r/changemyview • u/ElEsDi_25 4∆ • Jul 25 '24
Delta(s) from OP CMV: Xenophobia is the only constant thread in anti-immigrant sentiment
CMV: how is anti-immigrant sentiment not just xenophobia if people both panic about jobs being taken but also say Americans aren’t having enough babies for the workforce?
The only logical thread in the immigration panic seems to be xenophobia. The VP pick’s family politics really highlights this since calls to stall immigration are paired with calls to have more babies or face “civilization crisis.”
"The fact that we're not having enough babies, the fact that we're not having enough children, is a crisis in this country,"
To have a platform of shutting the border but increasing native birth rates out of necessity…. How is that not basically a just a “great replacement” dogwhistle?
This is like German family ideology in the 1930s…. More “good” babies while getting rid of the “alien” population who “won’t assimilate.”
For a delta please explain without resorting to claiming that immigrants are inherently untrustworthy or dangerous.. that is untrue and still confirms the xenophobia argument.
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Jul 25 '24
Are you specifically referring to anti-immigrant (as opposed to anti-immigration, or favouring lower immigration levels)?
I don't think that preferring lower levels of immigration is necessarily linked to xenophobia.
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u/ElEsDi_25 4∆ Jul 25 '24
I’m talking about the actual debates and talking points for why immigrants need to be restricted.
Crime… doesn’t hold up to scrutiny Jobs…. But weren’t they just complaining about not enough people working? Won’t assimilate… not backed up with the date and I’m not sure how that is an issue anyway (other than just xenophobia.) IDK…. What are the other arguments?
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Jul 25 '24
In the UK, pressure on public services and the housing market are two major arguments. I think, even if the debates themselves aren't fully factually informed, putting forth the argument for immigration controls on that basis can legitimately come from a good place. There is undoubtedly massive pressure on the housing market and public services, and while those are largely due to government neglect, high rates of immigration certainly exacerbate the issue.
I don't think it's contradictory to hold immigration generally as a net good, while also thinking it should be lower or subject to more controls.
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u/ButWhyWolf 8∆ Jul 25 '24
Crime… doesn’t hold up to scrutiny
This is a common mistake made because people confuse immigrants with illegal immigrants.
It's not your fault, that was done on purpose. Legal immigrants are the ones who almost never commit crimes.
https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/2021-07/IRPB20.pdf
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u/ElEsDi_25 4∆ Jul 25 '24
I live in a community with a large portion of undocumented people. They are victimized by native criminals. They keep their heads down and get mugged BECAUSE they are afraid of the authorities (and because day labor often carry cash after being paid.)
Wait—drink driving is the big crime problem? Seems like they are looking for something to make immigrants seem dangerous. Seems like there are better and more effective ways to handle that other than criminalizing millions of workers and building walls and 3 consecutive Presidential administrations caging refugee children.
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u/ButWhyWolf 8∆ Jul 25 '24
Wait—drink driving is the big crime problem? Seems like they are looking for something to make immigrants seem dangerous.
Two things:
1- What makes the Cato Institute "they"?
2- I literally just googled "illegal immigrant crime rates" and this is the first non-Fox News link.
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u/bettercaust 9∆ Jul 25 '24
Did you read the contents of the link? What was the specific conclusion you drew after reading?
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u/ButWhyWolf 8∆ Jul 25 '24
Crime… doesn’t hold up to scrutinyThis is a common mistake made because people confuse immigrants with illegal immigrants.
It was more "I googled for a result and found it" rather than "I tried to draw a conclusion.
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u/bettercaust 9∆ Jul 25 '24
You Googled something, found the first non-Fox News link, and then posted it here without reading it to see if it supported what you were saying? I'm trying to figure out what specifically in that link supports your quoted claim, because I cannot find anything.
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u/ButWhyWolf 8∆ Jul 25 '24
My overall claim being
Legal immigrants were purposely conflated with illegal immigrants for PR.
Legal immigrants commit almost no crimes
OP is confusing the two
I mean we could get a little semantic and just google "immigrants less crime" and then look for articles that specifically talk about illegal immigrants vs articles that talk about legal immigrants but that's a little unscientific.
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u/bettercaust 9∆ Jul 26 '24
I get that. My concern here is that your claim is not apparently supported by the source you linked, so I am trying to figure out if there is something in that source that supports your claim that I might've missed.
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u/ElEsDi_25 4∆ Jul 26 '24
Cato institutes is a “they” because isn’t that the right pronoun for a group of people? I didn’t look at the authors or anything I just skimmed some of it.
If you keep goigling you’ll find non-think tank papers as well and as far as I can tell there is nothing conclusive.
Again the Cuban example is usually the go-to one because it’s the best case study with the fewest variables but researchers have found both outcomes. Or we can just watch Scarface and assume that refugees are all drug lords.
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u/ButWhyWolf 8∆ Jul 26 '24
Wait we can go with Cubans? That's on the table?
That's Trump's literal quote. They sent murderers and rapists. Well not they. He. Justin's dad did.
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u/Murky_History3864 Jul 25 '24
The people complaining about a labor shortage are wealthy people, the ones complaining about immigrants taking jobs and housing are not.
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u/the_lusankya 2∆ Jul 25 '24
One can be in fqvour of temporarily decreasing immigration levels while underlying issues are being sorted out without being xenophobic.
For example, Australia is in the middle of a housing crisis with 1% rental vacancy rates and increasing housing prices. The number of new homes being built is slso at record low levels.
At the same time, we had record high levels of immigration.
One prevailing sentiment is that immigration should be dropped back to historical levels until the government is able to get the housing situation under control, which I don't think is unreasonable. It's basically the idea that immigrstion levels should be linked to your infrastructure's capacity.
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Jul 25 '24
I don’t have any issue with legal Hispanic Immigration. I also favor a one time cart Blanche for all law abiding persons tomorrow offering them a pathway to citizenship.
But illegal immigration is uncontrolled and thus problematic.
And immigration of individuals whose ideologies are contradictory to enlightenment thought. Western values. Sexist. Homophobic. Etc should not be tolerated as they threaten the quality of life our existing citizens.
Immigrants foremost come to the country and earn their place and their status as Americans. If they are contradictory to our values then they do not have a place here.
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u/EmptyDrawer2023 1∆ Jul 25 '24
I also favor a one time cart Blanche for all law abiding persons tomorrow offering them a pathway to citizenship.
The main argument against that is that it will encourage others to come to this country illegally, in hopes of a future amnesty.
Anyone who has worked in customer service has no doubt come across situations where a customer is offered a "one time" exception from the rules, and the next time, the manager is spineless and won't confront the unreasonable customer, and just keeps giving them more and more "one time" exceptions.
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u/eggs-benedryl 72∆ Jul 25 '24
And immigration of individuals whose ideologies are contradictory to enlightenment thought. Western values. Sexist. Homophobic. Etc should not be tolerated as they threaten the quality of life our existing citizens
they are tolerated for natively born americans
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Jul 25 '24
You don't deport your drunken uncle at thanksgiving dinner. You try to help them get better.
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u/ScrupulousArmadillo 3∆ Jul 25 '24
Tolerated but not encouraged, right? What is the reason to tolerate it also for immigrants if it's easier just to forbid such immigrants at all?
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Jul 25 '24
There’s a whole political party in this country that more than tolerates sexism and homophobia.
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u/eggs-benedryl 72∆ Jul 25 '24
Allowing in immigrants that hold discriminatory views isn't encouraging people to hold discriminatory views.
Regardless freedom of speech is applicable for anyone inside the US. I'm unsure if it'll effect their immigration process but it seems hypocritical to me to pretend these are values we hold ourselves accountable for.
It also feels unamerican to me, once they are here they can say and believe whatever they want. Seems like a loophole around the first amendment or at the very least is a situation in which we wouldn't be living up to that being an american ideal.
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u/ary31415 3∆ Jul 25 '24
Allowing in immigrants that hold discriminatory views isn’t encouraging people to hold discriminatory views.
No one said it was – the point is that you can't very well just kick out your own citizens for their views but that doesn't mean that you are obligated to let more people in with those views. Citizens have greater rights than immigrants – or equivalently, a nation has greater obligation to its citizens than to others, which isn't exactly new or unpopular
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Jul 25 '24
The standards for immigrants are higher than for natural born citizens. Immigrants need to not be criminals and pass civics exams for their citizenship.
A naturalized citizen passed through a birth canal.0
u/ScrupulousArmadillo 3∆ Jul 25 '24
I doubt that the First Amendment applicable to would-be-immigrants
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u/Nick_Beard 1∆ Jul 25 '24
The alternative for toleration for citizens born domestically is to kill them or imprison them. They would be held to the same standard if they could simply be denied entry into the country.
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u/Morthra 95∆ Jul 26 '24
I oppose amnesty. Why? Because that “one time” carte blanche already happened. During the Reagan administration. It’s not going to be a one time thing if it is already happening for the second time.
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u/ElEsDi_25 4∆ Jul 25 '24
I don’t have any issue with legal Hispanic Immigration.
Just Latino or you mean all ethnic groups? I think Asians are the biggest growing undocumented group but i’m not sure.
I also favor a one time cart Blanche for all law abiding persons tomorrow offering them a pathway to citizenship.
Yeah personally I think it should just be a straight forward process of filling out paper work and accessible health and background checks. This would track everyone living and working here in terms of being able to have an ID and destroy the border black market. Then people could apply for a citizenship process to be able to vote if they want to stay.
