Mass immigration has been a fake specter used by the right to get votes for decades now. How did it impact you, or even those close to you personally negatively?
I can tell you some positive impacts:
- Most western countries are concerned about economic cliffs around retirement benefits due to falling population. The US is not because so many people, used to(?), want to move here.
- Our food is subsidized by those willing to work awful hours at awful wages. As a humanitarian I hate this but I suspect most people would be upset to have to eat food picked at wages white Americans are willing to work.
- Most studies show more people equals more production equals more economic prosperity.
The solution to an illegal immigration problem is to loosen immigration rules and create pathways to citizenship.
- US is special because it is by far the richest and most entrepreneurial (big) country in the world; it gets the creme of the crop of the world, and corresponding economic growth, which no other Western country can replicate; many people want to move to all Western countries (e.g. Europe is experiencing an immigration crisis) but unfiltered (low-skill) immigration doesn't result in economic growth
- illegal (slave?) labour on farms is simply delaying automation, which is ultimately detrimental to economic growth [1]
- in fact, recent studies (and public data) show that non-Western immigrants are not net taxpayers, therefore they result in the opposite of economic prosperity (see graph in [2])
> Without freedom of association people stop socializing when you get a plurality population, you can see this everywhere in the US.
Can you elaborate on this? To me, again just being honest and genuine, it reads as a racist dog whistle which says “without a shared cultural baseline this country will collapse”.
I’ve worked with local immigrant advocate groups and have multiple immigrants living on the same street as me. They largely want nothing more than to be part of American society. Is this a range? Absolutely. Different people want to be part of society to different extents. But it’s very rare to find people who won’t be kind and welcoming to you if you are kind and welcoming to them.
On housing that’s obviously true. There are two solutions there. Reduce the demand, or increase the supply. Given that the demand is “humans wanting shelter” any attempt to reduce demand is clearly immoral. So the answer there is to up the supply.
I also genuinely want immigrants. At a minimum they bring delicious food I get to enjoy.
I'm fine with naming it although I think there are legitimate practical problems beyond just that.
Why is it wrong to not want to be made a minority in your own country? Most of the time when that's been done to other people it's been strongly condemned for good reasons. Why when it's done to some of the most productive (and I would argue just) people in history is it considered a good thing?
Why is it surprising that people prefer to be around other people like them and don't function as well with people who don't behave the same way?
Why does race matter at all? Why would you become a minority? We’re defining minority here as racial and that’s totally arbitrary. It’s so arbitrary that if you look at the early 1900s you’ll see that Italians and Irish weren’t considered white and would be considered a minority.
Cultural differences are already massive across the US even amongst long time Americans. If you meet 10th generation Americans in New England, The South, The Midwest, and California their cultural differences are already at the size of a different country. There is no majority that’s being replaced. I know this because I’ve lived in those places and in Europe and Asia. The US has always been a place where cultures mix and change.
I’m sorry that makes you anxious. Harming others isn’t the way to resolve that anxiety though.
Except that you can point to deaths, loss of productively, loss of revenue, etc caused by racist attitudes. And you can point to benefits caused by immigration.
I still have yet to hear an answer from my initial question about why any of this is a genuine problem aside from housing which I agree with but disagree on the solution.
To make progress concrete things need to exist for discussion around them to happen.
Deaths is an odd one to pick considering racial homicide statistics, so there's another problem for you to chew on.
I think the real fundamental problem we're running into is that we don't have a shared set of moral axioms. You've probably chosen international/interracial cooperation as one and I have not.
I have to admit I am quite intrigued by your ideology and feelings: it seems that you are acknowledging to hold racist beliefs but at the same time it bothers you to be called racist? May I ask why?
1) Minorities are going to have a worse experience anywhere just for practical reasons and additionally because of how human socialization naturally works. That's why we're so concerned about how they're treated and constantly do our best to help them.
2) The plurality or majority that replaces us will not be us and will not share our ideas (liberal democracy, market economies are two notable examples) which naturally we're going to prefer to theirs.
3) Globally people have been exceptionally unkind to minorities compared to how we've treated them. If they replicate that behavior here (and when they've been given the opportunity to they have) that absolutely is a problem.
> Without freedom of association people stop socializing when you get a plurality population, you can see this everywhere in the US.
What does this mean? Why would people stop socializing?
> If the immigrants were a net benefit things like housing would be getting cheaper since we otherwise would have shrinking population. Because of the effect I mentioned the opposite is happening.
Of all the issues with housing, you think immigrants are the primary force driving prices up? That a farm worker is causing houses in my neighborhood to be $1M+? Once all the constructing workers are driven away, we're about to see a real supply shock likely to drive prices higher.
> Plus just replacing the population doesn't actually help them.
Help who? Fewer Americans are having kids. The US economic system is built on growth and that also means population growth. An aging and shrinking US is a dying US.
> None of us need or want more immigrants.
Why not, and be specific. More so than anywhere else in the world, the US was built on immigration. Even with all the problems in the US, its ability to attract people who want to work hard and create a better life has been its superpower. This mixing pot of ideas and cultures is one of the keys that turned the US into the economic powerhouse it is today. Unfortunately, Trump is doing his best to dismantle the institutions that made America great.
Yes, immigration needs to be fixed. The people already in the US need to be given straightforward paths to be legal. And people outside the US should be given straightforward ways to come live and work and contribute to the US.
>The people already in the US need to be given straightforward paths to be legal.
No? You don't have a right to live somewhere just because you break in and camp there for a few years. If I broke into Mexico that way they'd evict me. Doing anything else is completely insane.
I can tell you some positive impacts:
- Most western countries are concerned about economic cliffs around retirement benefits due to falling population. The US is not because so many people, used to(?), want to move here.
- Our food is subsidized by those willing to work awful hours at awful wages. As a humanitarian I hate this but I suspect most people would be upset to have to eat food picked at wages white Americans are willing to work.
- Most studies show more people equals more production equals more economic prosperity.
The solution to an illegal immigration problem is to loosen immigration rules and create pathways to citizenship.