Decades of talkings heads offering an explanation for rural decline, that’s how. Look back to Rush Limbaugh and his predecessors.
The irony is rampant immigration (and our tolerance to it) was an economic miracle for the US, an envy of the world. We’d be facing a population cliff like S Korea, Japan, China or Russia without it. But now that’s coming for us too :(
Definitely a misdirect from the corporate takeover of everything.
I grew up in a shitty small rural town, but while I was in high school I watched the shitty “mom and pop” stores slowly disappear and the local factory vote against unionization only to be closed a few years after I moved away. You know what immediately moved in to fill the void? Wal-Mart and Dollar General.
My dad was so focused on immigrants taking his job and other insane republican economic talking points that he lost that job when the company decided it wasn’t cost effective to operate in the US anymore.
You must have lived down the street from me. We had a few mom and pop joints, two local restaurants, and "the plant". They didn't get Walmart but now they've got the world's worst Dairy Queen, the world's second worst Sonic, and two different brands of dollar store.
The "population cliff" is a made up boogeyman for capitalists. That's because they've relied on population growth for market growth. What's the harm in population stagnation or even decline?
And I don't want to hear about young people supporting aging populations. That's a man-made problem that has solutions. Just not the kind of solutions capitalists can abide. (and if you think about it, it's a temporary issue anyway).
And I don’t want to hear about young people supporting aging populations. That’s a man-made problem that has solutions.
Well, okay. I have a bridge to sell you.
Look. Everything is a “man made” issue with solutions.
It doesn’t matter what economic system we want or have; fact is something has to put a ton of work into taking care of old folks, unless you kill them off or let them rot. Hope and ideology isn’t going to fix one’s body/mind, and that has nothing to do with capitalism.
…Will we automate the problem away some day, WallE/Star Trek style? Sure. That’s the goal. But we aren’t close to there yet. Overloading the young taking care of the old IS our short term problem, and we have plenty of land to support a growing population with room for expanding conservation, as long as we don’t do stupid shit like ranch excessively and expand oil. Then we can level off the population. But we can’t do any of that if entire counties collapse from the pressure/burden of support.
But okay. Let’s say tomorrow, every country on the planet rises up, abandons capitalism, and embraces cooperative economics, with a magic snap of the fingers. That’d be great.
But we continue to let populations in developed countries age.
Then what?
How does that change the needs of elderly folks at all? How does that change the math of young people needing to devote more and more of their energy to them?
Reducing overconsumption and overproduction will help a ton. We do not need nearly as much stuff as we are currently consuming. In addition, there are a lot of jobs these days that are just.. not necessary. Take advertising for example, or all the job positions that are all about how to fuck over the consumers the most, then all the energy and work into fixing it or counteracting it, everything that is done not because it's efficient, but because it's profitable
We are far far more productive today than we ever were before in human history. It's all about prioritization
We aren’t even close to post-scarcity in, say, healthcare. Keeping people alive and healthy is expensive and labor/education intense, even without the current structural inefficiencies.
Distributing healthy food is not trivial either, which ties into that.
You also shouldn't overlook just how much is done because it's profitable, and not efficient, though
The simple example is of course enshittifying services. But it's also things like making 30 different versions of chips and candy and so on while putting lots of resources into preventing local homeless people from stealing any of the food they need for survival. Investing lots of research in making hyper-palatable foods that are addicting instead of how to make more efficient logistics towards everyone.
And then there's of course the part where it being a competitive system means stopping others from making use of your research/effort and sharing things, because that means more and stronger competition, which leads to doubling of efforts and so on..
And I mean, I could go on, but the point is that, if you look closely enough, you'll start seeing this everywhere. Inefficiencies made in the name of competition and profit seeking, not what is actually good for society and would be considered a job done well. A restructuring of society would help massively. From paying medical specialists more and making their jobs more tolerable instead of squeezing as much profit as possible, to opening up more human resources from other areas of society which could in theory help out more either directly or in the peripherals
We are massively massively more productive today than in the past. There is no excuse
And yeah, of course it isn't the be-all end-all. But I would argue it would help more than it might seem on the surface. Directing resources towards where they are needed, and not just where they are profitable
Keeping people alive and providing healthy food is not as expensive as it's made out to be. Socialism for the wealthy, now that's expensive! Elon Musk could feed the entire world three times over! And there are lots of solutions, money just doesn't back them.
For example, Holland had two issues. College students didn't have places to live or couldn't afford places, and they didn't have enough people taking care of the elderly. So they put them together, the students have a place to live and the elderly are being taken care of. It was just something they tried and the results were spectacular!
The problem in the states is that we don't even TRY ANYTHING! We have more resources than smaller countries and we don't even try. We could try 50 different solutions in 50 different states, use the scientific method to measure the results, and then implement the methods that worked. We could even try thousands of different solutions by trying different methods in different counties of each state. But instead, we CHOOSE to continue to argue and bicker between ourselves. What a waste of time and energy!
I agree that the capitalists economy is a complete scam. Americans are so used to having so much land, that we just continue to shit up as much as we want and then move on to shit up another area. The earth cannot support continued population growth, especially with climate change. And even America will eventually run out of land to shit on. Other smaller countries have to respect what land they have and how to use because it's limited. We could learn a thing or two from these smaller countries.
Population decline has little to nothing to do with immigration. It's just affordability. Anytime the lower and middle classes (most of the population) are doing well, people have more kids.
In France we have the "30 glorieuses", 30 years of unprecedented economical growth. Guess who came and worked tirelessly to make it happen? And guess who waxes poetic about this blessed moment in time?
Of course the difference is that at the time, the immigrants lived in slums outside major cities, and they knew their place if you catch my drift.
Hateful branding is always easier than inclusive branding. Just think about how many different words Americans have historically used for black people: all "they" have to do to turn a positive term into a slur is to say it with a sneer.
Because any kind of minority is inferior to white straight people and they're the reason for every ill in the world today.
It's truly just racism. It's worked for 4000 years, since the establishment of civilizations.
"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." - LBJ
There is a huge portion of the country, about 1/3, that knows they aren't living the American dream, but they work hard and don't understand why.
Then, someone tells them something slightly true. That there's not enough pie to go around (semi-true), and that the reason there's not enough pie is all the immigrants and freeloaders who aren't working and are taking handouts (false).
What they aren't told is there could be enough pie to go around, if the top 1% was willing to share. They aren't. And they now control ~35% of wealth in the USA.
And then the top 1% uses that extra capital to tell that 1/3 of people that their Hispanic neighbor is the problem.
I often give the benefit of the doubt towards minorities. My internal hope is that since they are a minority, they surely have experienced bigotry, reflected on it as victims, and rejected that spirit.
That mentality of mine has been completely shattered over the last couple years. The majority of the immigrants I have known have floored me with their bigotry towards so many others. It has made me curious: Are they attracted to that part of our culture? Is this the predominant spirit of the world? What the hell does it mean?
the issue is you thought people were better than they are. they aren't.
but we can't make any progress until we are open about who and what we really are. the lefties and the righties are both in total denial about the complexity of the world and put forth this vague bullshit idealism about who and how people are suppose to be.
most the of the rich white enlightened liberal/leftie set are incredibly sexist, racist, and bigoted towards others who aren't like themselves. their discourse and ideals are mostly about signally to each other they are part of the 'good people' and it's all the 'bad people' who are those things. by forming and out-group you get to get to pretend you have 'purged' the 'bad' by projecting it onto 'others' who don't share your views or lifestyle. but everyone does this. everyone hates some 'other' bad group of people in order to claim their group is 'good'. every immigrant group thinks they are the 'hard working' group and the other are 'lazy exploiters'.
the issue is you thought people were better than they are. they aren’t.
I am very cynical, but my hope is that we can collectively improve our situation. I pull my hair out when people keep playing their tribal games. All they have to do is reason it out.
I have prejudices that are wrong. I know that they are wrong. I know the kind of futures that will never exist if I exercise them. I don’t know, if it’s nature or nurture.
for someone to not be that way takes decades of specific training and a life of abundance. most people are never going to have that. most people don't perceive their life as being abundant, even if it objectively is.
Before you judge too harshly, remember that they can't physically vote and probably don't know as much about politics. It is very easy to fall into right-wing pipeline under these conditons.
More importantly, them not being able to vote means they don't effect you as much as some people want you to believe.
A lot of democrats blamed immigrants for the 2024 election results and there was a tiktok trend of reporting the unrelated immigrant neighbors to ICE.
Naturalized citizens can vote. First generations can vote, and children mostly align with their parents’ beliefs.
I am not anti-immigration. At all. I am against intolerance. I am against anyone who would abuse a country’s asylum system, because it will lead to end of such lifelines.
I’m becoming more curious about whether there are biases in the type of person who chooses to immigrate (excluding refugees) to the US.
This is how it plays out locally:
I live in a low cost of living town in Northeast PA. Our area has historically not been very diverse. Over the past 20 years they've ben building a lot of huge warehouses and distribution centers in our area to take advantage of the low cast of living. The industrial parks in the area all competed with each other to land these "job-creating" warehouses, and they competed by offering tax-free deals for x number of years.
So they build these warehouses, and when they hire, everybody apart from the 4 managers are hired part time, and can only work up to max of 28-30 hrs per week, to prevent the company from owing them any kind of health care retirement. Mostly, the only people desperate enough to move here for those jobs are immigrants, and since there's no attachment to one warehouse or another, as soon as there's slightly better offer, they move right on out. Our schools are getting hammered because their tax revenue hasn't increased, but instead of of 1-2 new students per year in a grade level, they're dealing with 5-6 new kids per WEEK, and a good number them come in with little to no English. Frequently, the families have to separate to get here, and that just makes everything even harder.
Now, if you're not paying too close attention, you look at the area compared to 20 years ago, and think,
There are more immigrants
The school have less money and test scores are down
Crime is worse
Wages are unliveably low
...
Immigrants did it
The "nice" thing is if you own a warehouse, you don't even need to spend any money "convincing" people to blame immigrants, you just make a bunch of money, pay them as little as possible, and watch the nightly news talk about all the danger and crime in the area.
lemmy users just call anyone who disagrees with them slightly on any social or political issue a Nazi. especially if they argue that those issues are complex and multifaceted instead of being a black/white moral issue.
immigration is complex. what is the 'correct' volume and distribution of immigration to allow? most people don't even attempt to go there because whatever answer you provide will get you called racist. should American immigration policy, for example, favor people from Latin America over people from southeast Asia? there might be good and clear reasons why... but if you dare to argue or explain those reasons you are going to be considered an anti-Asian racist. should certain groups based on wealth/income, religion, language skills, etc be given favorable status over others?
The current system has it's winners and losers already. But even acknowledging that is not an issue that most commentators are willing to touch, because they will be pejoratively labeled for doing so.
When you get into the details of this it's hard not to get dirty. Thus people only want to talk about it at a very high level where 'immigration good' or 'immigration bad' is the only discourse.
To be honest every issue is becoming like this on Lemmy. Either you parrot the emotionally satisfying far left narrative or you are the enemy. Don’t dare criticize the left from within, or point out complexities in issues. I prefer the left leaning bent of this place to the alternative, but I’m tired of the lack of subtle thought and intellectual honesty. If this is a place for teenagers to cut their teeth on political sentiment, fine, but I suppose I’ll eventually cycle out because that’s not what I came for.
My favorite is when MAGAts claim immigrants are taking our jobs, while also claiming immigrants are sucking off the government teat getting free rent, healthcare ect because they are too lazy to work. Schrödinger's immigrant.
It's one of the better reasons why a national divorce from the blue states and red states sounds like a better and better idea each and every day into this administration.
Vermont at least has a cool progressive city that elected Bernie Sanders for mayer 3 times before becoming a senator, and Graham Platner is a progressive, rockstar senate candidate in Maine, so there's some redeemability there IMO. The real zit to pop in the northeast would be New Fucking Hampshire.
It'd be a pain in the ass to workout a divorce, but I think it'd be a whole lot easier than dealing with the fucking deathtrap we're heading into. Not to mention some redemption on the global stage for better relationships with our virtually former allies? "See, we are not with those fucking assholes! And we got all the money!"
I live in a blue state and while I definitely do not want to live in a dictatorship, I am also not ok with abandoning the impoverished in the red states to that either. Just because the government of the red states are idiots doesn’t mean the population is worthy to be sacrificed.
I'd be in agreement with you before the 2024 election when I still some semblance of a belief in bipartisan left. But now, not so much; I learned that Republicans / MAGA are in a fascist death cult, and are in fact demons that we share the country with.
But common, we're not demons. There'd are red state refugees that'd make great blue state people whom we can take in.
The other major problem with this idea though is that the state with the most Republicans is California. So you need to deal with the fact that it's largely an urban/rural divide, not a state/state divide. But even then Maine and Vermont have extremely liberal rural areas that buck that trend too. And optimistically I sometimes think most Republicans are victims of propaganda and that they don't deserve to be left behind as a result of being manipulated by the wealthy.
They have a point though. Musk did indeed take the US president's job for a while and was simultaneously living off welfare (gov subsidies for his private businesses). Oh and according to his brother, he's an illigal immigrant too.
I mean fuck them and everything truly, but is this really such a paradox? It’s not like both can’t be true: say the men get jobs and the women and children get welfare. Or some immigrants take jobs and some are lazy and don’t. You can even get welfare while working if you are poor enough.
I’m just saying - trying to fight this mindset by calling it an impossible paradox will not work because that doesn’t even make basic sense. I know you’re only parroting what’s been said in a million tweets, so I’m not blaming you for inventing this idea. Just maybe stop repeating it like it’s a super clever gotcha. It isn’t.
If immigrant families are getting benefits when adults in the household are working jobs, this means they are below the federal poverty line that makes them eligible. (Usually if a child was born in the US to immigrant parents, the family will qualify for some benefits because the child is an American citizen.) This means that immigrants are working jobs where they are being underpaid, because no American in their right mind would want to work a job that pays wages below what it takes to stay alive. The narrative that these people are getting free benefits, and Americans aren't is a bullshit narrative. Immigrants aren't stealing jobs; their labor is being exploited in positions Americans don't want.
Illegal immigrants do not get welfare. Undocumented immigrants cannot receive things like cash assistance, food stamps (SNAP), Medicare, or regular Medicaid.
The average American eats tacos with pre shred cheddar and sour cream. And it's not bad, I like some Americanized foods, I liked Taco Bell before it became more expensive than getting the real thing. Most haven't had a Mexican taco.