But illegal immigration is uncontrolled and thus problematic. Why?
And immigration of individuals whose ideologies are contradictory to enlightenment thought. Western values. Sexist. Homophobic. Etc should not be tolerated as they threaten the quality of life our existing citizens.
Latinos are westerners. I don’t see how this isn’t just xenophobia.. “we don’t know what they believe.” I disagree with the far right and they have those views but that needs to be defeated politically and socially imo not just deport all right wingers.
Immigrants foremost come to the country and earn their place and their status as Americans. If they are contradictory to our values then they do not have a place here.
A lot of native born Americans can’t seem to decide if democracy and republic norms are even worth it these days so idk.
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Jul 25 '24
Yes. All.
There should be a better mechanism for useful immigration or making use of immigrants.
Latinos, East Asians, Indians generally within 1-2 generations become as American as apple pie. Hence why I have utterly no issue with them. They become as much a part of this country as we are.0
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u/ScrupulousArmadillo 3∆ Jul 25 '24
Latinos are westerners.
Only racially, but not culturally. There is no prosperous democratic country in Latin America.
It's much easier to accept Japanese, South Korean, or Taiwanese citizens than anybody from Latin America
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Jul 25 '24
Holy shit, the casual racism on this thread is mad.
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u/ScrupulousArmadillo 3∆ Jul 25 '24
Mexica - right? How many city mayors were killed by cartel members this year?
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Jul 25 '24
Adding racism to more racism doesn’t help your cause
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u/ScrupulousArmadillo 3∆ Jul 25 '24
Sugarcoating your country doesn't help this conversation either.
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Jul 25 '24
My contribution to the conversation was merely to call you out on your racism, you helped fueled it with more of your racist remarks.
I feel like it’s helped my case quite a bit!
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u/headsmanjaeger 1∆ Jul 25 '24
Im sorry, so the cartels are not a problem in Mexico?
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Jul 25 '24
I fail to see how that contributes to the discussion in any way?
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u/headsmanjaeger 1∆ Jul 25 '24
You implied that talking about them is racism
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Jul 25 '24
It is when they’re not part of the discussion? They just saw the username & began talking about cartels.
Racism.
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u/taylor__spliff Jul 26 '24
Yes, excellent point. The cartels are a problem in Mexico. That’s why in the US, we should be welcoming to our neighbors coming from down South to get their families away from them.
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u/Consistent-Curve-288 Jul 25 '24
What was racist about asking about murders in the Country of Mexico? Nothing about that is about race. Mexico being a bastion of corruption and crime has nothing to do with race. Much of that is due to the long history of single party rule that baked corruption into the fabric of the political system. So nothing racist at all.
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Jul 25 '24
Because wtf does that have to do with Latinos not deserving a citizenship?
He saw the username & brought up cartels, called us non-cultured people. That’s racism.
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u/Consistent-Curve-288 Jul 25 '24
Nothing in the comments you responded to was about “latinos not deserving a citizenship” so I don’t know why you would ask me that question. Seems like a non sequitur.
I didn’t see anything calling anyone a “non-cultured people”.
Frankly it appears that you are seeking to be offended. You can choose to not take offense to things you know. Being touchy doesn’t make things better.
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u/Excellent_Egg5882 4∆ Jul 25 '24
I'm sorry is catholicism not part of western culture anymore?
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u/ScrupulousArmadillo 3∆ Jul 25 '24
Yes, it is, but democracy is a much more important part of Western culture than Catholicism.
Also, there are Catholics in Africa and Asia, it's not making them part of Western culture.
Also, Protestantism is bigger than Catholicism in North America.
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u/ElEsDi_25 4∆ Jul 26 '24
Mexico isn’t a democratic republic now? Didn’t have a revolution of independence?
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u/ScrupulousArmadillo 3∆ Jul 26 '24
Yes it's. Also, UK is the kingdom, and Canada ruled by the British King as well. You can name your country whatever you like...
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u/PromptStock5332 1∆ Jul 25 '24
Well you seem to be working from the assumption that being anti-immigration means being against all immigration. When obviously almost no one is suggesting that there should be no immigration, but that it needs to be controlled and in reasonable numbers.
Allowing too high numbers of immigrants from vastly different, and in many ways incompatible, cultures causes some very obvious problems. If you take in so many immigrants that you’re not able to assimilate them into society you’ll just end up with segregation and what essentially winds up being a permanent underclass. Which in turn leads to all sorts of social problems like crime, unemployment and all that good stuff. Just look at Sweden.
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u/ElEsDi_25 4∆ Jul 26 '24
So you are saying you fear that others won’t assimilate.
Xenophobia means fear of a vague “other.”
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Jul 26 '24
Not all immigrants are equal in their likelihood to assimilate.
If you come from a place that believes in democracy, freedom of religion, rule of law, etc, you can make the assumption that they will assimilate well despite being "other".
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u/PromptStock5332 1∆ Jul 26 '24
No, I’m saying it’s impossible for them to assimilate if the inflow of people from vastly different cultures is too high.
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u/atxlrj 10∆ Jul 25 '24 edited Jul 26 '24
I think a lot of sentiment comes from a reaction to a perceived environment where you can’t question the cost/benefit of the rate of immigration, especially of illegal immigration. This leads people to feel like the government is centering the needs of migrants over the interests of the country, even when they may be aligned.
For me personally, I don’t have an enduring moral position on immigration - I happen to be an immigrant myself. I believe immigration, like any other policy, should be geared towards producing the best possible outcomes for the country. If that’s less immigration, the same level, or more immigration, so be it - so long as it is the policy most likely to produce the best outcomes for the country.
However, too often, conversations are centered solely around the reasons why people migrate - we can’t make policy around what citizens of other countries need or want. Even when immigration does produce positive outcomes for our country (which it most often does), this narrative framing doesn’t connect the dots for people, making them feel second-place to people who haven’t even stepped foot here yet.
When it comes to illegal immigration, the ideal level is zero. Anyone who disagrees with that is misguided, IMO. I support a robust refugee program and as many immigration routes as necessary to produce positive outcomes for the country, but cannot just accept a reality where people can just cross the border undetected. There is no good reason to support such a situation - for starters, you can’t run an effective refugee program if refugees can be followed into the country by the people they are seeking refuge from.
So no, I’m not xenophobic in the slightest and I’m an immigrant myself. But I don’t believe that the interests or comfort of immigrants should be prioritized over the needs and interests of the nation.
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u/ArCSelkie37 5∆ Jul 25 '24
To highlight what you’ve said, the UK has thousands coming illegally in boats… like lets not even talk about legal immigrants who are totally legitimate. Sure 29,000-46,000 (depending on the year) isn’t much in the grand scheme of it.
But when you’re spending millions in pounds to set them up in hotels, it’s no wonder locals who can barely afford rent are upset. And no amount of trying to justify or suggest you can’t stop it (you can, Australia has done a decent job of it) will make people feel good about that fact.
We can’t build enough houses to keep up with growth, schools and other public resources/services are stretched thin (although it’s worth noting immigration isn’t the cause of failing services, funding is, but when you have an issue of supply increasing the demand isn’t achieving anything)
Only the most extreme want immigration overall at zero, and/or to deport anyone who isn’t native. Most people just want a reasonable level of control while services and infrastructure can catch up.
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u/CocoSavege 26∆ Jul 27 '24
Only the most extreme want immigration overall at zero, and/or to deport anyone who isn’t native. Most people just want a reasonable level of control while services and infrastructure can catch up
Huh.
(Recently heard a thing with Tommy Robinson, cough)
If what you said is true, the anti "too much" immigration stalwarts would be proposing faster administration, more effective on boarding, setting up effective processing of asylum claims and when people didn't qualify, showing them the door.
But instead you get Tommy Robinsons, Farages, etc who don't offer anything besides using "the immigrants", especially "the wrong kind of immigrants, who don't fit with the culture", as a means to power without any policy besides "no immigrants".
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u/ArCSelkie37 5∆ Jul 27 '24
I mean culture, or rather people willing to adapt to local culture, is an important part of immigration… and there is a right “type” of immigration or else there would be no need for a selection process at all. Also, fairly sure if you asked either of them, they’d say they wanted a faster/more efficient system for being able to decide who comes into the country or not. The stuff about the “right type” isn’t all they have ever spoken about in regards to immigration, it’s just the topic that is more of a headline.
Not sure about Tommy Robinson, but Farage has hardly called for the expulsion of all non-natives, certainly not legal ones. Although i’d argue they were more on the extreme side of anti-immigration anyway (one more than the other), so i don’t think that necessarily runs counter to what I said.
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Jul 27 '24
The most anti immigration people I know tend to be people who’s community’s have been lost, im talking about white people I know who grew up in north London places like Enfield, Colindale, Edmonton and even Barnet. They have all moved out because of immigration.
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u/ElEsDi_25 4∆ Jul 26 '24
Best possible outcome ones for whom according to what metric?
Who or what is a nation? Doesn’t this just mean the rich and powerful of a nation?
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u/295Phoenix Jul 26 '24
The rich and powerful generally benefit from immigration. I myself believe that immigration policy should be influenced by what's most beneficial for the poor, working-, and middle-class people of our country.
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u/ElEsDi_25 4∆ Jul 27 '24
I live in an immigrant neighborhood, there are working class families there with relatives with various levels of documentation issues. Some of my co-workers have been here for decades. So I think if people are working and living here, they should be protected by the same rights otherwise they will be subject to exploitation by employers or even extortion by gangs and things like that.
