this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2024
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Immigrants are not only not a detriment to society, they are in fact a positive. Even the ones people in my area get mad about despite being hours and hours by interstate from the nearest border. More workers means more shit can get done, everything you're mad about is because the system sucks and is designed to keep us in poverty.
People act like jobs are a non-renewable resource that, once filled, that's all you get. This is a total misunderstanding of how consumer based economies work. Economic activity is demand driven. More consumers = more demand = more jobs. This is obvious if you think about it. It's why cities can exist rather than collapse once hitting a certain population because all the jobs are taken and no one can work anymore. It's why you find way more opportunities in cities rather than podunk rural villages.
Where the trouble comes in is that the population growth and job opportunities growth doesn't necessarily happen at exactly the same rate at exactly the same time. There can be pain in the transitional period between when the population growth happens, and when the new demand stimulates the new job opportunities. That isn't a reason to try and stifle the population growth. It's a political issue. Something like universal basic services (or UBI), or a universal jobs guarantee where the government puts people to work on infrastructure projects (social housing in particular seems like a good idea) or the like, like New Deal era USA did until they can find something more to their liking would do a lot to soothe that pain.
Ultimately, the new economic activity that's created from the growth is a good thing and ought to be embraced.
Yes but what if some of those people are brown??
Clearly your country's immigration system isn't labyrinthine and bureaucratic enough. Add enough systematic hatred and anyone can be turned into a burden to society.
Here in the Netherlands, immigrants are not allowed to work, so everything has to be provided to them by the state. The construction industry has been regulated and defunded so that building houses for the lower class is never profitable and is only built through quotas that are too low to meet demand, leading to immigrants competing with locals for extremely rare housing, leading to abuse victims being forced to stay with their abusers or go homeless. They are not taught the local language and children have to go to segregated schools to prevent them from forming attachments. There is an army of bureaucrats, cops, lawyers, judges, and public defenders involved in determining whether they have the right to stay, regulating how they live, enforcing how they live, litigating how they live, appealing litigation, and going after immigrants who are required to leave.
wait how do i immigrate to the netherlands, asking for no particular reason
Exactly. If capitalism was great at using all resources effectivly, then it clearly means that there should be no unemployment at all. After all it is a waste of work time.
So you are saying landlords are the problem? /s
This but unsarcastically
Yes, but also cynically.
Only part of it. Everyone that forces you into a corner with nowhere else to go. Endure unfair rent, endure shitty jobs with shitty pay. Boomers and part of my generation were the last (here at least, can't judge other countries) where appartments searched for tenants and jobs searched for people. We managed to turn it around. If you now place an ad for a job or an apt, you're drowning in applications in mere minutes. Literally. No matter how shitty either of which is. Housing-market especially. It's like dating for ugly and poor men. Probably even worse.
That's the dream of landlords and employers. And mass-immigration made it possible. e.G. my home-city went from 350.000 people to >600.000 in just a generation. Nearly same amount of apts and jobs. It shows :-)
Also, guess what. I can be part of the problem and still dislike it, even though i highly profit from it. I didn't make the rules.
Please look up actual statistics on population figures and housing market before making claims like that.
Nearly all urbanisation is driven by people relocating inside the country, not immigrants, and nearly all cities with massive affordable housing problems have huge amounts of empty flats that are kept off the market, artificially price inflated or are only used for short term holiday rentals.
Seriously, look it up for your city. Usually these figures are available online if you look a bit for them.
Nope, there isn't. Without a good reason it's forbidden. Sadly so, would drive prices even higher. And the "actual statistic" are obvious: Population nearly doubled. Fact. Still the same space and only a fraction of what would be needed have been built new. Fact. Less of something available with risen demand for it? Prices rise. Simple as that.
And even IF it would be as you said, wouldn't change a thing about immigrants. They're on top of the problem ypu describe. Can't speak for the US though.
Come on... doubled from where? You don't know? Look it up. Very unlikely due to immigrants.
There are past migrants too that procreate way more than we do. But why should i even argue? It's simple logic. Even if everyone of us had 1 child. Including past immigrants and not counting them, every coming immigrant is a +1 we didn't want nor need. Doesn't matter how well they integrate or not. It's just population = population +1
I have never heard so much e. G. ukranian in my life. Those hundreds of thousands need room to live.
But if you want to believe in your theory of how additional people don't matter, sure. Go ahed. I don't mind. It's people like you that helped bring us here. Thanks. I hate work anyway 😁
Dodging the question, I see 🙄
Look, I am not denying that the population in your city might have doubled in recent years, its a common trend with urbanisation in many places. And of course such growth puts strain on a cities services and creates a lot of competition in the housing market.
But, nearly everywhere this trend isn't driven by first or second generation immigrants, like you imply. It is usually driven by the native population that relocates from rural areas and smaller cities to larger cities.
The argument that every extra person makes it worse is laughable when the extra persons we talk about here make up such a small percentage of the overall issue and often don't even compete for housing as they are placed in government run group-housing.
Not dodging. Well if the sole reason is relocating to cities, then the outskirts or far-away-places should be cheap as shit right? Guess what, it's not different. Prices went up, demand grew, space is still the same.
I don't understand why you totally not see a problem with 15% of the population being immigrants that weren't here before. How can they not be a major part of the problem? And yes, they compete for gov-run grooup-housing. But so do the "natives".
Anyhow, be it as it may, i don't really care (beside profiting from whatever the real reaso is). The next generation will have to deal with it. I didn't add kids to this world, i have no stake in the future.
No, why would the outskirts be cheaper? The opposite happens as the more affluent move to the suburbs.
And please look up the actual figure. Refugees are less than 2% of the population in the EU for example. Of course if you identify everyone with generations old immigration background you can reach maybe 15% but those are no less "native" than all the others that move to the cities.
And no, the refugee "camps" that I politely described as group housing are not open to non-refugees.
Dude. Not one ukrainian is living in said group-housing. I thought you refered to social housing by the gov. But those in the refugee-camps (why so polite, it's literally what they are) either leave or can stay and occupy another apt.
Yeah i like your logic. An immigrant being here for a generation stops being one. Okay, whatever. It's still a +1 that was not supposed to be here.
But i get it, we taught you long enough these values of diversity and being liberal and open, and now we reap the profits. I'm game.
Ah, so it's just plain old racism then. Understood 😒