In a sense it's a displacement activity: you philosophize about multiculturalism and worry about having brown neighbors while getting it 1-4 in the butt (to use a swedish expression) by the financial system.
People who have talked to a non-white two times in their lives are acting terrified that they are getting run over by some alien cultural force. Normal political issues are elevated into existential threats. Immigration is a pretty boring, regular, bureucratic issue, but it has been made into the major political problem of our times even in countries like Finland where there are very few immigrants by any comparative standard and when the serious studies show that the society will in fact need more immigration in the future. It tells us that it is not about the real number of immigrants but something more sinister.
Don't take any views or news coming from Europe about the muslim threat without a huge grain of salt. They will deny this until they are blue in the face, but so much of the immigration debate is mixed with and motivated by blatant racism, and everyone will try to use the fashionable political tools to get what they want.
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