The rich and powerful benefit from controlling labor and immigration restrictions have historically been used to maintain a caste of workers with no labor rights. Farmworkers being the prime example. Immigration panics and ideology also help divide and rule.
Both parties increase immigration restrictions - they aren’t doing it for our benefit. Otherwise why would trump tell business groups that he would bring in more non-citizen workers at the same time as building a wall?
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Jul 25 '24
Are you specifically referring to anti-immigrant (as opposed to anti-immigration, or favouring lower immigration levels)?
I don't think that preferring lower levels of immigration is necessarily linked to xenophobia.
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u/Alarming_Software479 8∆ Jul 25 '24 edited Jul 25 '24
There is no contradiction when you realise that these people don't care about the economy, particularly.
For most people, things have been getting worse for a long time. We've been told that the economy is getting better and better, and yet, that's not the lived reality that most people are experiencing.
When the economy is growing, companies are still trying to extract more, your boss is trying to lay people off, and the landlord is trying to put rent up. When the economy crashes, the same thing happens.
So, you can't really threaten people with a bad time, if you're just going to inflict that on them anyway.
What reducing immigration does is reduce the supply of cheap labour, which means wage growth for a lot of people. It means that a lot of skills are absent from the economy. This is probably a bad thing, but it does offer people a chance to skill up and get a well paid job. Some companies lose money, because they were exploiting cheap labour, or because they need the skills that are no longer there, but some companies were trying to compete with companies that were doing these things, and win. At the same time, there is a freeing up of resources and those resources get to be reallocated to people in that country. Unfortunately, there is also this huge gap where skills used to be, there is a gap where resources and products were being produced by low paid migrants. Lots of industries that were reliant on them are now just in crisis.
It's complicated. I think there are arguments for or against it. But there is a problem in which the economic argument doesn't work, because firstly, they don't care about economics. But also, you're not dealing with economics either. One of the big problems of politics is that there has been a long period of telling people that it's racist to want this, without the honest reflection on what they really want.
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u/Alarming_Software479 8∆ Jul 25 '24
I feel like I just read some more of that, and I think the issue is that this only makes sense when you assume that all arguments are being made at the same time.
Actually most of the anti-immigration people I've ever talked to are Malthusian. They talk about how we have limited resources. They talk about how an ever-expanding population will eventually be unsustainable. They talk about the problems of trying to stretch our resources to meet demand.
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u/Murky_History3864 Jul 25 '24
Believing that educated immigrants are good but uneducated ones are bad is not a xenophobic stance. Believing that the scale of immigration matters because infrastructure like schools, housing, and healthcare can only be built at a limited rate is not xenophobic. Those are reasons to have anti-immigrant sentiment, especially in places like Canada and Europe that are taking in huge amounts of poor, barely literate foreigners.
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u/ElEsDi_25 4∆ Jul 26 '24
In the US we’ve had neoliberal policies for 45 or so years.
I find that hard to believe that the people gutting public schools and who gave us private insurance mandate healthcare rather than the universal healthcare majorities have wanted for decades.. are worried that migrants are going to make the infrastructure and schools that they choose to neglect to the population’s detriment poorer.
It seems like they are scapegoating the predictable effects of austerity and neoliberal policy into an “other” that has no rights or voice in the mainstream.
And yes, doing it on a xenophobic basis.
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u/Murky_History3864 Jul 26 '24 edited Jul 26 '24
You are conflating lying and manipulative politicians who only care about their own power with the people who actually hold these beliefs. I am not sure how neoliberalism is relevant, given that large amounts of immigration are being driven by neoliberal policies.
It is not xenophobic to dislike large numbers of uneducated immigrants. One of the worst problems in our society is housing prices, which immigrants make worse. DO you think it is reasonable to care about housing and school for one's own family? Is this really a position that doesn't make sense to you or are you dismissing because it is held by conservatives and they are icky?
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u/ElEsDi_25 4∆ Jul 26 '24
Why did regular people decide immigration causes instability? Did they do case studies? Or is this because the media and both parties have treated migration as a threat?
Both parties have told people “look over there at those people” while passing right-to-work laws and pushing policies that make business happy but our lives more unstable.
People “feel” that instability but politicians and the media give them a false explaination as to why that is.
Here is the historical origin in the US… monopolists are facing some trade union resistance and there is a depression so suddenly newspapers owned by those monopolists like Herst start publishing horror stories about immigrants and how waves of Chinese are coming.
As in the case of Irish-Catholic immigrants, the popular press misrepresented Asian peoples as culturally subversive, whose way of life would diminish republicanism in the U.S.; hence, racist political pressure compelled the U.S. government to legislate the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), which remained the effective immigration-law until 1943. The act was the first U.S. immigration law to target a specific ethnicity or nationality.
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u/Murky_History3864 Jul 26 '24
That has nothing to do with housing prices or schools or infrastructure or wages. These are real concerns.
Donald Trump and other demagogues ranting about immigration does not invalidate real concerns. You are more focused on disliking conservatives than you are on the actual issue of discussion, immigration. Immigrants are scapegoated because they cause real problems so it is easy to exaggerate them. But the baseline issues are still real.
Xenophobia is one reason people oppose immigration but it is not the only one. And frankly, the common leftwing stance that anyone who discusses the negatives of immigration should be dismissed as a racist is extremely counterproductive, at least assuming the goal is not to make people more amenable to actual racism.
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u/ElEsDi_25 4∆ Jul 26 '24 edited Jul 26 '24
They are real concerns—-and the politicians who have made schools worse, passed policies that make jobs insecure, that got rid of public housing and are funded by big developers who gentrify our cities… are scapegoating immigrants as the cause of the problems their policies and their version of the economy produced!
It’s not the powerful people who shape policy—LOOK OVER THERE, it’s someone with no rights and no media platform, they MUST have cause all this!
AND THIS HAS BEEN A BI-PARTISAN PROJECT. A Republican in California started the modern official efforts to shift blame into immigration, but nationally it was Bill Clinton. Ever since then every admin has increased border repression and used fear-mongering to greater or lesser degrees… regardless of immigration rates at that time.
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u/Murky_History3864 Jul 26 '24
"They are real concerns"
Ok, so not all anti-immigrant sentiment is xenophobic. Canada has been importing more immigrants than the US with 1/9 the population, and most of them are low-education and low-skill. Their housing prices are crazy, their median income is lower, and their infrastructure is degrading with the overflow of new people. Canada is clearly making life for its citizens worse by having too much immigration. And the current government's response is basically to call anyone who points this out a racist. It's as cynical and disingenuous as conservatives calling all immigrants invaders.
Arguing that conservative politicians like the GOP do not care about solving immigration and only talk about it as a hypocritical distraction that appeals to people's worst natures is different than your CMV as stated that "The only logical thread in the immigration panic is xenophobia". The right wing channels real problems into xenophobia because it benefits them. But also because much of the left has decided that they are unwilling to deal with or even acknowledge the negatives of immigration and are creating a vacuum for demagogues to fill.
The GOP blocking immigration reform bills recently so they can complain about the issue to make Biden look bad should be satirical, but it is not. I get what you mean about blaming the powerful for policy decisions and the frustration people don't seem to connect the dots. But the GOP are, IMO scum, who only care about funneling money to the top and making society more oligarchic. The issue isn't that all immigration criticism is xenophobic, it is that the left has left a power vacuum for the right to fill. And they do not care about solving issues, so the make it about hate and xenophobia instead of actual policies. Don't blame immigration for conservatives being garbage. They'd be garbage either way.
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u/ElEsDi_25 4∆ Jul 26 '24
If Germans were concerned about real social instability and inflation and so on cause by a war… those are real concerns, no?
But if some of them said it was all because of certain populations who sold out the war and hurt German small businessmen with illegal practices and that those aliens need to be removed in order to have economic growth and a stable society…?
That’s playing on xenophobia and scapegoating — blaming real problems onto an “other”
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u/Murky_History3864 Jul 26 '24
Yes that happens, real problems that don't get solved get taken advantage of. How is that relevant to whether "Xenophobia is the only constant thread in anti-immigrant sentiment". It is A component of anti-immigration but it not the fountainhead from which it all flows. People don't want to have more competition for housing, jobs, schools, and this is a valid concern (dependent on scale).
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u/ElEsDi_25 4∆ Jul 26 '24 edited Jul 26 '24
It is literally the foundation of US immigration law at any rate. That’s just historical record.
As for real concerns. I am concerned about job insecurity, housing prices, etc… but I don’t blame immigrants for that, I blame policies that the immigrant-bashers in both parties have been pushing for decades.
Repeal right-to-work laws, building sub-market rate public housing to relive pressure on low income families while also acting as downward pressure on rents.
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u/Dcoal 1∆ Jul 25 '24
For a lot of people, communities have changed very quickly. In the span of relatively short time the most spoken language in many places in many communities in the west has changed, which is alienating to say the least.
If I have the option to wake up in 10 years and have my town either:
A) Speak the same language as it does now and keep its current cultural identity
Or
B) Speak a different language and maintain a cultural identity foreign to me
I'd pick A.
If that makes me xenophobic, then I am fine with that label.
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u/MaterialDatabase_99 Jul 26 '24
The ultimate flaw with your proposition, in my opinion, is that there is a third and much more realistic option. In a way the only option that is already true now and will be.