For anyone here, who isn't satisfied with "white people taco night" and wants something better, I found a wonderful woman who is sharing her cooking knowledge from her beautiful outdoor Mexican kitchen:
our shit wouldn't be as cheap however and nothing is stopping people from building enough housing save the desire to keep prices artificially high. Lacking demand they could have just built less to maximize their gain. Given more demand yet they could have built more but little enough to again maximize gain. Seeing a pattern here?
nothing is stopping people from building enough housing save the desire to keep prices artificially high
I don't know where you're located. I live in a big European city. The space here is limited. The new housing is mostly being built outside of the city really, and it will take years for it to get the proper treatment (like buses, trams, metro line). The immigrants are directly competing with me for the in-city apartments. This could be different if you're located in, IDK, Iceland, where the space is not really a problem, or in USA where you don't have public services.
our shit wouldn’t be as cheap
Our cheap shit is imported from cheap countries though?
Given more demand yet they could have built more but little enough to again maximize gain
In 10 to 20 years. But the problem of competing for limited resources is now. Seeing a problem here?
The space here is limited... The immigrants are directly competing with me for the in-city apartments.
More desirable locations will be too expensive for many, or most, people to afford. As local economies change, and different locations become desirable, people will be priced out and forced to move. Good city planning decisions can slow this down to allow people to adapt, but trying to freeze things in place is futile.
It's not really possible to set up city planning regulations so the population stays exactly the same. If a city were successful in making itself an undesirable place to live so that no one new would move there, it would probably start losing its population, which (like growth) forces its own hard planning decisions.
Seems like a good reason for unions and worker protection
Yes. There's not enough unions in the EU and the power is overwhelmingly favouring the employers (interestingly that is the effect of allowing mass immigration into the EU: more workers who didn't unionise and were willing to work more hours for less money tends to weaker the worker class power; I have no idea how to give us more power short of literally eating the rich). I don't even want to think how shit the worker situation is in the USA.
No, not at all. Most Americans aren’t being threatened by immigrants. There are a few places where the uber rich immigrants flock to, but people in Average America, Iowa aren’t competing with immigrants.
Immigrants create more jobs due to an increased need for services. Immigrants are a net positive to an area, and they can fill in skill gaps.
Capitalists can keep wages low by rigging the game via bribing politicians to reduce social programs. They don’t need immigrants to do that. They need immigrants as scapegoats. They need people to buy into their warped view of the world, and they need people to turn against each other, like you’re doing here.
Capitalists use sticks, live poverty, homelessness, and healthcare, to keep people inline and eating up their bullshit. Without the sticks, the capitalist have no power, and they know this.
I was thinking on this just the other day. Without immigration, and native people alike, we wouldn't have such good food. How can't you hate people with such good food!?
It puts downward pressure on wages. That pressure is way overblown by Republicans and there are plenty of solutions to address it that don't involve sending icestapo in to break up families though.
Pretending that this pressure doesn't exist just makes people like us who want to stop this seem out of touch to the normal person who has concerns about immigration, which the election showed is a very large chunk of Americans and westerners in general.
These concerns should be addressed by showing the relative magnitude of the problem compared to benefits gained from immigration along with solutions for stagnating wages, not outright dismissal.
This is not the fault of immigrants. It's the fault of billionaires exploiting one of the most vulnerable people in the country for profit. It only exists because of capitalist greed.
No, this one can't solely be blamed on billionaires. They're hired by all manner of private companies, the majority of which are not owned by billionaires.
First of all, no, all illegal are not hired by billionaires, that a really stupid thing to think.
Second, Republicans are the ones who took healthcare from 17 million Americans to give tax cuts to billionaires. So take your "both sides" bullshit and shove it.
People hardly ever bring up how any company that knowingly hires illegal immigrants should be fined out of business. But of course it’s the workers that must face the consequences.
It's impossible to have that conversation. The left will fight against it to protect the immigrant, and the right will fight against it to protect the business, the result is that it's politically incorrect to talk about on both sides.
They are willing to work for less than a normal American living wage. This reduces the amount that an American can work for for the same job. Globalists love this.
They bring and establish a different culture eroding a way of life that is considered American.
Those are two things I think someone might say about immigrants. Additionally, there's general disdain for the poor and many immigrants come here to escape worse poverty.
In some instances, particularly in the American South and in some European cities, a large influx of immigrants has proven disruptive to local culture as well.
But as the son of a roofer, I can confirm, #1 has historically been an issue. My dad's business, when he was still able to roof houses, was often undercut by illegal crews giving lower bids.
Of course the answer is a legit path to citizenship and resources to help people assimilate more easily and without fear, not Gestapo shit, but immigration, like abortion, is an issue that is purposely never resolved, and it never will be. This is a golden goose issue for Republicans, just like abortion is a golden goose issue for Democrats. They simply make too much money in donations and are able to grift all the public money they want in order to pretend it's being solved, and therefore, have no real motivation to fix it.
just like abortion is a golden goose issue for Democrats.
Not anymore. That's also not an equivalence. One side rails against illegal immigrants while hiring them at the same time. The other side wants to protect a woman's right to choose. You don't see how those are different?
Yes, immigrants drive down wages is the biggest issue. The second is if you bring in a large enough glut of 1 type of immigrant all at once (like refugees for a real world example) they can establish an insulated community and not actually join "the mixing pot."
There are obviously a lot of positives and neutral points as well, but everything has a give and take. The biggest positive is that children are a pure drain on society but an immigrant doesn't need schooling or rearing. They can simply begin working (for that lowered wage).
This is less of an issue in America than it is in Europe, and I think it comes down to religion. The immigrants to the United States are generally more likely to adjust and conform since American culture is highly syncretic, and refugees are more likely to be Christian and meld into the predominantly Christian Unites States.
European immigrants are more likely to be Muslim, which clashes with European customs, cultures, and ideals. This is why they form such tight, insular communities where they can control the communities customs and ideals. You see this in Muslim and Jewish communities in the United States as well but it is less pronounced.
it's also true in both cases that after the third generation the insularity disappears, outside of extremist groups, like hasidics, etc. most children of who came to Germany in the 1970s are now more or less integrated and fully german because they have been there for generations. Just like Italians and Irish in America. I'm a third generation immigrant and i'm fully integrated, whereas my grandparents very much were not as integrated and saw themselves as irish/italian more than american.
New York added 33,000 homes in 2024 and gave permits for 15,000 new ones but you still see extremely low vacancy rates and high demand outpacing these constructions.
3- housing and rents go up in every city with more migrants because it's workers who just want to rent now right here at any cost compared to a city where people settle in owned houses.
4- they sent most of their earnings outside to their countries to help their families there compared to citizens who pay it all on their local economy. and if they were illegal, not even pay taxes while using and benefiting from most your services. However, the true leechers who pay no taxes are in fact the super wealthy.
In a broader picture again, it's actually corporations and property owners who benifit the most from illegals or cheap migrant B-visa workers, and crowded cities and higher rents and housings. So ironically the rich are the ones who benefit from immegrants the most specially in areas with high local unemployments and low wages. Then they use the narrative that these dirty unassimilated immigrants who dont speak your language or share your culture are ruining your city to distract the blame from them.
There's also the fact that whether or not the undocumented are illegally voting in national elections, states currently receive representation in Congress based on their total population, not citizen population. Which is a strong motivator for blue sanctuary states and cities to want open borders, and for conservatives to push for legal deportations. This is a power struggle.
There’s also the fact that whether or not the undocumented are illegally voting in national elections
They're not.
Also, California and New York have lost House seats in recent reapportionments despite having large undocumented populations, because people are moving out of those states. That counters your argument.
There are a ton of illegal immigrants in red states, because people hire them there. It's not some one-sided conspiracy to get more House representation.
That really only applies if it's difficult for the immigrants to become citizens (ie undocumented) or if their immigration status is tied to their employment (ie h1b) that artificially drive down the value of their labor. The current setup is basically indentured servitude with extra steps.
Theoretically. But. Not really true.
We know who devalues labor. It's the companies that only pay the bare minimum wage cause it's the law. Otherwise they wouldn't.
It's the companies that pay under the table to desperate people so they can avoid paying them the legal amount and often commit wage theft and there is nothing undocumented people can do about it.
Exploitative businesses are the ones devaluing labor.
Sure, but if almost nobody will do the job for minimum wage except for immigrant workers, should those businesses be allowed to exploit those workers instead of paying the wage they would need to staff their businesses?
Even though the businesses are the "guilty ones" it seems more like a policy issue than a business one, as the business will always do the bare minimum it can get away with. Especially egregious with temporary foreign worker programs. Why have programs that essentially subsidize industries that just exploit minimum wage workers and depress wages? And now racist assholes have a scapegoat in the people accepting the bad deal instead of the people who allow it in the first place.
I know you're joking, but illegal immigrants do kill people, just at a lower rate than the general population.
A big part of the problem is that if you're an illegal immigrant, then you have a huge incentive to keep your fucking head down and not be noticed.
So you don't notice the vast majority whose only crime was illegally entering the country. Meanwhile, the ones who do commit crimes make national news because some people have an agenda in spreading that type of news.
My brother, who dropped out of school, lays carpet. He is very mad about immigrants "takin' our jerbs". He is also not a very good employee and miserably failed when he tried to start his own business...he wanted to be the boss without doing any work himeself... I imagine most people have made poor life choices and just need someone to blame.
I had a pretty funny discussion where someone was like "they're bussing them in so they vote democrat!" And I was like, but they're not registered to vote. "Well the democrats want to change that." But most immigrants lean heavily republican, and are anti immigration as well, sort of a pull up the ladder behind you thing. "Well because even they know what the democrats are doing is stupid!"
And then 5 minutes later they're saying the first line, when they just agreed the exact opposite is true... it's like the facts are only true if it supports the argument that they're making at that exact instant
Having worked on local issues such as homelessness I can tell you that it is not a both sides issue much like most politics in the US. You have the progressives that are using evidence and best practices to deal with problems and you have conservatives who just want them out of the community.
That is why you are so funny to me, because you lack any real world experience and you think all sides are the same.
right, my years of working in non-profits and in housing policy clearly mean i'm an ignorant fool. and some internet tough guy slinging insults is clearly smarter than me.
progressives shoot themselves in the foot constantly due to their lack of being unable to acknowledge the harshness of reality. they ignore evidence all the time because they are paranoid of being labeled racist or looking bad. they care more about the optics of pretending to care than they do about pragmatic solutions to social problems. and they overwhelming don't support effective policies because those policies when the policies don't fit their narrative that all human beings wonderful and good by default. they lack the balls to make hard choices in a world with finite resources and often just throw up their hands that make a choice that might upset someone, because they'd rather homeless people starve on the streets than their housing values drop slightly by allowing a homeless shelter to expand their bed capacity.
I am glad to hear you have spent a lot of time working with nonprofits. Giving your time to organizations trying to help is admirable for sure.
First, progressive are the only ones who acknowledge the harsh reality which is why they are for things like harm reduction. Housing first, a very successful progressive housing program, challenges misconceptions about homelessness and has already proven itself effective.
Second, I have not seen any evidence in my lifetime that proves racism is right. In fact, progressives don't have to worry about any evidence that would make them look racist because there is none. Race itself is a societal construct with no science backing at all.
Third, Progressives care about measurable results. That is the point, to improve things through change. That is why a homeless programs will be evaluated for effectiveness with multiple metrics. Often times you find out something is not working so you change it and evaluate it again.
Your view of progressives is driven by feelings and not facts. I think ultimately you have just constructed a boogeyman to keep yourself from realizing the conservatives are the problem by both siding and using human nature as a convenient scapegoat.
I suppose you might think progressive=neo liberals. Neo liberals are certainly no friend to the homeless. They, just like the conservatives, use homelessness as punishment.
That was almost literally what the german chancellor recently said. Roughly translated: we already deported a lot of people but we still have this problem with "how it looks in the cities" (Stadtbild).
The main thing immigrants bring is change. Change to the culture, the language and all of that. In general, people don't like change. But it is well established that not changing means a culture will be left behind.
Well, large tech corporations often cut costs by falsely listing impossible to meet job descriptions and then use that to ask the government for an excuse to hire a foreign worker, who they will hire despite not meeting the job descriptions either, but is willing to work for a fraction of what the domestic worker can afford to live on.
So there is that
But that's not the fault of those immigrants, who are just looking for a better opportunity; that's on the corporations abusing a system that is supposed to improve the domestic economy by bringing in top talent to American industry, not by displacing domestic employees and depressing wages.
And uh, also, the conservative wing and the administration isn't really upset about that at all, either.
I live in Canada. While it is not the fault of individual immigrants, even the Government of Canada and big banks have admitted that abuse of the International Student and TFW programs has put a lot of strain of public infrastructure and housing supply and has suppressed wages. These issues have absolutely objectively affected the average Canadian.
Every now and then you get someone on social media try to be smart and smugly say something like, "International Students can't afford to buy a house. Explain to me how they're driving up the cost of housing." But they fail to realise it increases demand for rentals, and people buy single family homes to rent the rooms to those students, and so the demand for those rentals drives up the cost of houses.
You can acknowledge that not all immigration is good without blaming individual immigrants themselves. I'm always shocked when people who understand infinite growth is a fallacy when it comes to the corporate world, don't understand that trying to grow the population into infinity year after year is just the government equivalent of that fallacy.
Yeah this is so accurate or hurts that people don't get it, or go the opposite way and blame the migrant.
I was teaching in a college from 2021-2024 and by the time I left my classes were at least 95% international students. The greed of our higher education institutions has caused a massive problem.
It's a lack of nuance. Higher rates of population growth can be good, if pressure points like housing are planned for with zoning and permitting systems that promote densification in popular locations. The badness is neither the additional people nor the housing regulations individually, but instead is that they don't match.
Also, there's a lot of racism in the mix. The people with legitimate concerns about growth planning (or the lack thereof) end up mixed in with the people who are horrified at the idea of their racial group becoming a minority of the country's population.
I’m always shocked when people who understand infinite growth is a fallacy when it comes to the corporate world, don’t understand that trying to grow the population into infinity year after year is just the government equivalent of that fallacy
Sure "the higher rates of population growth" can be good. Usually for the wealthy and or privileged classes though, and ultimately always they don't solve the underlying issue causing the original problem.
Equating advocacy for planning for projected near- and middle-term population changes with advocacy for "infinite" growth is exactly the lack of nuance that frustrates me.
Most of the things people listed in this comment section isn't a problem with immigration, but a problem with greedy rich people. Immigrants just get falsely labeled with these problems. Chop off the heads of the rich along with their entire bloodline and we'd have a lot less issues.
There is a TON of anti-immigrant propaganda. Whenever the economy is shit -- which it often is now, because of the massive disparity between rich and poor -- immigration is an easy target.
It's easy to say things like market rates for labor are lowered due to an influx of immigrant labor, or that immigrants are taking jobs. There is a good case to be made that things like the H1-B program do artificially lower wages and do mean that there are fewer jobs for citizens -- but the spin is always against the immigrants and never against the companies exploiting them.
Yeah, the problem has always been that we've given illegal immigration an easy system to exploit by having people out there employing them for less and paying under the table to avoid taxes and insurance. The whole solution that's happening is equivalent to rounding up drug users while letting dealers go free, it makes no sense. There needs to be stiff penalties for employing people illegally. If there's no jobs available, people will be less inclined to live and work here illegally.
