in favour of some refugees the government will have to spend a large amount of money on

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05507-0

Stop repeating this lie.

[draven]

From the article: "To assess nations’ economic well-being, the researchers measured average incomes over the years by dividing a country’s gross domestic product (GDP) by the size of its population."

How will that give you the average income?

[drb91]

Adding people to an economy grows the economy.

[csomar]

I don't think they mean it literally but it is rather an indirect "You are just as worse as the refugees if not worse".

[cr1895]

That is not what "refugees welcome" implies.