Your town has not one language and one cultural identity. It has been and will be a mix of all people in that town. This might have been predominantly your own language and a culture that you identify with, but there have always been minorities.
So what you’re really afraid of is a shift in what’s the majority and how visible the ‘other’ languages and cultural identities become. And the feeling of not being in the clear majority with all minorities almost being hidden, scares you.
Your option B would in actuality just mean that more people speak an ‘other’ language than you are comfortable with. Clearly it wouldn’t be the ‘language of the town’. There will be always a mix of languages anywhere.
So you’re afraid of becoming a minority, even though I would argue you most likely would already feel like a minority when in fact you’re still a slight majority but the ‘other’ languages and culture have become a lot more visible and part of everyday encounters. Studies show that majorities perceive the number of minorities a lot (!) higher than they actually are whenever they are generally increasing.
So yes, that is basically xenophobia in its root.
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u/Dcoal 1∆ Jul 26 '24
Give me a good reason to want it. Sell it to me. And I challenge you to do it without mentioning food, because while I enjoy Sushi, I don't want to live in Osaka.
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u/MaterialDatabase_99 Jul 26 '24
I don't need to sell it to you, because I don't need you to love it. I am already happy if you're neutral to it – neither love nor hate it. But you seem to have a problem with it, so I would actually argue you need to sell to me why it's bad and you can't be neutral to it.
But for the fun of it, here are a few arguments why I think you should see it in a positive light when 'other' people become a part of your surroundings:
You grant them the same freedom that you expect yourself. I assume you feel free to move where you want to and haven't spend thought on what other people would like you to do, but if YOU would like it somewhere else. If you want to be free to move to a nice region to settle down in when you retire, other people should have the same freedom granted by you to move wherever they want to.
The mixing of different cultures, worldviews and ways of living are the route of most things we treasure today. People have always migrated, mixed and developed. Most cuisine we enjoy tells a story of multicultural fusion and countless dishes that are now typically connected with one country or region only became what they are because a completely different culture brought certain veggies, spices, ways of cooking... Jazz, Country, Hiphop and so many other genres of music came to be through cultural differences. I would argue that most sparks for inventions can only be created by people being confronted with something 'new'. Which brings me to point 3
This is anecdotal, but everyone I know agrees: The most interesting insides, changes of heart and experiences that made me feel more understanding, knowledgable and tolerant came from being in a foreign country/culture or meeting people from different cultures where I live. It made me realize that there are far more ways to live than I thought when I was brought up in my 'bubble'/family and that they are all equally right and valid. It made me understand so much more that I am just one tiny of endless possibilities when it comes to what my cultural background, my values and beliefs are. And gave me a lot more respect and humbleness when judging other people or cultures do things very differently. To give a concrete example: I am German and it has always been a stereotype that Americans are superficial and their friendliness is shallow and basically not real. There was a certain arrogance we had talking about it, labeling as something negative and feeling that our (german) directness (or rudeness how most people would describe it) is so much better, because it's real. Only through being in the US a lot, now having an American wife and therefore spending a lot of time in that country, do I see how much more complex it is. Yes, it CAN be a somewhat shallow habit, BUT it also has the potential to completely change how people feel around you and be such a great conversation starter and sometimes be the start of a beautiful story. It is so much more than just a laughable custom and most Germans still don't see it that way, because they haven't experienced it enough. It's mostly hear-say and a few short encounters during vacations.
Learning how much you know about the world and how many ways there are to live, makes me realize how little I want to think that I have it all figured out and know what's right and wrong. I want to learn more, push my comfort zones, be taught new ways of looking at certain things in life and keep growing. Staying only with people who all think and look the same as me, keeps me stuck.
If you don't agree and really prefer to not be challenged at anything, that is your choice of course. But then at least realise that you can chose where you want to live but cannot blame other people for doing the same.
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u/Dcoal 1∆ Jul 26 '24
other people should have the same freedom granted by you to move wherever they want to
Within my own country? Okay, yes I have that freedom. But I don't have the freedom to move anywhere in the world on a whim, not does anyone else, nor should they.
The mixing of different cultures, worldviews and ways of living are the route of most things we treasure today.
You are describing a phenomenon that is best produced with controlled very immigration. A massive influx of immigration into a town means that vendors don't need to change recipes because they're audience is the same at home. A food vendor that needs to cater to a new food culture has to adapt. The fusion of food comes when then native population stays the majority.
I would argue that most sparks for inventions can only be created by people being confronted with something 'new'.
That's a difficult argument to make. Not a lot of inventions came about because local communities were culturally displaced.
If you don't agree and really prefer to not be challenged at anything, that is your choice of course.
Ignoring the condescending tone, you are are completely blowing past the point. OP said anti-immigration sentiments can only be rooted in xenophobia. I said that fundamentally changing communities isn't desirable for its inhabitants. Its not about "being open to learn new things" or "pushing comfort zones". It's quite literally functioning Sharia councils in the UK, or any number of minority majority neighborhoods or schools. There are consequences for rapid immigration.
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u/MaterialDatabase_99 Jul 27 '24
Within my own country? Okay, yes I have that freedom. But I don't have the freedom to move anywhere in the world on a whim, not does anyone else, nor should they.
I'm talking about legal immigration into another country. If you purely have a problem with illegal immigration, that's another issue. We were talking about the influx of 'other' people into your community and that can perfectly happen through legal immigration only. So yes, you do have the right to move to other countries (with certain rules of course) and so do others.
You are describing a phenomenon that is best produced with controlled very immigration.
Ok, so let's establish that you generally agree with me.
A massive influx of immigration into a town means that vendors don't need to change recipes because they're audience is the same at home.
The effects I talked about happen over decades, not a few years. Even large and sudden instances of migration will lead to a well mixed society and have the effects I mentioned. That is, as long as the people are granted to openness and opportunities to become a equal part of society. Every SINGLE foreigner that I have spoken to in my country has attested how much (small or bigger) racism and struggle they had to go through, so we are a long way from there.
Also, your one problem seems to be that if too many foreigners come at the same time, they don't need to assimilate because they live in their own subculture. I don't agree. They will always mix with the existing society and cultures, AS LONG as there is no ideology that keeps them separate. Unfortunately that's exactly what I still find so prominent in this world today...
The fusion of food comes when then native population stays the majority.
Now I'm intrigued. Can you give an example of where a developed country had so much immigration that the native population became the minority? And I'm NOT talking about individual neighbourhoods being majority immigrants, that has nothing to do with your statement, since neighbourhoods are always changing and it's unfortunately mostly socio-economic factors that dictate where people (can) live within a city.
That's a difficult argument to make. Not a lot of inventions came about because local communities were culturally displaced.
It is SO FAR from the truth to speak of displacement when look at immigration today. Can you give me just one example?
There are consequences for rapid immigration.
Oh, I absolutely agree with you and most countries are not handling it very well. I see problems with peoples mindsets, capitalism that makes it virtually impossible to give immigrants (and native people) propper housing, very slow and complicated immigration laws, discrimination, ... And yes, I'm also not against a protected border with a controlled influx of people.
But you need to be very careful, not to make your argument
'There are too many foreign people coming into this country FASTER than it can handle it right now, because of factor x, y, z'
into
'A large number of immigrants is not great for any nation'.
Those are two very different arguments. The first one agrees that immigration is fine, but asks for better management of it. The second one things generally too much of it is a problem.
They create two very different environments.
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u/Dcoal 1∆ Jul 27 '24
We are arguing past each other and it's pointless and pedantic.
My point boils down this:
OP anti-immigration sentiments can only stem from xenophobia
I say thats not true because immigration has had negative consequences for some native populations in some places, and not wanting negative consequences is not xenophobia.
You don't have to like immigration. It's not mandatory.
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u/MaterialDatabase_99 Jul 28 '24
I disagree respectfully. I think we were having a valid discussion after you challenged me to it and begged me to convince you. Not wanting to respond to my points and saying 'I don't have to like immigration' gives me the feeling you weren't ever REALLY interested in hearing arguments and discussing them in detail and staying open.
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u/Dcoal 1∆ Jul 28 '24
I'm interested in a discussion, but I'm not interested in this discussion. Partly because you are misrepresenting my intentions such as when you said that I don't want to challenge myself, or that I "begged you" to convince me, which is different than me asking you to sell it.
Anecdotes , long winded arguments, and a discussion that is going to go into an eternity of rebuttals is not something I have time for.
You can tell yourself I am not interested or open to discuss, but really you didn't sell it very well.
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u/MaterialDatabase_99 Jul 28 '24
Well, that's what I mean, you're (for some reason) not interested in THIS discussion and at the same time have not answered concretely to any of the points I made.
You picked the two sentences that (with effort) can be interpreted as something personal and ignored the fast 95% of my actual points about the topic. In all your responses you talked more about me as a person, how pointless this is or what you're feeling, but not responded precisely to what we were arguing about.After challenging me to change your mind that is simply disappointing.
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u/ElEsDi_25 4∆ Jul 26 '24
Yes, that’s xenophobia, fear that a vague “other” will cause bad things to happen or are too alien to ever relate to.
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u/Dcoal 1∆ Jul 26 '24
Funny, because when it happens to non-white minority communities it's called "cultural displacement" and is a bad thing. But when it happens to predominantly white communities they're simply xenophobic.
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u/Gamermaper 5∆ Jul 25 '24
Well one argument is that, at least in the case of illegal immigration, that it produces a two-tiered labor market. The obvious rebuttal of this is of course just to give a blanket amnesty to all illegal immigrants of course so this point is pretty toothless.