Why things are the way they are we can attribute to whatever anyone wants, racism, capitalism, whatever. I'll just lump it under people being shitheads and regular people paying for it.
They and their families are operating convenience stores 24/7 for about $5/hr because existing Americans refuse to experience this thankless task!
Oh noes!
They're wrongfully attributing to the immigrants what should be attributed to corporations, businesses and the extremely wealthy who are exploiting and trafficking immigrants.
And the wealthy help conservatives get elected, and conservatives demonize immigrants, and on and on it goes with half the country being mad at the wrong people.
It does keep wages down on a lot of blue collar manual labor jobs. That's about it, but that does happen with a certainty. I used to work new construction housing. Framers, drywallers, cement layers, and roofers etc either work for less money, or end up not working because the company with Mexican laborors making $5+ an hour less underbids everyone else and the "builder" subcontracts out to that operation.
It's why so many of those laborors don't want immigrants. They see it directly effecting them, while so many others are completely ok with immigrants. It doesn't effect most other people's paycheck and it doesn't raise prices of anything they buy.
Also, many of those guys (the immigrants) aren't trying to support and care for families in the US. They have families they're supporting in Mexico and the guys up here working house themselves up cramped and send money down to their families. Exploitation or not, because the US dollar still goes much further down in Mexico than it does here in the US, they're able to make less and still support their families well.
Having to hear foreign languages and smell cuisine I'm not used to in my own country is basically a violation of my human rights. Like, isn't that in The Geneva Convention?
Surpressed wages. Immigration is just a consequence of the bourgeoisie war against the proletariat. It works double for them because they can blame the immigrants that they bring in for people's problems and can use them to make those problems worse.
You aren't going to find pro immigrant leftists. You will find humanitarian leftists that think the people the right bring here should be treated like people.
even by that logic, it is not the immigrant who is suppressing wages, but the capitalist. and he is so giddy about cunts blaming the immigrant with suppressed wages.
borders should be nothing more than tools to help manage regions, not as restrictions for people, no one should need to move, but everyone should be able to do so if they wish to.
You will find your lack of fight against oppressers just more readily allows them to oppress.
Borders aren't a colonial invention, your reference is to the idea that common people are subject to borders. Lords had their realms, and even with that common people had security checks. Let us not forget the military checkpoints that Guan Yu was stopped at as he fled Cao Cao. Historical accuracy of the account aside; it shows military checkpoints in traveling roads.
If you want to say Rome was colonialist then I'd agree but you're going back three thousand years and refusing to acknowledge a system to prevent military incursions.
Regular people would get their wares checked and weapons confiscated when entering cities. Sometimes their wares would be held until they leave or they'd be denied entry.
The biggest change which you seem confused on is the scale of the states involved. Going from city state to country is more of a logistical hurdle we overcame than a colonialist expansion.
modern borders, as a fence where people aren't allowed to cross is a colonial invention.
and honestly, arguing semantics and history is a fun tangent but not what I care about.
everyone should be free to travel and live/work/study wherever they please. and an immigrant and a local should have the same rights and opportunities.
that is separate to the point of "we should make their places better so they don't need to migrate" which I agree, but need to note the western chauvinism in that statements. it would be enough if the west stopped messing and exploiting those nations, forcing them into poverty.
but should people be free to live/travel/work where they please or should they be locked within the state they were born in and beg other states to live in them?
It's a little more complex than this. Wage suppression does occur but only at the very bottom strata of employment, specifically those producing use-values that are directly consumed within the country where the labour is performed. Employment in industries producing globalised/exported commodities tend not to see wage suppression and often sees an opposite effect as the higher concentration of highly-qualified labour attracts more investment. All this is to say that the overall effect doesn't tell the whole story, and different sections of the bourgeois may have differing reasons for supporting/opposing immigration.
dude, HB-1 visas lower wages in the tech sector, and there is a reason big tech corpos are so desperate to increase how many there are, so they can bring immigrant programmers to the USA and pay them 50K a year instead of a 150K a year a American programmer might get. They can also exploit them to work 80hour weeks or more because the visa is dependent on the companies sponsorship.
It's also a reason the AMA doesn't let foreign doctors practice in America w/o a crazy certification process that takes years to go through. They know it would lower physicians wages if doctors for eastern Europe could immigrate here and would glad to work for 80K.
Nobody likes to talk about these things because they are politically incorrect. Bring them up and people will tell you you're being an asshole.
Immigration is a complex problem at all bands of the economic spectrum. On the rich end, countries have national programs to actively court rich people to become citizens and expedite the process... because they want their money and assets in country. And on the flip side, nobody wants poor people because they are economic burdens who often use a lot of public resources.
Correct, but this more a case of qualifications chasing investment rather than vice-versa. It's not the kind of immigration that tends to get 'debated' in terms of how much of it should be allowed, though the H1Bs were kind of in the news cycle a few months ago.
I live in a big tech city and it's a very hot topic here on both sides. A lot of HB-1 visa holders are basically ghettoized in their companies and socially from the 'tech bro' workers who are from upper middle class white/asian families. They do a lot of the same work, but their wage differential is like a factor of 2-4x for the same job.
But true that it's not a big deal nationally, which seems to mostly focus on latin american emigration of uneducated low wage laborers.
one of my friends rents out his spare bedroom to hb-1 holders and people flip out at him for it. he's just a nice guy looking to give someone a leg up in this shitty world. and the people who shit on him the most are the ones who got houses paid for by their parents.
That’s not an immigration issue, it’s worker exploitation. We allow companies to hire unprotected workers and exploit their situation without consequences.
And yes, same is true of h1-b. As written, it theoretically would not reduce wages, but in reality it does because employers exploit their situation without system and the “trapped worker.
In both cases, wjilynarenwenletting corps get away with this?
Many people, when they look out at the world, all they want to see is themselves reflected back at them. When they see something else, they feel afraid.
These are people who weren't here when those voters were children and a large part of the population are voting to stop time, not policies or anything.
They hate LGBTQ+ people despite their lives being in no way affected by them whatsoever. Most of them have probably never even directly interfaced with one.
Same thing for immigrants.
The American conservative movement is a racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, and xenophobic movement.
I agree with the post but it conveniently avoids the actual issue. They are blamed for:
Cost of living
Job availability
I’m not saying that they do affect these negatively, but that these two subjects are making life harder for regular people. So when someone sees something like “immigrants don’t affect me”, they just assume the poster is rich enough not to be squeezed like the rest of us.
Capitalism gotta have its scapegoats or else it won’t work.
I'm poor as shit and I've never been affected by immigrants raising the cost of living or taking jobs.
Raising costs are caused by greedy business owners raising prices, and the lack of jobs is caused by greedy business owners only hiring skeleton crews and making them work harder for less.
You don't think flooding the labor force reduces the value of labor? If it was harder for business owners to just replace you, don't you think that would increase your ability to barter for better conditions, and wage?
On-top of that, do you not agree that flooding the population of an area can create greater demand on it's resources, like housing and food, which allows businesses to charge higher?
Alright. So you said you're poor as fuck in your previous comment. So are you telling me there's just abundant jobs in your area but zero ability for social mobility on your part?
There's proof of what I'm saying everywhere, but if you're conditioned not to see it no amount of proof is going to matter.
For me the one major pivotal point was seeing how much new housing we're building vs the immigration numbers. Another was when I was working in a job with no future, I was at a customer's business, and it's a place I had applied to previously, and the manager was complaining to someone about needing to renew a workers visa. People frequently make the argument that immigrants take jobs that no one else wants. Having lived in poverty for years working with other people in my situation, I know that's not the case. I know there's ton of people killing themselves looking for upwards mobility.
Another situation that's more recent. 10 years ago I moved to find work because my local economy was dead. This year I moved back. I looked for work all over within a 5 hour radius of my home city. #1, I wouldn't get call backs for jobs I had years of experience in.^1^ #2, There's no housing! There's no affordable rental units! - All that said, do you know what else I saw this year? A new immigration program to bring people to my area. - I literally had to move across the fucking country to get ahead in life, to find work, and I'm watching in real time as my city that's been in a perpetual recession for 15 years gets flooded with new labor.
Are greed businesses to blame? Absolutely! But one of the major mechanisms they use to keep wages low is flooding the market with cheap labor. It's a simple matter of leverage.
^1^just to be clear, my KPIs are in the top 95%, my employee reviews are through the roof, I've had my old employers pretty much beg me to come back to work.
The only racist here is you bud. The reality is... you have no problem creating a two-tiered system that promotes worker exploitation and creates racial underclasses, it feeds your superiority complex. Nothing I said relies on the anecdotal nature of my comment to be 'proof'. All I'm doing the laying out the logic to see what's right in front of your eyes.
Also, unfortunately I agree with you, nothing I've said will matter to 95% of people. I actually wish what I said would appeal to people with half a brain, but it won't.
Anyways, you can go back to sticking your head in the sand. Enjoy ✌️
Is it ok to be against immigration that lets people be exploited, such as h1-b without sufficient enforcement, or undocumented aliens where the person is at risk but the employer is not. We can fix it by better support of employee rights regardless of immigration status
artificially lowers wages. Supposed to be skills you can’t find but usually just cheaper pay
employee has to leave the country if they lose their job.
some employers will leverage that to exploit their situation with the employee
Clearly it’s not like undocumented aliens but it can still be exploitive and it’s something I think more people here are familiar with.
There may be millions of exploited undocumented aliens in jobs like construction and farm work that I’ll never meet. I know they exist but may never have direct experience. While work visas are less of an issue they are still an issue and throughout fields like technology where I’m assuming more lemmings are likely to meet them
They can't get lower wages though. It is required by the department of labor. Have you ever talked to someone on H1-B? It makes sense that they have to leave the country if they lose their job. It makes no sense to live in a country with a work visa if you aren't working.
Even if it was exploitative, how is that a good case for "to be against immigration that lets people be exploited"? That should be a good case for making it less exploitative. Not stopping immigration just for more American jobs to go overseas.
Yes, I’ve known many people on H1-B, including fighting for a few to be paid decently. Legally they aren’t supposed to be paid less but realistically many are, even at “good” employers. All it takes is categorizing them differently than someone else doing the same work.
While it makes sense that a work visa expires if you’re not working for a sponsoring company, it doesn’t have to be so disruptive to life. The expiration is way shorter than typical time to find another job - was it 30 days? Plus what about families? Is it reasonable to make a kid, say, leave school, leave friends, leave the only country they’ve ever known, with almost no notice? While you may claim that was the parents decision, what’s the alternative? Would you really ask them to give up their family to work in the us?
I’ve know people on H1-B ….
who left family behind and only saw them once per year
who put up with abusive employers just so their kid could complete the school year
who’ve had to consider leaving their children with family so the could stay in the only country they’ve ever known
Substitute "the Confederacy" for the GOP and it makes a lot more sense. The civil war never ended. It has recently flared up from a smouldering cold war into a coup of the US government.
"they impregnate (who's kidding? they will say rape) our daughters"
Then something something blood purity. Probably come up with racial slurs for the baby and the mother as one if those 'insert slur'-'fuckers.'
The rednecks in America happen to do a hell of a lot of math. Oops. Meth. Not math. Well I guess they're doing math when they convert fractions into decimals.
This is true from every empire since the Egyptians. Big money brings big immigrants. They do the jobs locals refuse to do. Managing immigration has always been part of how empires succeed.
Y'all - look, downvote all you want, but the main problem with no-borders immigration is that it does allow those willing and wanting to do harm to other people and the country to do whatever they want. And there's fucking enough of those already with the white supremacists.
Overland migration into the US is also very much not limited to people from countries in the Western Hemisphere. I have been told 3 separate times by people in West Africa and Turkey (guy was Syrian but in Turkey) that "you just fly to Mexico and you get in!" I didn't even ask - people just were excited to tell me after asking where I'm from.
Two issues that happen across Africa where borders are only for foreigners is that 1) all those JNIM/ISGS/ISIS/Al Shebab/Boko Haram guys go anywhere they want and no one stops them, and 2) human trafficking rings have no limits or friction. Most modern-day slavery exists in corridors where there's basically free movement across borders because you just get off the bus, walk 20 meters into the bush, walk across the border, and walk back to the road and get on the bust again. Half of those victims are children. Don't gotta own an island to traffic humans.
These are not related to economic issues, wages, dog whistle racism, etc. These are objective problems that are global in scope anywhere with a situation like this. There are no easy solutions. But the friction of knowing who comes and goes into the country reduces both of those.
Feel free to try and change my mind on this if you want, but having personally crossed borders on foot myself, intentionally and even on accident, y'all gotta bring some sources and logic.
Oh but they have. If you think they haven’t answered these questions Then you haven’t been paying attention to the GOP playbook filled with bullshit.
They manufacture outrage with a spin on casual observances. Here are some examples of the most random bullshit racial profiling I’ve come up against:
“They are taking up room in the hospital” - said by the vaccine refusing white MAGA relative who even go as far as denying they have Covid while on their deathbed dying from lung and heart failure when it was easily preventable. And this is somehow more valid time taken up with overworked hospital staff.
“They are taking our jobs” - this was said by white boy who never applied for the job in the first place.
Upon telling a story where I was sexually assaulted by a cab driver; first question I was asked : “what nationality was he”. Despite almost all times I’ve been afraid for my life after receiving unwanted sexual advances were all from white local men who felt they were untouchable.
So stop getting too comfortable. Just when you think they can’t get stupider, they will prove you wrong. And if you haven’t seen it, you’ve been ignoring it. You haven’t been paying attention. That’s not the boast you think it is. That’s just admitting your privilege to be able to ignore it.
If you actually really do care about putting a stop to racism: Stop ignoring it. This is how these racist assholes are winning elections. Because people are ignoring it , bubbling themselves up and pretending it can not happen around them.
Open your eyes. Do not ignore the racism. It absolutely is there. The first step in addressing the problem is admitting there is a problem. And pay attention to why it became a problem.
Adds demand for resources. Demand for jobs reduces wages and increases unemployment. Demand for housing and land increases prices. It accelerates inflation significantly, especially when birth rates in the population are low. Increased energy draw from the grid, which is usually running near capacity nowadays anyway due to the industrial revolution 2.0. Increased load on hospitals. All the typical problems associated with population growth, without any time to adapt because you're bringing in a lot of people who need things suddenly and not gradually as they're growing up and moving out of home.
Most people are already struggling with cost of living issues and inflation, some of these people want to clamp down on immigration to control growth. In Australia immigration is one of several factors causing some of the most expensive housing and rents on Earth. It doesn't help that other factors include supply reductions because our builders all collapsed during covid.
Govts generally see growth as good, a numbers go up game.
This isn't even touching on other reasons people might have for thinking that way too, like erosion of culture when rates are high instead of integration into culture when rates are low
Yeah, i mean for instance, all native American culture has been pushed out of America and most of the European immigrants that moved here replaced the cultures and religions of the native population. It really has been awful to force them out and replace them with what is here now. We barely know anything about the vast numbers of people who used to occupy the lands we currently claim to own because the immigrant governments murdered them and forced them out before settling here.
That's a fantantic example, rapid immigration destroys the way of life for people that have been living in a place for generations with their own culture
Illegal immigration increased unemployment among black men, and it created an underground economy that hired only illegal immigrants through 3rd parties. The underground illegal employers only spoke Spanish and didn't hire Americans. Some blacks supported Trump because his efforts increased employment among them.
Whew. Please keep in mind when reading the following that I am generally pro-immigration, hate ICE, and think that most of the anti-immigrant sentiment is driven by conservative propaganda and racism. Having said that, there are serious concerns surrounding immigration, especially unchecked immigration, even if they are overshadowed by problems caused by oligarchs and late-stage capitalism. The current immigration system in the US is horribly broken and cruel, but that doesn't mean I want open borders.
Labor markets and the devaluation of blue-collar jobs. People may not realize this, but there was a time in the US (1950s and 60s) when one parent could work a blue-collar job and support a family with several children and afford a home, a car, and a middle-class lifestyle. This was the norm. If you wanted to, you could easily work your way through college with a part time job and graduate with little to no debt. Immigration is not the sole cause of this decline (you can also blame greed, the lack of unions, poor minimum wage, globalism, the rise of Chinese manufacturing and low trade barriers, etc) but it is one cause. Cheap blue-collar labor, in the form of poor immigrants, legal or otherwise, has driven down wages to poverty levels. First-generation immigrants might not mind this because US-level poverty may be preferable to poverty of their home nation, and they may be laying the groundwork for a better life for their children. Additionally, the rich love it because it lowers their labor costs, but this system of cheap labor has really screwed over the rest of the population. In exchange for the possibility of a middle-class lifestyle, the rest of us are forced to go into debt getting a college education, with no guarantee that the investment will even pay off. Even if you do score a decent job after getting a college degree, you likely still won't make enough money to support a family by yourself or buy a house.
The decline of social cohesion. Diversity is not a black-and-white issue. It's a sliding scale. Some people are comfortable with more. Some are comfortable with less. Just because you enjoy being able to eat a different ethnic cuisine every night of the week doesn't mean you want to be surrounded by people who are unable to speak your language. Generally speaking, I like living in big cities with lots of different cultures, but it's not for everyone, and I don't fault anyone for not wanting that lifestyle. Sometimes, you want to feel like you have a home and to be surrounded by people of the same culture. In some cases, unchecked, mass immigration has radically changed areas, to the point that some people no longer feel they belong in the place in which they grew up. In general, the more cultures, religions, and languages you have packed in the same area, the less social cohesion there will be. Studies have shown that it takes several generations for an immigrant population to fully assimilate into the host nation's culture, but if there is a constant, long-term influx of immigration, then it will slow the assimilation process further. While I personally think immigration and the cultural melting pot of the US is a good thing, unchecked immigration could easily change that melting pot into a fruit salad, with people of differing cultures living in "parallel" societies with little motivation to assimilate with each other.
Before anyone gets up in arms about what I wrote above, I will again stress that most of the anti-immigrant narratives coming from conservatives are designed to divide the population to the benefit of rich oligarchs, who represent a far bigger threat to the job market and social cohesion than immigration ever has or ever will.
I’m with her. It’s like people have never learned that developed nations experience a declining birthrate and need to supplement it with immigration or there will not be enough workers for the jobs, enough young people to look after the old people. Immigration literally sustains us. This is why we keep allowing it, even playing fast and loose with the rules. The rules are fucking stupid. Fighting for them is beyond stupid.
Yeah but there are lots of other reasons to support immigration as well. The US is one of the countries that historically has significant benefits from immigrants. It’s one of our founding ethos and has always helped drive our economy, our innovation, our culture.
While i while-heartedly agree that declining birth rates are another reason to encourage more immigration, we need to keep in mind that it’s temporary. In a world of decline my birth rates, we’ll see dwindling numbers and more competition for them.
You’re right that the economic utilitarian argument for immigration is not the only one. It’s just one that I would expect any rational conservative to actually care about if they understood it. Other arguments, like our moral obligation to provide asylum to folks fleeing terrible circumstances… I don’t expect them to care about that one.
Conservatives believe that immigrants are taking jobs, getting tax funded benefits, and are generally opposed to brown people doing something technically illegal.
In truth the majority take jobs conservatives don't really want, they do take tax funded benefits but also pay taxes in most cases (and they don't get the payouts for them most of the time), and the process for legally entering the country is so much more difficult than it should be that many resort to illegal immigration.
Oh, and going back to the benefits part, last I checked the average illegal immigrant household (on average) gets something like < $5,000 per year. Most of the time the benefits they are getting are things like SNAP or medicare because someone in the household is a legal resident and thus can qualify. When you apply for benefits they typically only care if the applicant is legal, but they count the whole household.
The whole thing is stupid, conservatives want to complain about pennies when we have dollar problems and at the end of the day immigrants prop up the economy. We honestly should be lowering barriers to legal entry.
please don't conflate the entire idea of immigration with what the R(retarded) refer to as illegal immigration, that is not through official approved or legal channels.
relatively few Americans, even the (R)etards oppose legal immigration. but their dumb asses spent 0 on improving or bolstering the processes in favor of...
(checks notes)
a fucking wall.
nevermind we're all too dumb on this side of the fucking wall.
I think people are tired if seeing immigrants come to the country and then become net tax recipients, meanwhile people whose ancestors have lived here for hundreds of years are struggling and getting no help from the government.
I'm happy to welcome immigrants who want to make better lives for themselves, if they want to work hard and buy into the American dream that we all want to see succeed. If they want to take advantage or disrupt the system for their own benefit (to the detriment of the system or others), or if they don't follow the laws, then they should be expelled.
These veiled reactionary takes are stale. The overwhelming majority of immigrants fit the bill. To frame this in terms of immigration is to effectively suggest a preference only for home grown American criminals.
Are you pointing out that illegal immigrants are criminals by definition because they are here illegally? Or are you asking why citizen criminals shouldn't also be deported?
I'm saying that the framing of this response is intrinsically reactionary, if not xenophobic. Criminality itself is rare. Americans themselves are vastly more prone to criminality. And the ideals of the American system, for better and worse, are forwarded only by Americans themselves, and not their guests. If this is about public decency, following laws, and participating in the system, then the call comes from inside the house. "Crime should be punished" is the accepted way of the world. There's no point in stating it, we take it for granted as part of the 'civilized world'. For some reason this needs reiterated in the context of immigration, however? Evidence suggests if anything this is of less concern when discussing immigrants, yet it needs restated?
Maybe more simply, it reads, "I don't trust 'em". There's a type of person who says that kind of thing.
They are 100% anti immigrant. Because the current GQP admin wants to get rid of birthright citizenship. Which should ring alarm bells for everyone, since that also affects citizens.
The first Trump shutdown in the first term happened because Trump scrapped the existing Republican/Democrat deal made in Congress and demanded that there also be cuts to legal immigration in addition to the agreed-upon wall funding and increased ICE budget.
“Trump’s policy doesn’t make sense so it must be fake news” is a bad way to cope with reality. He broke his campaign promise, simple as that.
The reason is quite simple: It doesn't make sense to have immigration anymore, because the country tries to have a certain number of people in it, and that number is reached now.
That was not the case 200 years ago when the US was still new and growing.
Basically, having mass immigration isn't good because it doesn't really help much but it costs a lot of resources to support all these extra people.
Interesting, most countries need to continue immigration due to low birth rates. I believe if your country population isn't growing, it's more challenging financially.
We aren't allowing the average person to immigrate, were taking the best and brightest; were literally brain draining the developing world to keep social security afloat.
we are many times less dense than the densest nations America isn't "full" by any means and those extra people don't "cost resources" they both consume and produce resources and bigger nations have both more economic and military power. Is your know how on national politics informed entirely by the game mechanics for simple strategy games?
• it create a lot of risk
• sutain buisness of human traficking
• Then the ppl that came lets forget all the risk and imagine it a s good person
• wich happen since u have litteraly nor verification
• It s so fucking crasy
• Mb it s cause you r talking about a country
• for how long they can
• for what benefice
I'm responding to your "unchecked immigration" claim, which is separate from illegal immigrants. No country has unchecked immigration. There are countries that have issues with illegal immigration, though I'm guessing it's less of a problem than you think.
Decades of talkings heads offering an explanation for rural decline, that’s how. Look back to Rush Limbaugh and his predecessors.
The irony is rampant immigration (and our tolerance to it) was an economic miracle for the US, an envy of the world. We’d be facing a population cliff like S Korea, Japan, China or Russia without it. But now that’s coming for us too :(
Definitely a misdirect from the corporate takeover of everything.
I grew up in a shitty small rural town, but while I was in high school I watched the shitty “mom and pop” stores slowly disappear and the local factory vote against unionization only to be closed a few years after I moved away. You know what immediately moved in to fill the void? Wal-Mart and Dollar General.
My dad was so focused on immigrants taking his job and other insane republican economic talking points that he lost that job when the company decided it wasn’t cost effective to operate in the US anymore.
You must have lived down the street from me. We had a few mom and pop joints, two local restaurants, and "the plant". They didn't get Walmart but now they've got the world's worst Dairy Queen, the world's second worst Sonic, and two different brands of dollar store.
TBH some of the points were right. Democrats took big bucks from corporations too, especially Big Tech and basically anything focused in metros.
And it was also a distraction.
Rural folks should have voted differently, yeah, but it was an easy trap to fall into. I blame propagandists and cowards taking money, not them.
The "population cliff" is a made up boogeyman for capitalists. That's because they've relied on population growth for market growth. What's the harm in population stagnation or even decline?
And I don't want to hear about young people supporting aging populations. That's a man-made problem that has solutions. Just not the kind of solutions capitalists can abide. (and if you think about it, it's a temporary issue anyway).
Well, okay. I have a bridge to sell you.
Look. Everything is a “man made” issue with solutions.
It doesn’t matter what economic system we want or have; fact is something has to put a ton of work into taking care of old folks, unless you kill them off or let them rot. Hope and ideology isn’t going to fix one’s body/mind, and that has nothing to do with capitalism.
…Will we automate the problem away some day, WallE/Star Trek style? Sure. That’s the goal. But we aren’t close to there yet. Overloading the young taking care of the old IS our short term problem, and we have plenty of land to support a growing population with room for expanding conservation, as long as we don’t do stupid shit like ranch excessively and expand oil. Then we can level off the population. But we can’t do any of that if entire counties collapse from the pressure/burden of support.
But okay. Let’s say tomorrow, every country on the planet rises up, abandons capitalism, and embraces cooperative economics, with a magic snap of the fingers. That’d be great.
But we continue to let populations in developed countries age.
Then what?
How does that change the needs of elderly folks at all? How does that change the math of young people needing to devote more and more of their energy to them?
Reducing overconsumption and overproduction will help a ton. We do not need nearly as much stuff as we are currently consuming. In addition, there are a lot of jobs these days that are just.. not necessary. Take advertising for example, or all the job positions that are all about how to fuck over the consumers the most, then all the energy and work into fixing it or counteracting it, everything that is done not because it's efficient, but because it's profitable
We are far far more productive today than we ever were before in human history. It's all about prioritization
I wouldn’t make that generalization.
We aren’t even close to post-scarcity in, say, healthcare. Keeping people alive and healthy is expensive and labor/education intense, even without the current structural inefficiencies.
Distributing healthy food is not trivial either, which ties into that.
You also shouldn't overlook just how much is done because it's profitable, and not efficient, though
The simple example is of course enshittifying services. But it's also things like making 30 different versions of chips and candy and so on while putting lots of resources into preventing local homeless people from stealing any of the food they need for survival. Investing lots of research in making hyper-palatable foods that are addicting instead of how to make more efficient logistics towards everyone.
And then there's of course the part where it being a competitive system means stopping others from making use of your research/effort and sharing things, because that means more and stronger competition, which leads to doubling of efforts and so on..
And I mean, I could go on, but the point is that, if you look closely enough, you'll start seeing this everywhere. Inefficiencies made in the name of competition and profit seeking, not what is actually good for society and would be considered a job done well. A restructuring of society would help massively. From paying medical specialists more and making their jobs more tolerable instead of squeezing as much profit as possible, to opening up more human resources from other areas of society which could in theory help out more either directly or in the peripherals
We are massively massively more productive today than in the past. There is no excuse
And yeah, of course it isn't the be-all end-all. But I would argue it would help more than it might seem on the surface. Directing resources towards where they are needed, and not just where they are profitable
Keeping people alive and providing healthy food is not as expensive as it's made out to be. Socialism for the wealthy, now that's expensive! Elon Musk could feed the entire world three times over! And there are lots of solutions, money just doesn't back them.
For example, Holland had two issues. College students didn't have places to live or couldn't afford places, and they didn't have enough people taking care of the elderly. So they put them together, the students have a place to live and the elderly are being taken care of. It was just something they tried and the results were spectacular!
The problem in the states is that we don't even TRY ANYTHING! We have more resources than smaller countries and we don't even try. We could try 50 different solutions in 50 different states, use the scientific method to measure the results, and then implement the methods that worked. We could even try thousands of different solutions by trying different methods in different counties of each state. But instead, we CHOOSE to continue to argue and bicker between ourselves. What a waste of time and energy!
I agree that the capitalists economy is a complete scam. Americans are so used to having so much land, that we just continue to shit up as much as we want and then move on to shit up another area. The earth cannot support continued population growth, especially with climate change. And even America will eventually run out of land to shit on. Other smaller countries have to respect what land they have and how to use because it's limited. We could learn a thing or two from these smaller countries.
Population decline has little to nothing to do with immigration. It's just affordability. Anytime the lower and middle classes (most of the population) are doing well, people have more kids.
In France we have the "30 glorieuses", 30 years of unprecedented economical growth. Guess who came and worked tirelessly to make it happen? And guess who waxes poetic about this blessed moment in time?
Of course the difference is that at the time, the immigrants lived in slums outside major cities, and they knew their place if you catch my drift.
Well you see, they are coming here to steal all our jobs but they are also jobless losers stealing all our welfare
Reagan was an evil genius with the "welfare queen" branding.
Hateful branding is always easier than inclusive branding. Just think about how many different words Americans have historically used for black people: all "they" have to do to turn a positive term into a slur is to say it with a sneer.
These are the same people who were simultaneously protesting "Stop the count" and "count the votes" on election day in 2020.
Don't forget that they stick to themselves and form parallel communities while also stealing our wives
Because any kind of minority is inferior to white straight people and they're the reason for every ill in the world today.