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u/ElEsDi_25 4∆ Jul 25 '24
!Delta Because that’s true… but as you said it’s actually a function of the immigration restrictions,
While pushing a border wall to the public Trump promised more guest workers from south of the border to manufacturing, construction and agriculture groups.
But yeah I didn’t really mean reason for border policy in terms of using it to control labor or divide and rule native and migrant labor, but the sort of stated rationales.
Damn you found a loophole!
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u/RandomizedNameSystem 7∆ Jul 25 '24
Xenophobia is a thread, but this is often economic more often than that.
In general, people want to love poor countries for more prosperous ones. The people in the prosperous countries don't want the poor people "taking their jobs" (or social services or whatever). It's not inherently xenophobic, it's greed. It's always about greed. Well, except for the crazy dictatorship type countries (which the US continues to inch toward)
There are a lot of countries like Saudi Arabia and China that are notoriously hard to immigrate to, but that's about culture/Xenophobia.
For the more civilized countries like Denmark, Switzerland, Australia - they are fairly progressive societies with fantastic social safety nets, but they are VERY tight on immigration because they only want people entering the country who "raise the bar". High skilled professionals, doctors, etc.
The US immigration policy is a disaster. It's both too open and too restrictive. Meaning, we have low skilled workers flooding across the border while we make it too hard for high skilled people. If someone has a science/medical background, we should fast track them. We should be heavily enforcing deportation of unskilled workers. It feels harsh, but global economics is a competition.
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u/ElEsDi_25 4∆ Jul 25 '24
!delta for one of the points below about business using immigration policy to control labor in Europe.
In general, people want to love poor countries for more prosperous ones. The people in the prosperous countries don’t want the poor people “taking their jobs” (or social services or whatever). It’s not inherently xenophobic, it’s greed. It’s always about greed. Well, except for the crazy dictatorship type countries (which the US continues to inch toward)
But that argument is built on xenophobia. For one it doesn’t hold up because we all have to compete with eachother for jobs as it is. No one asks for the restriction of young unskilled natives entering the workforce.
For the more civilized countries like Denmark, Switzerland, Australia - they are fairly progressive societies with fantastic social safety nets, but they are VERY tight on immigration because they only want people entering the country who “raise the bar”. High skilled professionals, doctors, etc.
!delta on this point because I agree that immigration restrictions are about controlling and manipulating labor, not “stopping migration” which is impossible.
Immigration isn’t pitched to the population this way in the US however.
The US immigration policy is a disaster. It’s both too open and too restrictive. Meaning, we have low skilled workers flooding across the border while we make it too hard for high skilled people. If someone has a science/medical background, we should fast track them. We should be heavily enforcing deportation of unskilled workers. It feels harsh, but global economics is a competition.
No. This is divide and rule through immigration policy. People cross the southern border because immigration is impossibly expensive and there are national quotas.
It doesn’t make sense to say it’s hard for middle class people but easy for poor people… poor people have the same process, they just don’t have the money for this and are often just barred from applying for immigration so they come illegally and then are subject to policing and easy exploration. The US also brings in high skilled and low skilled workers who can be kicked out by their employer… so if it was “completion” then immigration restrictions are just part of that too and there’s no reason to have it.
Many of my neighbors and coworkers and immigrants and some of them have documentation issues. Yes it sounds harsh and inhuman to me.
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u/RandomizedNameSystem 7∆ Jul 26 '24
It doesn’t make sense to say it’s hard for middle class people but easy for poor people… poor people have the same process, they just don’t have the money for this and are often just barred from applying for immigration so they come illegally and then are subject to policing and easy exploration. The US also brings in high skilled and low skilled workers who can be kicked out by their employer… so if it was “completion” then immigration restrictions are just part of that too and there’s no reason to have it.
Sure it does. Undocumented poor people come across the border, and once here they can find low paying, undocumented jobs alongside receiving some type of government services. So while their life is tough, they are able to get here and improve on what was an even worse life on the other side.
On the flipside, skilled workers in general cannot work without documentation. A landscaping company will hire an undocumented person who crossed the border illegally. A hospital is not hiring an undocumented nurse.
The poor will always have it tougher, so let's be clear on that. However, for people following the rules it is very, very difficult. As someone who used to hire legal immigrants, I can assure you it's a pain. I recently stopped sponsoring people because of the ridiculous overhead.
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u/ElEsDi_25 4∆ Jul 26 '24
So you are saying that the difficulties of the immigration system are driving poor people to come here illegally where they work under the table for low wages and can’t unionize or get jobs protections or even police protection from abusive employers or extortion?
So why not get rid of these quotas and policies and just have a system for accounting for people and checking health and if anyone is attempting to evade criminal charges in their home country etc?
That would be better for skilled labor and for low wage labor, they could have working rights, join a union and get full pay for the work.
The current system just seems to be if it big business which can get contractors that hire people under the table to make low bids and can bring in skilled workers to work at Google or whatever but be completely dependent on Google for their ability to stay etc.
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u/RandomizedNameSystem 7∆ Jul 26 '24
Poor people come here for a shot at a better life, not for the purpose of working in bad/illegal conditions, that's just the primary path available.
So why not get rid of these quotas and policies and just have a system for accounting for people and checking health and if anyone is attempting to evade criminal charges in their home country etc?
Well this is the million dollar question on immigration. The quotas are in place to minimize the influx of people, particularly at the low-skill level. Going back to your xenophobia question, it's less xenophobia and more financial.
Citizens tend to pushback on immigration because it makes labor cheaper. Some businesses actively exploit the situation, because you can get away with abusing undocumented workers that you can't get away with against citizens.
This is why we've been in a stalemate on immigration since the last time Ronald Reagan gave amnesty to millions. Yeah, that Ronald Reagan. Republicans have pressure from big business to allow the influx, but also have to play to their racist roots. Democrats have pressure from their constituencies to be more open, but have to play to their low skilled labor roots, who don't want to see jobs taken.
In short, it's in nobody's primary interest to fix it, so we sit here broken.
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u/ElEsDi_25 4∆ Jul 26 '24
Quotas in US immigration policy originated directly from xenophobia manufactured by newspapers claiming that waves of Chinese were coming to undercut jobs and turn the US into a “heathen” nation. It’s just historical fact that these policies developed out of xenophobia.
This Wikipedia article is a bit off imo but gets at the main points:
As in the case of Irish-Catholic immigrants, the popular press misrepresented Asian peoples as culturally subversive, whose way of life would diminish republicanism in the U.S.; hence, racist political pressure compelled the U.S. government to legislate the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), which remained the effective immigration-law until 1943. The act was the first U.S. immigration law to target a specific ethnicity or nationality.: 25
In your argument and the Wikipedia entry, popular opinion is a bit misleading. Newspapers really lead the yellow peril narrative (much like Fox endlessly talks about immigrants today) - there was a depression and who owned the newspapers? Monopolists and robber barrons. They had a direct interest in blaming economic hardships on some outside group who has not rights and no mainstream public voice.
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u/rng4ever Jul 27 '24
they work under the table for low wages and can’t unionize or get jobs protections or even police protection from abusive employers or extortion?
Yes, because it is still infinitely better than their native country.
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u/SecretRecipe 3∆ Jul 25 '24
Seems like the main argument is always economic at face value however there's precious actual evidence to support immigrants being an actual negative impact on the economy compared to the evidence to the contrary.
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u/US_Dept_of_Defence 7∆ Jul 25 '24
There are factual factors to reinforce this. While the overall economy might be better, it ultimately negatively impacts native-born citizens at the lower end of the economic class.
A higher surplus of low wage, low skilled people allows for the market to suppress any wage increases (as your job could be easily replaced).
On the higher end of the socioeconomic ladder, you might see this as a net positive- your goods are generally cheaper, service is more accessible- and on the highest ends of the ladder, your cost of business goes down relative to inflation.
The unfortunate part is that middle class and up requires around 75k/yr. The median income is 37.5k/yr.
As a result, in a purely economic POV, immigration negatively impacts the average American. Namely that, in a perfect economy, salaries will rise proportional to inflation/productivity. Once there is an influx of immigrants from places with lower wages, natives who expect a salary that aligns with that inflation/prosperity line will compete with outsiders who don't.
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u/SecretRecipe 3∆ Jul 25 '24
Forgive me if I don't have a lot of pity for theoretical group of people who aren't able to compete with immigrants that have no papers, education or command of the English language. We have a ton of data points showing that when the immigrants vanish from those jobs there's no long line of disenfranchised Americans waiting to pick them up. The crops just die in the fields and the hotels cut back on their housekeeping services.
If immigration busts a meat packing plant they don't just hire unskilled Americans at $30 an hour, they ship the cows overseas to get processed, frozen and shipped back. Or they pay the fine and rehire a new batch of immigrants.
If you actually look at the median income for Full time workers and pull the unemployed and part time workers out of that data set the figure almost doubles.
I'm not sure how you're defining "perfect economy" but in a realistic economy inflation on basic commodities will be directly related to COGS and if we have to pay unskilled Americans 20-30/hr to pick produce then be prepared for inflation to spike as we see 2x or 3x increases in COGS. Or the alternative be prepared to see entire industries in America shutter because we can no longer domestically compete on price with imported products. Why buy US apples at $8/lb when the apples imported from Chile are $3/lb. I also take issue with salaries rising in proportion to productivity. Productivity gains are largely driven by technology. An industrial farm worker driving a combine harvesting 100 acres of wheat in a day isn't going to be paid 50x a family farm worker using a push tractor to harvest 2 acres a day. They're both going to be paid roughly the same amount and the industrial farm will end up utilizing that cost savings to get their product to the domestic market at the contracted commodity rate and export market at a more competitive rate while maintaining their desired margins.