It's truly just racism. It's worked for 4000 years, since the establishment of civilizations.
"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." - LBJ
Easy.
There is a huge portion of the country, about 1/3, that knows they aren't living the American dream, but they work hard and don't understand why.
Then, someone tells them something slightly true. That there's not enough pie to go around (semi-true), and that the reason there's not enough pie is all the immigrants and freeloaders who aren't working and are taking handouts (false).
What they aren't told is there could be enough pie to go around, if the top 1% was willing to share. They aren't. And they now control ~35% of wealth in the USA.
And then the top 1% uses that extra capital to tell that 1/3 of people that their Hispanic neighbor is the problem.
a big chunk of that bloc is first gen immigrants themselves.
all my 2nd gen immigrant friends have parents who hate new immigrants and support ICE type policies and are big Trump fans.
First gen immigrants are affected by new immigrants, they're in direct competition with the new guys and many are quite happy to pull up the ladder.
If that was all that was going on, it would be pretty understandable for that subset.
What I don't get are the white ones with first gen immigrant partners.
most of the immigrant women I have dated wanted a conservative white guy boyfriend. probably because they were looking for a guy like their dad.
I often give the benefit of the doubt towards minorities. My internal hope is that since they are a minority, they surely have experienced bigotry, reflected on it as victims, and rejected that spirit.
That mentality of mine has been completely shattered over the last couple years. The majority of the immigrants I have known have floored me with their bigotry towards so many others. It has made me curious: Are they attracted to that part of our culture? Is this the predominant spirit of the world? What the hell does it mean?
No. they are just people. everyone is like that.
the issue is you thought people were better than they are. they aren't.
but we can't make any progress until we are open about who and what we really are. the lefties and the righties are both in total denial about the complexity of the world and put forth this vague bullshit idealism about who and how people are suppose to be.
most the of the rich white enlightened liberal/leftie set are incredibly sexist, racist, and bigoted towards others who aren't like themselves. their discourse and ideals are mostly about signally to each other they are part of the 'good people' and it's all the 'bad people' who are those things. by forming and out-group you get to get to pretend you have 'purged' the 'bad' by projecting it onto 'others' who don't share your views or lifestyle. but everyone does this. everyone hates some 'other' bad group of people in order to claim their group is 'good'. every immigrant group thinks they are the 'hard working' group and the other are 'lazy exploiters'.
I am very cynical, but my hope is that we can collectively improve our situation. I pull my hair out when people keep playing their tribal games. All they have to do is reason it out.
people like it when collective improvement benefits people that look like them. they don't when the people don't look like them.
the scandanvian models works because of the lack of diveristy. it's starting to break down due to the influx of immigration.
people are hardwired this way. it is incredibly difficult to change it.
Is it hardwired, or trained?
I have prejudices that are wrong. I know that they are wrong. I know the kind of futures that will never exist if I exercise them. I don’t know, if it’s nature or nurture.
hardwired and trained.
for someone to not be that way takes decades of specific training and a life of abundance. most people are never going to have that. most people don't perceive their life as being abundant, even if it objectively is.
Before you judge too harshly, remember that they can't physically vote and probably don't know as much about politics. It is very easy to fall into right-wing pipeline under these conditons.
More importantly, them not being able to vote means they don't effect you as much as some people want you to believe.
A lot of democrats blamed immigrants for the 2024 election results and there was a tiktok trend of reporting the unrelated immigrant neighbors to ICE.
No Democrats blamed illegal immigrants, if that's what you mean. That just did not happen because it makes no sense.
They DID blame the people who voted for Trump, even if they were from a community with a lot of immigration. Rightfully so.
Naturalized citizens can vote. First generations can vote, and children mostly align with their parents’ beliefs.
I am not anti-immigration. At all. I am against intolerance. I am against anyone who would abuse a country’s asylum system, because it will lead to end of such lifelines.
I’m becoming more curious about whether there are biases in the type of person who chooses to immigrate (excluding refugees) to the US.
You are now banned from Piefed. Please lay down while the death squadron comes for you.
If magas could read a post this long they might get it
Not a chance.
This is how it plays out locally: I live in a low cost of living town in Northeast PA. Our area has historically not been very diverse. Over the past 20 years they've ben building a lot of huge warehouses and distribution centers in our area to take advantage of the low cast of living. The industrial parks in the area all competed with each other to land these "job-creating" warehouses, and they competed by offering tax-free deals for x number of years.
So they build these warehouses, and when they hire, everybody apart from the 4 managers are hired part time, and can only work up to max of 28-30 hrs per week, to prevent the company from owing them any kind of health care retirement. Mostly, the only people desperate enough to move here for those jobs are immigrants, and since there's no attachment to one warehouse or another, as soon as there's slightly better offer, they move right on out. Our schools are getting hammered because their tax revenue hasn't increased, but instead of of 1-2 new students per year in a grade level, they're dealing with 5-6 new kids per WEEK, and a good number them come in with little to no English. Frequently, the families have to separate to get here, and that just makes everything even harder.
Now, if you're not paying too close attention, you look at the area compared to 20 years ago, and think,
The "nice" thing is if you own a warehouse, you don't even need to spend any money "convincing" people to blame immigrants, you just make a bunch of money, pay them as little as possible, and watch the nightly news talk about all the danger and crime in the area.
Once you get down to the bottom half they are all together possessed of only a single digit share of wealth between them
This pretty much
Racism
I have yet to see any Lemmy nazis, are they coming from any specific instances?
there aren't any.
lemmy users just call anyone who disagrees with them slightly on any social or political issue a Nazi. especially if they argue that those issues are complex and multifaceted instead of being a black/white moral issue.
immigration is complex. what is the 'correct' volume and distribution of immigration to allow? most people don't even attempt to go there because whatever answer you provide will get you called racist. should American immigration policy, for example, favor people from Latin America over people from southeast Asia? there might be good and clear reasons why... but if you dare to argue or explain those reasons you are going to be considered an anti-Asian racist. should certain groups based on wealth/income, religion, language skills, etc be given favorable status over others?
The current system has it's winners and losers already. But even acknowledging that is not an issue that most commentators are willing to touch, because they will be pejoratively labeled for doing so.
When you get into the details of this it's hard not to get dirty. Thus people only want to talk about it at a very high level where 'immigration good' or 'immigration bad' is the only discourse.
To be honest every issue is becoming like this on Lemmy. Either you parrot the emotionally satisfying far left narrative or you are the enemy. Don’t dare criticize the left from within, or point out complexities in issues. I prefer the left leaning bent of this place to the alternative, but I’m tired of the lack of subtle thought and intellectual honesty. If this is a place for teenagers to cut their teeth on political sentiment, fine, but I suppose I’ll eventually cycle out because that’s not what I came for.
Child marriage is legal right now in a bunch of states. Can't blame immigrants for that one.
My favorite is when MAGAts claim immigrants are taking our jobs, while also claiming immigrants are sucking off the government teat getting free rent, healthcare ect because they are too lazy to work. Schrödinger's immigrant.
Never forget that many of the the biggest MAGA bootlickers have their income subsidized by the government…
Red states boast cheaper... everything, because they get money from all the blue states. Buncha welfare queens.
It's one of the better reasons why a national divorce from the blue states and red states sounds like a better and better idea each and every day into this administration.
Not every blue state is a net contributor. Vermont and Maine don't deserve that fate
Vermont at least has a cool progressive city that elected Bernie Sanders for mayer 3 times before becoming a senator, and Graham Platner is a progressive, rockstar senate candidate in Maine, so there's some redeemability there IMO. The real zit to pop in the northeast would be New Fucking Hampshire.
It'd be a pain in the ass to workout a divorce, but I think it'd be a whole lot easier than dealing with the fucking deathtrap we're heading into. Not to mention some redemption on the global stage for better relationships with our virtually former allies? "See, we are not with those fucking assholes! And we got all the money!"
I live in a blue state and while I definitely do not want to live in a dictatorship, I am also not ok with abandoning the impoverished in the red states to that either. Just because the government of the red states are idiots doesn’t mean the population is worthy to be sacrificed.
I'd be in agreement with you before the 2024 election when I still some semblance of a belief in bipartisan left. But now, not so much; I learned that Republicans / MAGA are in a fascist death cult, and are in fact demons that we share the country with.
But common, we're not demons. There'd are red state refugees that'd make great blue state people whom we can take in.
The other major problem with this idea though is that the state with the most Republicans is California. So you need to deal with the fact that it's largely an urban/rural divide, not a state/state divide. But even then Maine and Vermont have extremely liberal rural areas that buck that trend too. And optimistically I sometimes think most Republicans are victims of propaganda and that they don't deserve to be left behind as a result of being manipulated by the wealthy.
Imagine suddenly shifting freely open state borders to restricted international ones. It would be ridiculously disruptive.
They have a point though. Musk did indeed take the US president's job for a while and was simultaneously living off welfare (gov subsidies for his private businesses). Oh and according to his brother, he's an illigal immigrant too.
He's the only example I can think of.
That's due to Immigrant Jorge. He works ten million jobs and is a statistical outlier, he should not have been counted.
I mean fuck them and everything truly, but is this really such a paradox? It’s not like both can’t be true: say the men get jobs and the women and children get welfare. Or some immigrants take jobs and some are lazy and don’t. You can even get welfare while working if you are poor enough.
I’m just saying - trying to fight this mindset by calling it an impossible paradox will not work because that doesn’t even make basic sense. I know you’re only parroting what’s been said in a million tweets, so I’m not blaming you for inventing this idea. Just maybe stop repeating it like it’s a super clever gotcha. It isn’t.
If immigrant families are getting benefits when adults in the household are working jobs, this means they are below the federal poverty line that makes them eligible. (Usually if a child was born in the US to immigrant parents, the family will qualify for some benefits because the child is an American citizen.) This means that immigrants are working jobs where they are being underpaid, because no American in their right mind would want to work a job that pays wages below what it takes to stay alive. The narrative that these people are getting free benefits, and Americans aren't is a bullshit narrative. Immigrants aren't stealing jobs; their labor is being exploited in positions Americans don't want.
Illegal immigrants do not get welfare. Undocumented immigrants cannot receive things like cash assistance, food stamps (SNAP), Medicare, or regular Medicaid.
Your typical MAGAT would tell you that those might be the rules but they aren’t followed, or are defrauded. Fraud does exist, at least.
"Fuck you, I've got mine"
That's German and Irish immigrants to the US and their descendants being portrayed as doing the same to Chinese immigrants in 1870
As drawn by a German-American immigrant cartoonist, no less.
You can't think of a single thing an immigrant has made worse?
Then you must not heard of Elon Musk.
Racism.
How has immigration affected the average voter?
Tasty ethnic food. There are tasty tacos around, some good Pho, there was an Ethiopian place around here, and tabouli with BBQ.
The remaining Caribbean place around here is really disappointing and the pulled pork is dry, so there is that.
Fuck the taco vote might break elections if people realize
The average American eats tacos with pre shred cheddar and sour cream. And it's not bad, I like some Americanized foods, I liked Taco Bell before it became more expensive than getting the real thing. Most haven't had a Mexican taco.
For anyone here, who isn't satisfied with "white people taco night" and wants something better, I found a wonderful woman who is sharing her cooking knowledge from her beautiful outdoor Mexican kitchen:
La Herencia de las Viudas
A few years ago, she posted a recipe for her Nana's sopa de tortilla Sopa de Tortilla and it's so good I've made it twice in the last few weeks.
I've been watching her cook for years, and I've learned a lot. Great recipes! You don't need to know much Spanish to follow either!
Sounds like a good way to practice cooking Mexican food and Spanish at the same time, thanks!
It's not just ethnic food. It's all food. Did your food come from a farm? An immigrant worked on that farm.
More competition on the job market, housing market and so on? Especially visible in big companies and big cities?
And immigrants famously will work longer hours for less, thus the capitalists are using them to keep wages low.
our shit wouldn't be as cheap however and nothing is stopping people from building enough housing save the desire to keep prices artificially high. Lacking demand they could have just built less to maximize their gain. Given more demand yet they could have built more but little enough to again maximize gain. Seeing a pattern here?
I don't know where you're located. I live in a big European city. The space here is limited. The new housing is mostly being built outside of the city really, and it will take years for it to get the proper treatment (like buses, trams, metro line). The immigrants are directly competing with me for the in-city apartments. This could be different if you're located in, IDK, Iceland, where the space is not really a problem, or in USA where you don't have public services.
Our cheap shit is imported from cheap countries though?
In 10 to 20 years. But the problem of competing for limited resources is now. Seeing a problem here?
Not really. This is not a new problem. This is not a surprise. This is the result of putting off change until it becomes a more serious issue.
Given the nature of politics, of people, problems will always be ignored until they become critical
More desirable locations will be too expensive for many, or most, people to afford. As local economies change, and different locations become desirable, people will be priced out and forced to move. Good city planning decisions can slow this down to allow people to adapt, but trying to freeze things in place is futile.
It's not really possible to set up city planning regulations so the population stays exactly the same. If a city were successful in making itself an undesirable place to live so that no one new would move there, it would probably start losing its population, which (like growth) forces its own hard planning decisions.
Thank you captain obvious. What's your point in the discussion, as you havent made one in that comment.
Seems like a good reason for unions and worker protection. Let’s have a good highly visible corp prosecution as a lesson
Yes. There's not enough unions in the EU and the power is overwhelmingly favouring the employers (interestingly that is the effect of allowing mass immigration into the EU: more workers who didn't unionise and were willing to work more hours for less money tends to weaker the worker class power; I have no idea how to give us more power short of literally eating the rich). I don't even want to think how shit the worker situation is in the USA.
No, not at all. Most Americans aren’t being threatened by immigrants. There are a few places where the uber rich immigrants flock to, but people in Average America, Iowa aren’t competing with immigrants.
Immigrants create more jobs due to an increased need for services. Immigrants are a net positive to an area, and they can fill in skill gaps.
Capitalists can keep wages low by rigging the game via bribing politicians to reduce social programs. They don’t need immigrants to do that. They need immigrants as scapegoats. They need people to buy into their warped view of the world, and they need people to turn against each other, like you’re doing here.
Capitalists use sticks, live poverty, homelessness, and healthcare, to keep people inline and eating up their bullshit. Without the sticks, the capitalist have no power, and they know this.
I was thinking on this just the other day. Without immigration, and native people alike, we wouldn't have such good food. How can't you hate people with such good food!?
It puts downward pressure on wages. That pressure is way overblown by Republicans and there are plenty of solutions to address it that don't involve sending icestapo in to break up families though.
Pretending that this pressure doesn't exist just makes people like us who want to stop this seem out of touch to the normal person who has concerns about immigration, which the election showed is a very large chunk of Americans and westerners in general.
These concerns should be addressed by showing the relative magnitude of the problem compared to benefits gained from immigration along with solutions for stagnating wages, not outright dismissal.
This is not the fault of immigrants. It's the fault of billionaires exploiting one of the most vulnerable people in the country for profit. It only exists because of capitalist greed.
No, this one can't solely be blamed on billionaires. They're hired by all manner of private companies, the majority of which are not owned by billionaires.
Agreed. Glad I can count on you not to vote Democrat or Republican ever again.
First of all, no, all illegal are not hired by billionaires, that a really stupid thing to think.
Second, Republicans are the ones who took healthcare from 17 million Americans to give tax cuts to billionaires. So take your "both sides" bullshit and shove it.
People hardly ever bring up how any company that knowingly hires illegal immigrants should be fined out of business. But of course it’s the workers that must face the consequences.
It's impossible to have that conversation. The left will fight against it to protect the immigrant, and the right will fight against it to protect the business, the result is that it's politically incorrect to talk about on both sides.
companies create jobs. creating jobs is political currency for representatives.
workers don't create jobs, they take them.
We're talking about companies hiring illegal immigrants, you're aware of that right?
If you oppose illegal immigration, you should crack down on companies that hire them. Those companies create the incentive for them to come here.
those companies are the ones who donate to the politicians.
Not true. Workers that are good at what they do can increase demand for the company/product/service which creates jobs.
Just like a bad worker can kill hurt a companies reputation and hurt it's business, a good worker can bring in business, and grow the reputation.
The explanation is racism.
Those are two things I think someone might say about immigrants. Additionally, there's general disdain for the poor and many immigrants come here to escape worse poverty.
In some instances, particularly in the American South and in some European cities, a large influx of immigrants has proven disruptive to local culture as well.
But as the son of a roofer, I can confirm, #1 has historically been an issue. My dad's business, when he was still able to roof houses, was often undercut by illegal crews giving lower bids.
Of course the answer is a legit path to citizenship and resources to help people assimilate more easily and without fear, not Gestapo shit, but immigration, like abortion, is an issue that is purposely never resolved, and it never will be. This is a golden goose issue for Republicans, just like abortion is a golden goose issue for Democrats. They simply make too much money in donations and are able to grift all the public money they want in order to pretend it's being solved, and therefore, have no real motivation to fix it.
Not anymore. That's also not an equivalence. One side rails against illegal immigrants while hiring them at the same time. The other side wants to protect a woman's right to choose. You don't see how those are different?
Yes, immigrants drive down wages is the biggest issue. The second is if you bring in a large enough glut of 1 type of immigrant all at once (like refugees for a real world example) they can establish an insulated community and not actually join "the mixing pot."
There are obviously a lot of positives and neutral points as well, but everything has a give and take. The biggest positive is that children are a pure drain on society but an immigrant doesn't need schooling or rearing. They can simply begin working (for that lowered wage).
This is less of an issue in America than it is in Europe, and I think it comes down to religion. The immigrants to the United States are generally more likely to adjust and conform since American culture is highly syncretic, and refugees are more likely to be Christian and meld into the predominantly Christian Unites States.
European immigrants are more likely to be Muslim, which clashes with European customs, cultures, and ideals. This is why they form such tight, insular communities where they can control the communities customs and ideals. You see this in Muslim and Jewish communities in the United States as well but it is less pronounced.
it's also true in both cases that after the third generation the insularity disappears, outside of extremist groups, like hasidics, etc. most children of who came to Germany in the 1970s are now more or less integrated and fully german because they have been there for generations. Just like Italians and Irish in America. I'm a third generation immigrant and i'm fully integrated, whereas my grandparents very much were not as integrated and saw themselves as irish/italian more than american.
but that takes 50+ years.
There is plenty of evidence that driving down wages is not true.
https://www.congress.gov/118/meeting/house/116727/documents/HHRG-118-JU01-20240111-SD013.pdf
also, the simple fact that more people looking for somewhere to live means less accessibility to that housing if supply is fixed
The supply is "fixed" by the people who already have a big pile of cookies. Fight them, not the dude trying for a better life for his kids
yep. housing hoarders disgust me
When has the housing supply ever been fixed, though? It's always growing, and it should always be driven by demand.
In an ideal world it should. But in reality the demand can rapidly outpace the growth.
https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/1c9138dc24064b2e8142ff156345a719
New York added 33,000 homes in 2024 and gave permits for 15,000 new ones but you still see extremely low vacancy rates and high demand outpacing these constructions.
https://comptroller.nyc.gov/reports/spotlight-new-york-citys-housing-supply-challenge/
Well that's fair enough for the larger point, at least within NY. I guess I was mostly reacting to the notion of "fixed", mathematically speaking.
fixed how? it's been artificially restricted for 50+ years now, because people want values to go up.
those restrictions didn't exist in the 1970s and prior.
3- housing and rents go up in every city with more migrants because it's workers who just want to rent now right here at any cost compared to a city where people settle in owned houses.
4- they sent most of their earnings outside to their countries to help their families there compared to citizens who pay it all on their local economy. and if they were illegal, not even pay taxes while using and benefiting from most your services. However, the true leechers who pay no taxes are in fact the super wealthy.
In a broader picture again, it's actually corporations and property owners who benifit the most from illegals or cheap migrant B-visa workers, and crowded cities and higher rents and housings. So ironically the rich are the ones who benefit from immegrants the most specially in areas with high local unemployments and low wages. Then they use the narrative that these dirty unassimilated immigrants who dont speak your language or share your culture are ruining your city to distract the blame from them.
There's also the fact that whether or not the undocumented are illegally voting in national elections, states currently receive representation in Congress based on their total population, not citizen population. Which is a strong motivator for blue sanctuary states and cities to want open borders, and for conservatives to push for legal deportations. This is a power struggle.
They're not.
Also, California and New York have lost House seats in recent reapportionments despite having large undocumented populations, because people are moving out of those states. That counters your argument.
There are a ton of illegal immigrants in red states, because people hire them there. It's not some one-sided conspiracy to get more House representation.
I'd guess they'll lose even more seats. Will housing become more affordable? It should, but it won't.
there are several immigrants that made things worst: melania, THIEL, musk, cruz, . just not the ones that came with no money.
If ICE went after them instead, I would be okay with ICE.
Theoretically, it decreases the value of labor, but there's so many better solutions to that problem.
In a world where AI fervor is already tanking the cost of labor, I doubt you could even measure the impact of immigrants.
This is the part that's especially amusing to me.
conservatives: "NOOOOO DEY TERK ER JERBS"
Meanwhile, the exact same conservatives: "Ooooooo, AI!"
And outsourcing
That really only applies if it's difficult for the immigrants to become citizens (ie undocumented) or if their immigration status is tied to their employment (ie h1b) that artificially drive down the value of their labor. The current setup is basically indentured servitude with extra steps.
Theoretically. But. Not really true.
We know who devalues labor. It's the companies that only pay the bare minimum wage cause it's the law. Otherwise they wouldn't.
It's the companies that pay under the table to desperate people so they can avoid paying them the legal amount and often commit wage theft and there is nothing undocumented people can do about it.
Exploitative businesses are the ones devaluing labor.
Sure, but if almost nobody will do the job for minimum wage except for immigrant workers, should those businesses be allowed to exploit those workers instead of paying the wage they would need to staff their businesses?
Even though the businesses are the "guilty ones" it seems more like a policy issue than a business one, as the business will always do the bare minimum it can get away with. Especially egregious with temporary foreign worker programs. Why have programs that essentially subsidize industries that just exploit minimum wage workers and depress wages? And now racist assholes have a scapegoat in the people accepting the bad deal instead of the people who allow it in the first place.
Who pays the politicians to keep minimum wage low and fines for hiring illegals low to non-existent ?
You are right, the laws are not in our favor.
Big business owns politicians and they get policies that benefit them.
Illegals are KILLING People!
-Supporters of ICE!
I know you're joking, but illegal immigrants do kill people, just at a lower rate than the general population.
A big part of the problem is that if you're an illegal immigrant, then you have a huge incentive to keep your fucking head down and not be noticed.
So you don't notice the vast majority whose only crime was illegally entering the country. Meanwhile, the ones who do commit crimes make national news because some people have an agenda in spreading that type of news.
My brother, who dropped out of school, lays carpet. He is very mad about immigrants "takin' our jerbs". He is also not a very good employee and miserably failed when he tried to start his own business...he wanted to be the boss without doing any work himeself... I imagine most people have made poor life choices and just need someone to blame.
I had a pretty funny discussion where someone was like "they're bussing them in so they vote democrat!" And I was like, but they're not registered to vote. "Well the democrats want to change that." But most immigrants lean heavily republican, and are anti immigration as well, sort of a pull up the ladder behind you thing. "Well because even they know what the democrats are doing is stupid!"
And then 5 minutes later they're saying the first line, when they just agreed the exact opposite is true... it's like the facts are only true if it supports the argument that they're making at that exact instant
They operate on feelings, not facts. This is a common and true trope about conservatives.
it's entirely true of liberals, and anarchists, and communists, and fascists.
turns out it's a trait of human beings of any belief system. facts and complexities of reality tend to outside the simplistic grasp of most beliefs.
Both sides! You are hilarious 😂 thanks for that.
last time i checked both sides were full of people.
or are we letting robots vote now?
Having worked on local issues such as homelessness I can tell you that it is not a both sides issue much like most politics in the US. You have the progressives that are using evidence and best practices to deal with problems and you have conservatives who just want them out of the community.
That is why you are so funny to me, because you lack any real world experience and you think all sides are the same.
right, my years of working in non-profits and in housing policy clearly mean i'm an ignorant fool. and some internet tough guy slinging insults is clearly smarter than me.
progressives shoot themselves in the foot constantly due to their lack of being unable to acknowledge the harshness of reality. they ignore evidence all the time because they are paranoid of being labeled racist or looking bad. they care more about the optics of pretending to care than they do about pragmatic solutions to social problems. and they overwhelming don't support effective policies because those policies when the policies don't fit their narrative that all human beings wonderful and good by default. they lack the balls to make hard choices in a world with finite resources and often just throw up their hands that make a choice that might upset someone, because they'd rather homeless people starve on the streets than their housing values drop slightly by allowing a homeless shelter to expand their bed capacity.
I am glad to hear you have spent a lot of time working with nonprofits. Giving your time to organizations trying to help is admirable for sure.
First, progressive are the only ones who acknowledge the harsh reality which is why they are for things like harm reduction. Housing first, a very successful progressive housing program, challenges misconceptions about homelessness and has already proven itself effective.
Second, I have not seen any evidence in my lifetime that proves racism is right. In fact, progressives don't have to worry about any evidence that would make them look racist because there is none. Race itself is a societal construct with no science backing at all.
Third, Progressives care about measurable results. That is the point, to improve things through change. That is why a homeless programs will be evaluated for effectiveness with multiple metrics. Often times you find out something is not working so you change it and evaluate it again.
Your view of progressives is driven by feelings and not facts. I think ultimately you have just constructed a boogeyman to keep yourself from realizing the conservatives are the problem by both siding and using human nature as a convenient scapegoat.
I suppose you might think progressive=neo liberals. Neo liberals are certainly no friend to the homeless. They, just like the conservatives, use homelessness as punishment.
Yeah, and you decided that there's an aspect to all humans that is a ludicrously false assertion.
Only one side worshipping a child rapist criminal president right now.
it's a fact of the matter. just like all humans breathe oxygen and shit.
are you going to stop breathing because trump supporters also breathe?
oh sorry, i forgot i can't generalize, claiming human beings breath air is clearly wrong and bad.
No, that's not the case. I operate on facts and logic, not solely "feelings".
What a ridiculously indefensible generalization.
everyone thinks they are the only person who operates on facts and logic.
nobody claims they operate on feelings. they claim that's what everyone else does.
They have to look at brown people
That was almost literally what the german chancellor recently said. Roughly translated: we already deported a lot of people but we still have this problem with "how it looks in the cities" (Stadtbild).
All my favorite food and culture comes from regions I am not native.
The main thing immigrants bring is change. Change to the culture, the language and all of that. In general, people don't like change. But it is well established that not changing means a culture will be left behind.
Well, large tech corporations often cut costs by falsely listing impossible to meet job descriptions and then use that to ask the government for an excuse to hire a foreign worker, who they will hire despite not meeting the job descriptions either, but is willing to work for a fraction of what the domestic worker can afford to live on.
So there is that
But that's not the fault of those immigrants, who are just looking for a better opportunity; that's on the corporations abusing a system that is supposed to improve the domestic economy by bringing in top talent to American industry, not by displacing domestic employees and depressing wages.
And uh, also, the conservative wing and the administration isn't really upset about that at all, either.
I live in Canada. While it is not the fault of individual immigrants, even the Government of Canada and big banks have admitted that abuse of the International Student and TFW programs has put a lot of strain of public infrastructure and housing supply and has suppressed wages. These issues have absolutely objectively affected the average Canadian.
Every now and then you get someone on social media try to be smart and smugly say something like, "International Students can't afford to buy a house. Explain to me how they're driving up the cost of housing." But they fail to realise it increases demand for rentals, and people buy single family homes to rent the rooms to those students, and so the demand for those rentals drives up the cost of houses.
You can acknowledge that not all immigration is good without blaming individual immigrants themselves. I'm always shocked when people who understand infinite growth is a fallacy when it comes to the corporate world, don't understand that trying to grow the population into infinity year after year is just the government equivalent of that fallacy.
Yeah this is so accurate or hurts that people don't get it, or go the opposite way and blame the migrant.
I was teaching in a college from 2021-2024 and by the time I left my classes were at least 95% international students. The greed of our higher education institutions has caused a massive problem.
It's a lack of nuance. Higher rates of population growth can be good, if pressure points like housing are planned for with zoning and permitting systems that promote densification in popular locations. The badness is neither the additional people nor the housing regulations individually, but instead is that they don't match.
Also, there's a lot of racism in the mix. The people with legitimate concerns about growth planning (or the lack thereof) end up mixed in with the people who are horrified at the idea of their racial group becoming a minority of the country's population.
You:
Commenter before you:
Sure "the higher rates of population growth" can be good. Usually for the wealthy and or privileged classes though, and ultimately always they don't solve the underlying issue causing the original problem.
Equating advocacy for planning for projected near- and middle-term population changes with advocacy for "infinite" growth is exactly the lack of nuance that frustrates me.
Yaaay nuanced opinion!! Thank you for posting :)
Well, how many international students do you get?
Immigration in my area is heavily used for wage suppression.
That's Capitalism you're mad at, not immigrants....
Most of the things people listed in this comment section isn't a problem with immigration, but a problem with greedy rich people. Immigrants just get falsely labeled with these problems. Chop off the heads of the rich along with their entire bloodline and we'd have a lot less issues.
Yeah I don't think mass murder, including of innocent children apparently, is the correct course of action, psycho.
These fucks murder children on the daily, either directly or indirectly. Making them go through what they make millions go through is necessary.