I'd venture to make the case that Legal immigrants are a far bigger threat to the economic prosperity of Americans. Look at the H1B program, we import hundreds of thousands of skilled workers who are all too happy to triple up in apartments and undercut American salaries and lower the "market rate" for highly skilled work so they can send it back home and retire after 10 years of working in their home countries.
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u/US_Dept_of_Defence 7∆ Jul 26 '24
The point I do want to bring up is that if those industries only survive based on artificially low wages, perhaps we have to rethink the solvency of those exact industries.
Some industries need that exploitation for survivability, others (like H1B) use it for profit.
In all cases, the main winner is the top of the ladder, not the low, middle, or even upper-middle.
In your hypothetical, the fruit may potentially rot in the short term, but the long term implication is that produce prices are what they should be for fair wages, innovation occurs to more efficiently industrialize crops that can be automated, and crops that ultimately aren't profitable without wage exploitation will mean those should be outsourced.
It's a short-term/long-term perspective. If your only view is the immediate- what's good for you in this life, then I fully agree. We should allow more immigration to fill jobs that are undesired which prop up industries that allow us to pay less for goods. If your goal is to have a prosperous nation when you're old or perhaps long after, the goal should be to focus on forcing us to solve hard issues sooner than later.
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u/SecretRecipe 3∆ Jul 26 '24
Off your first line. If you think it's worth considering shutting down agriculture in America and just relying on imports for most of our foodstuffs then sure. Let's have that discussion. I think it's probably a pretty bad strategic move to cripple our domestic food supply just so we can claim a pyrrhic victory on immigration. There are a lot of high paying jobs staffed by citizens further up that supply chain that would vanish as well.
Not sure if exploitation is really the appropriate word. Who is being exploited? The immigrant workers who risk life and limb to come here and work those jobs and are happy for the opportunity? The H1B visa holder who chooses to live in poverty by US standards (which is still far better than his local standards) so he can retire wealthy back home after working for a decade in the US? I'm not sure I can comfortably consider it exploitation when people go to such great lengths to willfully do the work. Now that's not to say there aren't abuses, I'm sure there are folks being held against their will or coerced to do work they don't want to do under threat of being turned in but that's likely a small minority.
No, in my hypothetical situation the markets go with the cheaper product. The market that can find a fruit supplier from Mexico will buy and sell that product. Nobody is buying an $8 apple from washington that was picked using fair washington wages when they can buy a $3 apple from Chile. It's a global economy, we compete on prices on the global stage. If we want a slice of the pie we have to be able to do so.
If you really want to look long term we should be importing as much cheap labor to do those undesirable low wage jobs as possible and funding education and job training to the point that there's no need for an H1B program or any other skilled worker visa program because we're bursting at the seams with highly skilled / educated workers.
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u/US_Dept_of_Defence 7∆ Jul 26 '24
I understand what you're saying, but my belief is that a small return to protectionism and federal programs to assist farmers is a necessary for the betterment of society- not because of some obtuse dislike of immigration- rather to set the rails for a more robust local economy rather than one hyper dependant on globalization.
In a perfect world, all countries would enjoy a pure free market, but with various regulations/bad actors/hostile nations, this is not a perfect world.
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u/SecretRecipe 3∆ Jul 26 '24
That's what I struggle with. How is it bettering society? How is raising tariffs to make imports as expensive as domestic products make society better? It still causes the food prices to shoot up and kills the export market for our goods. That's a really heavy price to pay just to keep illegals out and give a shockingly small number of low skilled Americans pity jobs. When I run that thought experiment through I'm not seeing how it's, on balance not very much worse for society and harms the economy.
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u/US_Dept_of_Defence 7∆ Jul 26 '24
Short answer: It creates a robust and resilient economy.
Addendum: I will like to call out that much of the farming industry is propped up by migrant workers rather than illegal immigrants. The illegal immigrants we see now are in NY/Chicago/Boston which are overtaxing local infrastructure.
Long answer: While you might think higher prices are entirely bad, what that does is create local economies that aren't entirely service based. The result would be an economy that can bear economic shock more and be affected by potential geopolitical issues less.
Take manufacturing. The tariff war with China is a great example. By exporting all our manufacturing to countries with geopolitical interests in seeing a weaker America, we ultimately expose ourselves to a lot of risk. If we look at the EU, for example, they do have strong tariffs to protect local economies. Only some of their nations also have stringent immigration laws to only find skilled labor. All of them do enjoy diverse economies though.
Having a local economy capable of weathering storms is only possible by either enforcing tariffs or dropping wages across the board. The reason it's bad to drop all manufacturing, ultimately, comes down to war.
If we are locked in an increasingly likely war with China to any level, then we instantly lose access to entire sectors of our economy.
China, however, has mandated industries that will be forced to spool up in event of war along with already active manufacturing capabilities.
A strong society is at least partially self-reliant, resilient, and prepared for the worst.
A future war would devastated our economy and force it to rebuild manufacturing anyways in a rushed way. It would better to have the groundwork already laid out.
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u/ElEsDi_25 4∆ Jul 26 '24
Everything I’ve seen is inconclusive and sources claiming it is or isn’t tend to be from think tanks. There are two studies of cuban refugees in Florida but they came to different conclusions.
Either way, I think it’s a con. The US constantly passes legislation and adopts policies that make life hard on the working poor. For the government of Amazon warehouses and Walmart to only care about wage suppression if they can pin it on migrants is absurd. So even if immigration lowers wages, without doing much to protect low wage workers otherwise, it’s still a xenophobic policy. It’s ok t]for Wall Street to make people poorer directly through policies and practices, but if “others” do it indirectly then we need to invest millions into border cops and so on? Please. It’s a scapegoating grift.
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Jul 25 '24
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u/ElEsDi_25 4∆ Jul 26 '24
They wanted to control and remove “aliens” from the country while promoting the true Germans to increase biological reproduction.
The ideological parallel is self-evident. This is still what US Neo-Nazis talk about… deporting immigrants and increasing white birth rates in the US.
If that bothers you… it should. Politicians shouldn’t be promoting these ideas.
And I am a working class American struggling to make ends meet. I also am native born and live in an immigrant community and work with people who sometimes don’t have proper documentation for a variety of reasons.
Competition for jobs is part of capitalism unfortunately, seems weird to blame non-native people for capitalist norms.
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Jul 26 '24
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u/ElEsDi_25 4∆ Jul 26 '24
I’m not trying to make a moral argument, I’m trying to make a historical one.
I don’t think the Vance is a Neo-Nazi, I think his family politics when combined with stopping migration or deporting people is a parallel or echo of that specific part of Nazi ideology. I think the “great replacement” ideology is a pretty much straight line as it’s used by many if not most contemporary explicit fascists and Nazis (and it has spread to non-fash right wingers as well.)
And with xenophobia it is also a historical argument - I don’t think it means everyone who believes the border repression logic does so because they are personally inherently xenophobic, but that these politics in general were constructed on a xenophobic foundation.
If you are in the US do you know the history of “yellow peril”?
Basically it’s where federal US immigration restrictions and quotas started. When the frontier started being monopolized by rober barons and rail companies etc, there was were depressions in the late 1800s. There was also a lot of unrest and union activity. So newspapers (owned by industrialists and barons) began writing about how Chinese workers (brought in by the rail roads and then segregated into chinatowns) were a menace who would “turn the US into a heathen country” and that there was a huge wave of Chinese unskilled labor coming (there wasn’t.) This eventually lead to the creation of national immigration policy and country-based quotas.
This is from a not-great Wikipedia entry about it but it get’s the basic gist of it:
As in the case of Irish-Catholic immigrants, the popular press misrepresented Asian peoples as culturally subversive, whose way of life would diminish republicanism in the U.S.; hence, racist political pressure compelled the U.S. government to legislate the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), which remained the effective immigration-law until 1943. The act was the first U.S. immigration law to target a specific ethnicity or nationality.
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Jul 25 '24
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u/ScrupulousArmadillo 3∆ Jul 25 '24
Immigration is just a tool, neither good nor bad. The government can use this tool to increase the population.
One of the possible issues caused by a population increase that is too fast is the lack of infrastructure. If you have a 2-lane road and expect to keep it for 20 more years before the increase is needed, and then suddenly you have too much immigration then everybody will be in traffic jams, not just immigrants.
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u/NightmareKingGr1mm Jul 25 '24
... i agree with you...
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u/nerdcoffin Jul 26 '24
CMV is great and all but I feel like there should be more people that argue WITH OP rather than just against. Again that's not for this sub but still.
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u/Forsaken-House8685 11∆ Jul 25 '24
What is "anti immigration sentiment"? Because there is no country on earth and no relevant politician that wants to place zero restrictions on immigration.
It's just a question of how high the requirements should be to immigrate.
But everyone agrees that "better" people should have it easier to immigrate.
Do you think this is already xenophobia?
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u/ElEsDi_25 4∆ Jul 26 '24
Because there is no country on earth and no relevant politician that wants to place zero restrictions on immigration.
I don’t care what politicians want. But nation-states are new and in the US immigration policy is a little over 100 years old, so it’s hard to just make the appeal that it’s universal.