There is a TON of anti-immigrant propaganda. Whenever the economy is shit -- which it often is now, because of the massive disparity between rich and poor -- immigration is an easy target.
It's easy to say things like market rates for labor are lowered due to an influx of immigrant labor, or that immigrants are taking jobs. There is a good case to be made that things like the H1-B program do artificially lower wages and do mean that there are fewer jobs for citizens -- but the spin is always against the immigrants and never against the companies exploiting them.
Yeah, the problem has always been that we've given illegal immigration an easy system to exploit by having people out there employing them for less and paying under the table to avoid taxes and insurance. The whole solution that's happening is equivalent to rounding up drug users while letting dealers go free, it makes no sense. There needs to be stiff penalties for employing people illegally. If there's no jobs available, people will be less inclined to live and work here illegally.
Why things are the way they are we can attribute to whatever anyone wants, racism, capitalism, whatever. I'll just lump it under people being shitheads and regular people paying for it.
They and their families are operating convenience stores 24/7 for about $5/hr because existing Americans refuse to experience this thankless task!
Oh noes!
We're fools to not recognize the humanitarian benefits of Bodega Cats!
I'm really sad that Bodega cats is stuck in New York and more states don't have corner grocers :( stupid urban sprawl
Live in Manhattan. Can confirm, they're the best.
Close runner up are the kitties that live in the plant shops in the flower district.
Oh nice, they sell purrennials.
Best I get is a friend adopting feral kittens from her work parking lot :( give them good cats all the love for me
They're wrongfully attributing to the immigrants what should be attributed to corporations, businesses and the extremely wealthy who are exploiting and trafficking immigrants.
And the wealthy help conservatives get elected, and conservatives demonize immigrants, and on and on it goes with half the country being mad at the wrong people.
Rich people said poor people have no health care because poorer people get sick sometimes.
And then the rich just belied this nonsense
It does keep wages down on a lot of blue collar manual labor jobs. That's about it, but that does happen with a certainty. I used to work new construction housing. Framers, drywallers, cement layers, and roofers etc either work for less money, or end up not working because the company with Mexican laborors making $5+ an hour less underbids everyone else and the "builder" subcontracts out to that operation.
It's why so many of those laborors don't want immigrants. They see it directly effecting them, while so many others are completely ok with immigrants. It doesn't effect most other people's paycheck and it doesn't raise prices of anything they buy.
The immigrants didn't ask for 5$ less.
It is the company owner who abuses the immigrant's legal status to pay them 5$ less.
Does that knowledge make any of the workers more?
Also, many of those guys (the immigrants) aren't trying to support and care for families in the US. They have families they're supporting in Mexico and the guys up here working house themselves up cramped and send money down to their families. Exploitation or not, because the US dollar still goes much further down in Mexico than it does here in the US, they're able to make less and still support their families well.
Having to hear foreign languages and smell cuisine I'm not used to in my own country is basically a violation of my human rights. Like, isn't that in The Geneva Convention?
Their eyes are offended by the very sight of someone different from them.
Surpressed wages. Immigration is just a consequence of the bourgeoisie war against the proletariat. It works double for them because they can blame the immigrants that they bring in for people's problems and can use them to make those problems worse.
You aren't going to find pro immigrant leftists. You will find humanitarian leftists that think the people the right bring here should be treated like people.
even by that logic, it is not the immigrant who is suppressing wages, but the capitalist. and he is so giddy about cunts blaming the immigrant with suppressed wages.
That's what I said.
sorry,if I misread it.
Also a slight tangent, leftists don't believe in borders, so "immigrant" is a nonsensical term.
why is someone considered less of they aren't living in their birth country??? such an irrational hierarchies.
Borders have a purpose, if we try removing them then we just become colonizers.
Rather than removing borders it's better to invest to bring up the status of their home country.
Why should someone have to leave home to be more?
borders should be nothing more than tools to help manage regions, not as restrictions for people, no one should need to move, but everyone should be able to do so if they wish to.
borders are literally a colonial invention.
You will find your lack of fight against oppressers just more readily allows them to oppress.
Borders aren't a colonial invention, your reference is to the idea that common people are subject to borders. Lords had their realms, and even with that common people had security checks. Let us not forget the military checkpoints that Guan Yu was stopped at as he fled Cao Cao. Historical accuracy of the account aside; it shows military checkpoints in traveling roads.
If you want to say Rome was colonialist then I'd agree but you're going back three thousand years and refusing to acknowledge a system to prevent military incursions.
Regular people would get their wares checked and weapons confiscated when entering cities. Sometimes their wares would be held until they leave or they'd be denied entry.
The biggest change which you seem confused on is the scale of the states involved. Going from city state to country is more of a logistical hurdle we overcame than a colonialist expansion.
modern borders, as a fence where people aren't allowed to cross is a colonial invention.
and honestly, arguing semantics and history is a fun tangent but not what I care about.
everyone should be free to travel and live/work/study wherever they please. and an immigrant and a local should have the same rights and opportunities.
that is separate to the point of "we should make their places better so they don't need to migrate" which I agree, but need to note the western chauvinism in that statements. it would be enough if the west stopped messing and exploiting those nations, forcing them into poverty.
So then you support this "colonial invention"?
Borders exist everywhere, not just countries that were historically colonized.
?
I'm saying borders are bad, and you somehow read that as the opposite?
cancer also exists everywhere, does that make it good?
Uh yeah, we do. Every country on Earth recognizes borders. That doesn't mean a person in one country is valued less than a person in another.
but should people be free to live/travel/work where they please or should they be locked within the state they were born in and beg other states to live in them?
It's a little more complex than this. Wage suppression does occur but only at the very bottom strata of employment, specifically those producing use-values that are directly consumed within the country where the labour is performed. Employment in industries producing globalised/exported commodities tend not to see wage suppression and often sees an opposite effect as the higher concentration of highly-qualified labour attracts more investment. All this is to say that the overall effect doesn't tell the whole story, and different sections of the bourgeois may have differing reasons for supporting/opposing immigration.
dude, HB-1 visas lower wages in the tech sector, and there is a reason big tech corpos are so desperate to increase how many there are, so they can bring immigrant programmers to the USA and pay them 50K a year instead of a 150K a year a American programmer might get. They can also exploit them to work 80hour weeks or more because the visa is dependent on the companies sponsorship.
It's also a reason the AMA doesn't let foreign doctors practice in America w/o a crazy certification process that takes years to go through. They know it would lower physicians wages if doctors for eastern Europe could immigrate here and would glad to work for 80K.
Nobody likes to talk about these things because they are politically incorrect. Bring them up and people will tell you you're being an asshole.
Immigration is a complex problem at all bands of the economic spectrum. On the rich end, countries have national programs to actively court rich people to become citizens and expedite the process... because they want their money and assets in country. And on the flip side, nobody wants poor people because they are economic burdens who often use a lot of public resources.
Correct, but this more a case of qualifications chasing investment rather than vice-versa. It's not the kind of immigration that tends to get 'debated' in terms of how much of it should be allowed, though the H1Bs were kind of in the news cycle a few months ago.
I live in a big tech city and it's a very hot topic here on both sides. A lot of HB-1 visa holders are basically ghettoized in their companies and socially from the 'tech bro' workers who are from upper middle class white/asian families. They do a lot of the same work, but their wage differential is like a factor of 2-4x for the same job.
But true that it's not a big deal nationally, which seems to mostly focus on latin american emigration of uneducated low wage laborers.
That's fair. I didn't realise how socially divisive the H1Bs were, though it makes sense now that you mention it.
one of my friends rents out his spare bedroom to hb-1 holders and people flip out at him for it. he's just a nice guy looking to give someone a leg up in this shitty world. and the people who shit on him the most are the ones who got houses paid for by their parents.
That’s not an immigration issue, it’s worker exploitation. We allow companies to hire unprotected workers and exploit their situation without consequences.
And yes, same is true of h1-b. As written, it theoretically would not reduce wages, but in reality it does because employers exploit their situation without system and the “trapped worker.
In both cases, wjilynarenwenletting corps get away with this?
Many people, when they look out at the world, all they want to see is themselves reflected back at them. When they see something else, they feel afraid.
My personal explanation:
These are people who weren't here when those voters were children and a large part of the population are voting to stop time, not policies or anything.
Elon Musk immigrated from South Africa to the US, so I can think of at least one thing that made things distinctly worse in the US at least.
Bigotry.
Plain and simple.
They hate LGBTQ+ people despite their lives being in no way affected by them whatsoever. Most of them have probably never even directly interfaced with one.
Same thing for immigrants.
The American conservative movement is a racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, and xenophobic movement.
It's a bigot cult.
I agree with the post but it conveniently avoids the actual issue. They are blamed for:
I’m not saying that they do affect these negatively, but that these two subjects are making life harder for regular people. So when someone sees something like “immigrants don’t affect me”, they just assume the poster is rich enough not to be squeezed like the rest of us.
Capitalism gotta have its scapegoats or else it won’t work.
I'm poor as shit and I've never been affected by immigrants raising the cost of living or taking jobs.
Raising costs are caused by greedy business owners raising prices, and the lack of jobs is caused by greedy business owners only hiring skeleton crews and making them work harder for less.
Yes, my point was that even though educated people would agree, you would push the uneducated further with rhetoric like this.
Having said that, that’s not a problem with an audience such as us.
You don't think flooding the labor force reduces the value of labor? If it was harder for business owners to just replace you, don't you think that would increase your ability to barter for better conditions, and wage?
On-top of that, do you not agree that flooding the population of an area can create greater demand on it's resources, like housing and food, which allows businesses to charge higher?
Untill you can show an example of that actually happening somewhere, no. I don't.
Alright. So you said you're poor as fuck in your previous comment. So are you telling me there's just abundant jobs in your area but zero ability for social mobility on your part?
There's proof of what I'm saying everywhere, but if you're conditioned not to see it no amount of proof is going to matter.
For me the one major pivotal point was seeing how much new housing we're building vs the immigration numbers. Another was when I was working in a job with no future, I was at a customer's business, and it's a place I had applied to previously, and the manager was complaining to someone about needing to renew a workers visa. People frequently make the argument that immigrants take jobs that no one else wants. Having lived in poverty for years working with other people in my situation, I know that's not the case. I know there's ton of people killing themselves looking for upwards mobility.
Another situation that's more recent. 10 years ago I moved to find work because my local economy was dead. This year I moved back. I looked for work all over within a 5 hour radius of my home city. #1, I wouldn't get call backs for jobs I had years of experience in.^1^ #2, There's no housing! There's no affordable rental units! - All that said, do you know what else I saw this year? A new immigration program to bring people to my area. - I literally had to move across the fucking country to get ahead in life, to find work, and I'm watching in real time as my city that's been in a perpetual recession for 15 years gets flooded with new labor.
Are greed businesses to blame? Absolutely! But one of the major mechanisms they use to keep wages low is flooding the market with cheap labor. It's a simple matter of leverage.
^1^just to be clear, my KPIs are in the top 95%, my employee reviews are through the roof, I've had my old employers pretty much beg me to come back to work.
Long winded anecdotes aren't proof. That's why this bullshit won't matter to anyone with half a brain.
If you can't provide actual evidence of what you claim, your racist ass can fuck off.
The only racist here is you bud. The reality is... you have no problem creating a two-tiered system that promotes worker exploitation and creates racial underclasses, it feeds your superiority complex. Nothing I said relies on the anecdotal nature of my comment to be 'proof'. All I'm doing the laying out the logic to see what's right in front of your eyes.
Also, unfortunately I agree with you, nothing I've said will matter to 95% of people. I actually wish what I said would appeal to people with half a brain, but it won't.
Anyways, you can go back to sticking your head in the sand. Enjoy ✌️
Is it ok to be against immigration that lets people be exploited, such as h1-b without sufficient enforcement, or undocumented aliens where the person is at risk but the employer is not. We can fix it by better support of employee rights regardless of immigration status
I think that means you're against exploitation, not immigration...
How is H1B people exploitation? All of my colleagues at the same position as me (a US citizen) make the same amount of money.
can be. People do choose and do benefit but
Clearly it’s not like undocumented aliens but it can still be exploitive and it’s something I think more people here are familiar with.
There may be millions of exploited undocumented aliens in jobs like construction and farm work that I’ll never meet. I know they exist but may never have direct experience. While work visas are less of an issue they are still an issue and throughout fields like technology where I’m assuming more lemmings are likely to meet them
They can't get lower wages though. It is required by the department of labor. Have you ever talked to someone on H1-B? It makes sense that they have to leave the country if they lose their job. It makes no sense to live in a country with a work visa if you aren't working.
Even if it was exploitative, how is that a good case for "to be against immigration that lets people be exploited"? That should be a good case for making it less exploitative. Not stopping immigration just for more American jobs to go overseas.
Yes, I’ve known many people on H1-B, including fighting for a few to be paid decently. Legally they aren’t supposed to be paid less but realistically many are, even at “good” employers. All it takes is categorizing them differently than someone else doing the same work.
While it makes sense that a work visa expires if you’re not working for a sponsoring company, it doesn’t have to be so disruptive to life. The expiration is way shorter than typical time to find another job - was it 30 days? Plus what about families? Is it reasonable to make a kid, say, leave school, leave friends, leave the only country they’ve ever known, with almost no notice? While you may claim that was the parents decision, what’s the alternative? Would you really ask them to give up their family to work in the us?
I’ve know people on H1-B ….
It's also something they willingly apply for and clearly want. OP is acting like they're forced into it.
Substitute "the Confederacy" for the GOP and it makes a lot more sense. The civil war never ended. It has recently flared up from a smouldering cold war into a coup of the US government.
darn immigrants come into our country with their "high quality", "delicious" food and make our all american cheez whiz sandwiches look bad
Have you ever considered being a giant racist dick though?
They clearly think cruelty is a zero sum game. If cruelty is applied to another, the cruelty to them is reduced.
They are wrong. The machine knows no bounds. Your boot on another's face does not remove the boot from your own.
It just makes the boot vendor very happy, and he sincerely hope the poor sod you're stomping on also buys a boot.
"they impregnate (who's kidding? they will say rape) our daughters"
Then something something blood purity. Probably come up with racial slurs for the baby and the mother as one if those 'insert slur'-'fuckers.'
The rednecks in America happen to do a hell of a lot of math. Oops. Meth. Not math. Well I guess they're doing math when they convert fractions into decimals.
Well, there was this German guy who immigrated to America evading the draft in Germany for
WWIsome war I'm not sure of.This guy had a son in America, who in turn had another son.
The name that the original immigrant took when he moved to America was Trump.
Another example would be the Austrian painter by the name of Adolf, who immigrated to Germany.
Leaving in [checks notes] 1885 to evade the WWI draft would be some impressive foresight.
(It was to avoid conscription, though.)
Cheers for the correction!
Read how the Nazis came to power you need a boogie man to blame and tell people to fear.