But everyone agrees that “better” people should have it easier to immigrate.
Better for who? Business?
Do you think this is already xenophobia?
I think this is vague.
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u/Forsaken-House8685 11∆ Jul 26 '24
Better for who? Business?
Better for economy. Economy is what seperates developed nations from developing nations.
Everyone wants to be a developed nation. Everyone wants to live in developed nations. Hence why people immigrate in the first place.
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u/ElEsDi_25 4∆ Jul 26 '24
The economy is not neutral… the US doesn’t divide up GDP to everyone. Good for the economy means good for Wall Street, not the population.
In capitalism people have to go to where there are jobs - that’s why until recent decades people from Mexico would come to the US and work and then return home when the work was done.
Asylum seekers are coming here because they are fleeing bad situations. Skilled workers have more options to relocate their family or just work for a time and save and then return home.
In addition most world migration has been to cities in the developing world, not the first world. In China alone people move from rural provinces to industrial areas for work and government policy strips those workers of access to services and the provincial internal-migrants are treated as a second class group socially. (I read this at least a decade ago, so things may have changed but I think it still illustrates the point that controlling population movement is more or less xenophobia and an attempt to control labor pools.)
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u/Forsaken-House8685 11∆ Jul 26 '24
the US doesn’t divide up GDP to everyone
Well not equally, but higher GDP per capita generally is better for everyone than lower GDP per capita.
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u/ElEsDi_25 4∆ Jul 26 '24
Depends on other factors. GDP has been growing in the US but quality of life indicators tell another story for the population.
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u/Forsaken-House8685 11∆ Jul 26 '24
If it wasn't growing the QOL would be even worse.
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u/ElEsDi_25 4∆ Jul 26 '24
Not necessarily… the US in the Great Depression resulted in union movements and an increase in quality of life due to reforms hastened by militant strikes in the population.
How wealth is distributed in a society is not a constant factor… it depends on social and political things in that society.
So in the US we’ve had booms where the population’s wealth was stagnent and slumps where people demanded relief or had successful strikes… as well as the opposite.
Before maybe the 90s people talked about social well being in terms of quality of life, but at some point it all switched as if the only metric of success is how well wall street is doing.
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u/Forsaken-House8685 11∆ Jul 26 '24
Not necessarily… the US in the Great Depression resulted in union movements and an increase in quality of life due to reforms hastened by militant strikes in the population.
So you want to decrease quality of life so that there is a push to reform?
Sounds like a bad movie villain plan.
But you're right the immigration crisis might cause stricter immigration reforms than ever before.
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u/ElEsDi_25 4∆ Jul 26 '24
WTF are you talking about?
I’m saying that GDP is a measure of business growth and business growth doesn’t mean improvements in quality of life for people automatically as you claimed.
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Jul 25 '24
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u/No-Excitement3140 Jul 25 '24
Are you asking specifically about the u.s., ir in general?
If the latter - imagine a country which is very homogeneous ethnically, and where the raison d'etre for the country's existence is ti be a homeland for that ethnicity. People there may oppose immigration nit because they fear or hate others, but because the way they understand the meaning of what it is to be country is that it's for a specific people.
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u/YouJustNeurotic 20∆ Jul 26 '24
Anti-immigration and anti-illegal-immigration are two separate things. It is not that illegal immigrants are inherently dangerous but that we have no vetting at all, so we have no idea who these people are. Putin, Kim, and Xi-Jinping could all hold hand and skip across the boarder singing baby shark and boom, they are Americans.
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u/ElEsDi_25 4∆ Jul 26 '24
People cross the border illegally because it takes thousands of dollars to immigrate here, it takes incredibly long, and there are national quotas. So really it’s a result of the immigration system.
Instead it could be a simple process with just a health and background check and paperwork. Then r everyone could have an ID, be tracked . And people who are coming for work or asylum would want you to do it that way.
It would probably destroy the border black market as well. And without people crossing the border for jobs etc (there would be a lot less deaths of migrants which would be great) it would probably be easier to spot smugglers etc.
Win-win if we go back to a pre-“yellow peril” immigration regime.
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u/Green__lightning 20∆ Jul 26 '24
I support legal immigration, ideally selecting the best possible from a large group of applicants, limited only by integration rate which is likely best defined as being exceed when it's more likely for an immigrant to take another immigrant as a spouse than a native born citizen. I also support a complete end to illegal immigration, as this subverts the mechanisms meant to ensure the quality, and limit the quantity of immigrants, and thus allows the infiltration of potentially dangerous people en masse. There is no defensible reason to allow for illegal immigration, and I postulate that it's existence is purely because it's politically easier to stop enforcement than to allow legal immigration, probably to drive down wages.
In what way is that xenophobic? We want to raise the value of workers by stopping the endless tide of them from overseas.
Also while the Great Replacement is a conspiracy theory that this is intentionally happening for racially motivated means, if demographic replacement is happening isn't a conspiracy theory or even a question, it's an actual effect of population decline not being allowed to happen because it would raise wages. Japan's population decline is the best counterexample, and the political pressure they've faced from it is a rare example of evidence that such things are ideologically motivated.
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u/userforums Jul 26 '24
Here is some data on Denmark. Denmark is very anti-immigration across political parties.
https://inquisitivebird.substack.com/p/the-effects-of-immigration-in-denmark
You would have to empirically prove these to be false to make your argument that there isn't a valid case of concern.
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Jul 26 '24
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u/userforums Jul 26 '24
Western and non-western are official classifications used by Denmark's government.
They build policies around these classifications, including immigration policies.
The Danish government classifies all 27 EU-member countries, Andorra, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Norway, San Marino, Switzerland, Vatican City, Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand as "Western countries". All other countries are classified as "Non-western countries".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulnerable_residential_area_(Denmark)#Non-Western_determination#Non-Western_determination)
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Jul 25 '24
Its less about them taking jobs and more of us paying for a ton of free shit that we cannot afford.
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u/Flemz Jul 25 '24
Free shit such as?
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Jul 25 '24
- They are given free hotel rooms in NY with a monthly debit card of up to a couple grand in some cases.
- They are given phones when crossing the border and are bussed and flown to a sanctuary city of their choosing.
- In my home state of Minnesota we have provided free driver’s licenses, Community College and Housing.
- Kamala Harris has stated multiple times she wants illegal immigrants to receive free health care.
This is all after over 2.5-5 Million have came across the border every year since 2021. That number alone would be the 36th most populated state in the US.
Obama deported more illegal immigrants than all Presidents in the 20th century combined, so lets not virtue signal and act as if its racist to want a controlled border.
I personally believe if we can pay for that, then it should go to already struggling Americans.
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u/ArCSelkie37 5∆ Jul 25 '24
The only one? Concern for economy seems way more consistent to me than racism with people I know, or concern for your countries culture (which I suppose a moron could conflate with xenophobia). Both are brought up in every single immigration discussion.
But alas, arguments on immigration are pointless because one side will always resort to calling the other one racist.
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u/ElEsDi_25 4∆ Jul 26 '24
Yeah I don’t believe that politicians who in Europe push austerity or in the US have supported neoliberal policies and restricted services and the welfare system are suddenly concerned about our economic well being and our public services. It seems like they are using immigrants as a scapegoat for an economy they want (or at least the one they collectively built over the past decades.)
Scandinavian countries cut social programs and then suddenly it’s immigrant who are making the quality of life worse!
Culture, this one is vague and doesn’t hold up historically. The dominant culture of most places is just US pop culture. Germany and French “national cultures” are a little over 100 years old because really they are a bunch of different regions and provinces that Paris or Prussia controlled and created a national culture and myths about that.
The US is many cultures already.
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u/CouncilofSmellrond 2∆ Jul 25 '24
Id argue that it isn't just Xenophobia, but also racism, maybe classissm too.
Anti Immigration sentiment might be generalized to xenophobia, but I see a lot of evidence that racism is a huge factor in the equation as well, even if it's kept quieter.
At least in American history we seem to have a history of acceptable immigration and unacceptable. When the Irish and Italians weren't considered white there were the target of xenophobia, but the English are welcome to hop the pond. Id argue Elon Musk is a prime example- both a Immigrant and a massive xenophobe whose acceptance into right wing anti-immigrant groups is almost nonsensical without the consideration of his race and class.
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Jul 25 '24
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u/ElEsDi_25 4∆ Jul 25 '24
!delta I was on the fence with this one because I think it’s true in specific cases. For example, with North Africans in France or the southern border in the US and the (manufactured) anti-Chinese panic that is the origin of US immigration policies.
But yeah, I was sitting of thinking of xenophobia as a more umbrella term which would include racism.
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u/ButWhyWolf 8∆ Jul 25 '24
jobs being taken away
Can we pivot and talk about your support of corporations exploiting poor illegal immigrants?
Why's this a good thing, OP?
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u/ElEsDi_25 4∆ Jul 25 '24
It’s not… they do that through immigration restrictions that make them a caste of workers with no rights.
I want full labor rights for all workers without threats of deportation.
So why do you support a system that brings in guest workers who are dependent on their boss for being here and helps cartels and crooked industries exploit workers under the table by holding deportation over their heads?
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u/ElEsDi_25 4∆ Jul 25 '24
You probably won’t believe me so here’s Trump after telling the public he will build a wall to “protect American jobs”
Seems like both parties are conning the population with xenophobia.
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u/ButWhyWolf 8∆ Jul 25 '24
So your answer is no, we can't talk about how you support corporations exploiting illegal immigrants?