Corporations illegally hire undocumented immigrants, therefore reducing the cost of labor and stealing jobs from americans
So we should fine the corporations to make sure that's not profitable, right? Right??
No. The managers and ceos that do that need to be arrested and jailed.
The majority of illegal immigrants are working jobs Americans won't touch.
Hot take but if you pay more money, people who wouldn’t normally take the job, will suddenly want to do it.
This is true from every empire since the Egyptians. Big money brings big immigrants. They do the jobs locals refuse to do. Managing immigration has always been part of how empires succeed.
Has she tuned into Nick Fuentes. The answer is: racism.
And my god, so much good food
Rob Schneider
Their "argument"
But they take the jobs Americans are unwilling to do!
We need to knock us plebs down a peg.
Y'all - look, downvote all you want, but the main problem with no-borders immigration is that it does allow those willing and wanting to do harm to other people and the country to do whatever they want. And there's fucking enough of those already with the white supremacists.
Overland migration into the US is also very much not limited to people from countries in the Western Hemisphere. I have been told 3 separate times by people in West Africa and Turkey (guy was Syrian but in Turkey) that "you just fly to Mexico and you get in!" I didn't even ask - people just were excited to tell me after asking where I'm from.
Two issues that happen across Africa where borders are only for foreigners is that 1) all those JNIM/ISGS/ISIS/Al Shebab/Boko Haram guys go anywhere they want and no one stops them, and 2) human trafficking rings have no limits or friction. Most modern-day slavery exists in corridors where there's basically free movement across borders because you just get off the bus, walk 20 meters into the bush, walk across the border, and walk back to the road and get on the bust again. Half of those victims are children. Don't gotta own an island to traffic humans.
These are not related to economic issues, wages, dog whistle racism, etc. These are objective problems that are global in scope anywhere with a situation like this. There are no easy solutions. But the friction of knowing who comes and goes into the country reduces both of those.
Feel free to try and change my mind on this if you want, but having personally crossed borders on foot myself, intentionally and even on accident, y'all gotta bring some sources and logic.
They are taking mah jobs at the moment.
Seriously, though, send help. I'm fighting them off with this broom handle for now, but there are just too many of them!
Oh but they have. If you think they haven’t answered these questions Then you haven’t been paying attention to the GOP playbook filled with bullshit. They manufacture outrage with a spin on casual observances. Here are some examples of the most random bullshit racial profiling I’ve come up against:
“They are taking up room in the hospital” - said by the vaccine refusing white MAGA relative who even go as far as denying they have Covid while on their deathbed dying from lung and heart failure when it was easily preventable. And this is somehow more valid time taken up with overworked hospital staff.
“They are taking our jobs” - this was said by white boy who never applied for the job in the first place.
Upon telling a story where I was sexually assaulted by a cab driver; first question I was asked : “what nationality was he”. Despite almost all times I’ve been afraid for my life after receiving unwanted sexual advances were all from white local men who felt they were untouchable.
So stop getting too comfortable. Just when you think they can’t get stupider, they will prove you wrong. And if you haven’t seen it, you’ve been ignoring it. You haven’t been paying attention. That’s not the boast you think it is. That’s just admitting your privilege to be able to ignore it.
If you actually really do care about putting a stop to racism: Stop ignoring it. This is how these racist assholes are winning elections. Because people are ignoring it , bubbling themselves up and pretending it can not happen around them.
Open your eyes. Do not ignore the racism. It absolutely is there. The first step in addressing the problem is admitting there is a problem. And pay attention to why it became a problem.
Adds demand for resources. Demand for jobs reduces wages and increases unemployment. Demand for housing and land increases prices. It accelerates inflation significantly, especially when birth rates in the population are low. Increased energy draw from the grid, which is usually running near capacity nowadays anyway due to the industrial revolution 2.0. Increased load on hospitals. All the typical problems associated with population growth, without any time to adapt because you're bringing in a lot of people who need things suddenly and not gradually as they're growing up and moving out of home.
Most people are already struggling with cost of living issues and inflation, some of these people want to clamp down on immigration to control growth. In Australia immigration is one of several factors causing some of the most expensive housing and rents on Earth. It doesn't help that other factors include supply reductions because our builders all collapsed during covid.
Govts generally see growth as good, a numbers go up game.
This isn't even touching on other reasons people might have for thinking that way too, like erosion of culture when rates are high instead of integration into culture when rates are low
Yeah, i mean for instance, all native American culture has been pushed out of America and most of the European immigrants that moved here replaced the cultures and religions of the native population. It really has been awful to force them out and replace them with what is here now. We barely know anything about the vast numbers of people who used to occupy the lands we currently claim to own because the immigrant governments murdered them and forced them out before settling here.
That's a fantantic example, rapid immigration destroys the way of life for people that have been living in a place for generations with their own culture
The environment has paid for it too
Illegal immigration increased unemployment among black men, and it created an underground economy that hired only illegal immigrants through 3rd parties. The underground illegal employers only spoke Spanish and didn't hire Americans. Some blacks supported Trump because his efforts increased employment among them.
Whew. Please keep in mind when reading the following that I am generally pro-immigration, hate ICE, and think that most of the anti-immigrant sentiment is driven by conservative propaganda and racism. Having said that, there are serious concerns surrounding immigration, especially unchecked immigration, even if they are overshadowed by problems caused by oligarchs and late-stage capitalism. The current immigration system in the US is horribly broken and cruel, but that doesn't mean I want open borders.
Labor markets and the devaluation of blue-collar jobs. People may not realize this, but there was a time in the US (1950s and 60s) when one parent could work a blue-collar job and support a family with several children and afford a home, a car, and a middle-class lifestyle. This was the norm. If you wanted to, you could easily work your way through college with a part time job and graduate with little to no debt. Immigration is not the sole cause of this decline (you can also blame greed, the lack of unions, poor minimum wage, globalism, the rise of Chinese manufacturing and low trade barriers, etc) but it is one cause. Cheap blue-collar labor, in the form of poor immigrants, legal or otherwise, has driven down wages to poverty levels. First-generation immigrants might not mind this because US-level poverty may be preferable to poverty of their home nation, and they may be laying the groundwork for a better life for their children. Additionally, the rich love it because it lowers their labor costs, but this system of cheap labor has really screwed over the rest of the population. In exchange for the possibility of a middle-class lifestyle, the rest of us are forced to go into debt getting a college education, with no guarantee that the investment will even pay off. Even if you do score a decent job after getting a college degree, you likely still won't make enough money to support a family by yourself or buy a house.
The decline of social cohesion. Diversity is not a black-and-white issue. It's a sliding scale. Some people are comfortable with more. Some are comfortable with less. Just because you enjoy being able to eat a different ethnic cuisine every night of the week doesn't mean you want to be surrounded by people who are unable to speak your language. Generally speaking, I like living in big cities with lots of different cultures, but it's not for everyone, and I don't fault anyone for not wanting that lifestyle. Sometimes, you want to feel like you have a home and to be surrounded by people of the same culture. In some cases, unchecked, mass immigration has radically changed areas, to the point that some people no longer feel they belong in the place in which they grew up. In general, the more cultures, religions, and languages you have packed in the same area, the less social cohesion there will be. Studies have shown that it takes several generations for an immigrant population to fully assimilate into the host nation's culture, but if there is a constant, long-term influx of immigration, then it will slow the assimilation process further. While I personally think immigration and the cultural melting pot of the US is a good thing, unchecked immigration could easily change that melting pot into a fruit salad, with people of differing cultures living in "parallel" societies with little motivation to assimilate with each other.
Before anyone gets up in arms about what I wrote above, I will again stress that most of the anti-immigrant narratives coming from conservatives are designed to divide the population to the benefit of rich oligarchs, who represent a far bigger threat to the job market and social cohesion than immigration ever has or ever will.
Stanhope said it best
I’m with her. It’s like people have never learned that developed nations experience a declining birthrate and need to supplement it with immigration or there will not be enough workers for the jobs, enough young people to look after the old people. Immigration literally sustains us. This is why we keep allowing it, even playing fast and loose with the rules. The rules are fucking stupid. Fighting for them is beyond stupid.
Yeah but there are lots of other reasons to support immigration as well. The US is one of the countries that historically has significant benefits from immigrants. It’s one of our founding ethos and has always helped drive our economy, our innovation, our culture.
While i while-heartedly agree that declining birth rates are another reason to encourage more immigration, we need to keep in mind that it’s temporary. In a world of decline my birth rates, we’ll see dwindling numbers and more competition for them.
You’re right that the economic utilitarian argument for immigration is not the only one. It’s just one that I would expect any rational conservative to actually care about if they understood it. Other arguments, like our moral obligation to provide asylum to folks fleeing terrible circumstances… I don’t expect them to care about that one.
So obvious! They steal the jobs we don't even want or are unqualified for. How dare they.
What were the answers?
Someone else to blame for their own problems.
They are eating the cats and dogs!
Trump’s great grandfather was an immigrant… he has a lot to answer for
Conservatives believe that immigrants are taking jobs, getting tax funded benefits, and are generally opposed to brown people doing something technically illegal.
In truth the majority take jobs conservatives don't really want, they do take tax funded benefits but also pay taxes in most cases (and they don't get the payouts for them most of the time), and the process for legally entering the country is so much more difficult than it should be that many resort to illegal immigration.
Oh, and going back to the benefits part, last I checked the average illegal immigrant household (on average) gets something like < $5,000 per year. Most of the time the benefits they are getting are things like SNAP or medicare because someone in the household is a legal resident and thus can qualify. When you apply for benefits they typically only care if the applicant is legal, but they count the whole household.
The whole thing is stupid, conservatives want to complain about pennies when we have dollar problems and at the end of the day immigrants prop up the economy. We honestly should be lowering barriers to legal entry.
Terk our jerbs?
There is a lot of abuse by tech companies of the h1b visa program to keep wages low and engage slave based labor, but that is all I can think of.
well hitler
Didn't you hear? An illegal immigrant killed a white girl back in 2024. Burn it all down. /s
please don't conflate the entire idea of immigration with what the R(retarded) refer to as illegal immigration, that is not through official approved or legal channels.
relatively few Americans, even the (R)etards oppose legal immigration. but their dumb asses spent 0 on improving or bolstering the processes in favor of...
(checks notes)
a fucking wall.
nevermind we're all too dumb on this side of the fucking wall.
Really? They must not teach civics in school?
Impact on Electoral Representation (Apportionment and the Electoral College)
I think people are tired if seeing immigrants come to the country and then become net tax recipients, meanwhile people whose ancestors have lived here for hundreds of years are struggling and getting no help from the government.
I'm happy to welcome immigrants who want to make better lives for themselves, if they want to work hard and buy into the American dream that we all want to see succeed. If they want to take advantage or disrupt the system for their own benefit (to the detriment of the system or others), or if they don't follow the laws, then they should be expelled.
These veiled reactionary takes are stale. The overwhelming majority of immigrants fit the bill. To frame this in terms of immigration is to effectively suggest a preference only for home grown American criminals.
Are you pointing out that illegal immigrants are criminals by definition because they are here illegally? Or are you asking why citizen criminals shouldn't also be deported?
I'm saying that the framing of this response is intrinsically reactionary, if not xenophobic. Criminality itself is rare. Americans themselves are vastly more prone to criminality. And the ideals of the American system, for better and worse, are forwarded only by Americans themselves, and not their guests. If this is about public decency, following laws, and participating in the system, then the call comes from inside the house. "Crime should be punished" is the accepted way of the world. There's no point in stating it, we take it for granted as part of the 'civilized world'. For some reason this needs reiterated in the context of immigration, however? Evidence suggests if anything this is of less concern when discussing immigrants, yet it needs restated?
Maybe more simply, it reads, "I don't trust 'em". There's a type of person who says that kind of thing.
The framing is because of the context of this conversation. Also that's a lot of words for a whattabout and an implication of racism.
What does this mean?
The problem is entering illegally is against the law, although it's just a misdemeanor offense.
Immigrant. Nothing at all.
Illegal immigrant - then you're asking the wrong question. You should be asking why having second class citizens with exploitable cheap labor is bad.
Absolutely no one is arguing for anti immigration.
Stephen Miller and a number of GOP leaders are demanding that legal immigration be frozen or reduced.
Yeah? And what's Kid Rock's stance on the best flavor of pop tarts?
They are 100% anti immigrant. Because the current GQP admin wants to get rid of birthright citizenship. Which should ring alarm bells for everyone, since that also affects citizens.
Maybe 100% anti net tax recipient immigrant.
What is this supposed to mean? Miller has no influence?
No one I know is anti-legal immigration; so this all smells like BS to me.
The first Trump shutdown in the first term happened because Trump scrapped the existing Republican/Democrat deal made in Congress and demanded that there also be cuts to legal immigration in addition to the agreed-upon wall funding and increased ICE budget.
“Trump’s policy doesn’t make sense so it must be fake news” is a bad way to cope with reality. He broke his campaign promise, simple as that.
Illegal immigrants aren't citizens. And people who support brutalizing them don't give a fuck about their wellbeing.
Second class citizens will always be vulnerable to such exploitation, that's the argument against allowing them in the first place.
The reason is quite simple: It doesn't make sense to have immigration anymore, because the country tries to have a certain number of people in it, and that number is reached now.
That was not the case 200 years ago when the US was still new and growing.
Basically, having mass immigration isn't good because it doesn't really help much but it costs a lot of resources to support all these extra people.
Interesting, most countries need to continue immigration due to low birth rates. I believe if your country population isn't growing, it's more challenging financially.
I kind of hate this.
We aren't allowing the average person to immigrate, were taking the best and brightest; were literally brain draining the developing world to keep social security afloat.
we are many times less dense than the densest nations America isn't "full" by any means and those extra people don't "cost resources" they both consume and produce resources and bigger nations have both more economic and military power. Is your know how on national politics informed entirely by the game mechanics for simple strategy games?
Source?
How does one calculate this certain number?
US is still growing, still benefiting from growth and our economy needs immigration to offset declining birthrate
And no, the resources argument has been debunked many times
• it create a lot of risk • sutain buisness of human traficking • Then the ppl that came lets forget all the risk and imagine it a s good person • wich happen since u have litteraly nor verification • It s so fucking crasy • Mb it s cause you r talking about a country • for how long they can • for what benefice
And he's mad they "can't speak the language," if you can imagine
Ironic since they, themselves, can't even write the language they want immigrants to speak.
Immigrant ≠ illegal immigrant.
Sir, this is a Wendy's
hate and propaganda has you trembling in fear
There's not a single country on earth that has "unchecked immigration". Your media is lying to you.
Ah yes, the EU famously has zero requirements for anyone moving there
https://european-union.europa.eu/live-work-study/immigration-eu_en
I'm responding to your "unchecked immigration" claim, which is separate from illegal immigrants. No country has unchecked immigration. There are countries that have issues with illegal immigration, though I'm guessing it's less of a problem than you think.