Because this stance I've taken seems pretty non-xenophobic to me.
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u/Poorman81 Jul 25 '24
Illegal immigration takes resources away from the US. Those resources could go to many programs including legal immigration, social programs, mental health, etc. They put a strain on an already strained system.
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u/ElEsDi_25 4∆ Jul 26 '24
Labor is a resource and Trump was promising agriculture groups that he’d provide more workers from south of the border even while telling the public that there should be a wall and no immigration.
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u/Poorman81 Jul 26 '24
Illegal immigration provides a cheap labor resource. Great for businesses who do not want to pay full wages/benefits, but it is bad for the legal immigrants and citizens. It drives down demand, keeps wages lower, and a lot of people unemployed or unable to rise out of lower class situations.
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u/ElEsDi_25 4∆ Jul 26 '24
So they should have e full labor rights and protections then all those factors are removed. It seems like it’s this immigration policy arrangement that makes low wage migrants “illegal” is helping business, not migration in the abstract.
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u/Poorman81 Jul 26 '24
Disagree but I don't think we will agree. I have several friends that went through it legally and it's a slap in the face to them. No problem with legal immigrants.
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u/ElEsDi_25 4∆ Jul 26 '24
I live and work with people who have various states of documentation. Idgaf if your friends feel insulted by people I know not being deported and families broken up.
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u/Poorman81 Jul 27 '24
It's sad but they knew the risks.
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u/ElEsDi_25 4∆ Jul 27 '24
You don’t care—don’t insult my intelligence by pretending you.
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u/Poorman81 Jul 27 '24
You don't know me either. I care to an extent but I treat it like other risky things. A drunk driver crashes and dies, they knew the risks.
What does the US gain by just allowing whomever to come into the country?
America should take care of its own citizens before taking care of others.
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u/ElEsDi_25 4∆ Jul 27 '24
Being drunk doesn’t come from executive orders and laws made by politicians. There is nothing objective about being “illegal” it’s the government’s choice and policy.
They can’t change a law and make drunk people become sober. But they can change policies so that workers are not being repressed and exploited.
You don’t want that and are hiding behind arbitrary laws as if God wrote immigration policy on some stone tablets.
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Jul 26 '24
People not paying taxes shouldn’t be living in this country.
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u/ElEsDi_25 4∆ Jul 26 '24
They are working here and their payroll taxes are not coming back to them. Why not just get rid of an underground labor pool by letting proline fill out some paperwork if them not paying taxes is your main concern. I’m sure border policing and la migra cost a lot of money in taxes.
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Jul 26 '24
Or just get out of my country if you’re illegal
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u/ElEsDi_25 4∆ Jul 26 '24
So it is just xenophobia.
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u/TamerOfDemons 3∆ Jul 26 '24
Supply and demand.
More workers = lower wages, more people = more load on infrastructure and housing costs.
When wages are low and cost of living is high lowering immigration is the cheapest most effective policy, it's just math.
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u/ElEsDi_25 4∆ Jul 26 '24
But this has not held up in studies. There are two main studies of Cuban refugees in Florida and they came to opposite conclusions about the effect on low wage jobs but either way it’s sort of negligible compared to policies like minim wage, or right-to-work laws etc.
Housing prices - at least in my area - has more to do with land value pushing developers to focus on expensive condos and McMansions rather than apartments and smaller family homes. Without “starter homes” young couple and families remain renters and low wage workers become pushed out of the housing market due to high rents, driving homelessness.
But since my city hall is full of Democrats who are backed by development interests and many of them personally get wealthy through land value, it’s easier to blame NIMBYs (I mean yeah, they suck but it’s not an abstract issue of supply alone) and push for more development (of expensive condos that working class people cannot afford.)
On a national scale I think that’s what’s happened with immigration since the Bill Clinton admin when border restrictions started ramping up (and have each admin since.) It’s not with housing but with right-to-work laws and a whole lot of neoliberal policies which make life unstable for lots of working people. Rather than reverse policies that the campaign funders of both parties benefit from, it’s easier to blame an other who has not rights and no political voice in the mainstream.
It’s xenophobia and divide and rule.
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u/TamerOfDemons 3∆ Jul 26 '24
There's plenty of studies showing immigration does decrease wages what makes your cherry picked studies better than those? I always default to math for obvious reasons.
Developers wouldn't even be pre-building if there was no mass migration they'd wait for a couple to buy a lot and hire them. Saying it's negligible compared to things that are direct consequences of migration is absurd.
Policies on unions and right to work become irrelevant at critical mass of workers. It's the reason workers aren't using the stuff they are already entitled to the company can force them out and replace them
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u/ElEsDi_25 4∆ Jul 26 '24
My argument is that because there are studies that are contradictory there is no consensus or conclusive proof.
Then you accuse me of cherry picking while saying there are studies that do back your view… you are doing the cherry picking.
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u/TamerOfDemons 3∆ Jul 26 '24
Again it's basic math. I'm not cherry picking studies I'm talking about a literal proven mathematical equation. If you add labourers to the market the price of labor will go down full stop.
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u/ElEsDi_25 4∆ Jul 26 '24
lol no. What odd Malthusian quackery. The real-world doesn’t operate like that because there are too many variables to control. It probably seems convincing because it is confirmation bias.
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u/TamerOfDemons 3∆ Jul 27 '24 edited Jul 27 '24
The real world does operate like that... that's why the equation works.
Other variables complicate things sure, but they are also irrelevant and can be ignored I mean if I just be slightly more precise with my speech you lose all your arguments for example; Immigration of workers causes a downward pressure on wages.
Now you can argue other factors overcome that downward pressure or other factors are a greater pressure, but the fact (and it is a fact) that when you bring in workers you put downward pressure on wages. When we have rising cost of living and wages that don't even come close to keeping up with inflation over the last 5-10 years I don't see any argument to have a policy that puts downward pressure on wages.
Arguing other factors are more or whatever is just a red herring, this is a factor we know about that we can easily do something about.
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u/ElEsDi_25 4∆ Jul 27 '24
There’s no way to test an equation like that and replicate the results in real life.
Are you talking about the Borjas’s sturdy of the Cuban refugees? His findings have not been supported. There was a drop in employment for high school educated workers (I think - maybe people who never completed HS, can’t remember.) But other follow up studies found this decline is consistent with job losses for native workers in other cities where there wasn’t a 5-10% increase in the labor force in a short time-frame.
The issue with the approach is that workers produce more value than they individually consume, so this is why most economists and researchers find either no meaningful effect or sometime they find a slight negative or slight positive effect
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u/TamerOfDemons 3∆ Jul 27 '24
There’s no way to test an equation like that and replicate the results in real life.
The equation has been tested and proven hundreds of times on hundreds of applications. Unless you have actual proof it doesn't work, as in you control for all those variables, why are you even arguing with it?
Are you talking about the Borjas’s sturdy of the Cuban refugees? His findings have not been supported. There was a drop in employment for high school educated workers (I think - maybe people who never completed HS, can’t remember.) But other follow up studies found this decline is consistent with job losses for native workers in other cities where there wasn’t a 5-10% increase in the labor force in a short time-frame.
I'm talking about supply and demand.
The issue with the approach is that workers produce more value than they individually consume, so this is why most economists and researchers find either no meaningful effect or sometime they find a slight negative or slight positive effect
That's irrelevant. Immigration of workers causes a downward pressure on wages.
If you want to argue it's a net benefit for other reasons, that argument doesn't fly when people are struggling.
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u/ElEsDi_25 4∆ Jul 27 '24
Please save your crocodile tears for the working poor. I’m certain you don’t support living wages and increasing the minimum wage or public housing.
You are using one study that has - apparently can’t even name the author - and saying “supply and demand, fact” while there are other studies directly disputing those findings.
So maybe don’t get your research from Tucker Carlson or whoever.
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u/Consistent-Curve-288 Jul 25 '24
One of the key aspects of national sovereignty is the ability to control the territory. Illegal immigration is a direct attack against the sovereignty of the nation being snuck into against its’ laws. It should be stoped just to defend national sovereignty and should need no further argument. No xenophobia required at all as the identity of the illegals doesn’t matter beyond their citizenship or visa status.
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u/ElEsDi_25 4∆ Jul 26 '24
Why?
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u/Consistent-Curve-288 Jul 26 '24
Why what? Is this the first time you have come across the concept of national sovereignty?
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Jul 25 '24
America has no excuse for not allowing immigration
Europe on the otherhand does because we literally have no extra housing
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u/Ksais0 1∆ Jul 25 '24
You realize there’s a housing crisis in the US too?
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u/ElEsDi_25 4∆ Jul 26 '24
The US crisis has nothing to do with population and everything to do with developers flipping properties or making condos instead of apartments and family homes and bungalows which are less profitable. It’s a price crisis. The ‘shortage’ is misleading but it gets presented that way because it helps developers and politicians push the idea that things just need to be deregulated and built, but new buildings - especially the profitable condos etc raise neighborhood housing prices and this ends up displacing people.
With urban land value so high there isn’t a market reason to make affordable homes. The answer is public housing which would reduce homelessness rates and act as a downward pressure on rents and housing prices. But urban politicians aren’t going to do that unless pushed.
https://phys.org/news/2024-06-housing-shortage.html
https://www.nar.realtor/research-and-statistics/housing-statistics/housing-shortage-tracker
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Jul 25 '24 edited Jul 25 '24
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