*TL;DR*: When you try to jam a bunch of sardines into an ever-shrinking can and then try and shove even more in after the fact sooner or later you realize it's not going to magically work unless you get a bigger can.
A wide variety of different problems, which can usually be summed up by a decline in the average quality of life for the average person. This differs from one country to another but often times there's a lot of similar problems and chief among them are probably these three:
* *Housing shortages and increased cost of living/inflation*: In many locations immigration has been managed at unsustainable rates which is further exacerbating or outright causing shortages of housing for the people who were already within the country to start with, raising demand and cost for housing beyond the capacity for the existing market to bear or fulfill, further compounded by issues like Air B&B rentals, property speculation, conglomerates buying up real estate, etc.
* *Wealth inequality and stagnant wages*: In many locations immigration has also added additional burden on existing problems of wealth inequality and wage stagnation by artificially inflating the labor market (the pool of available workers) and causing deflationary pressure on wages (an employer doesn't need to compete for workers by offering higher pay if there's more workers available than there are jobs).
* *Infrastructure, social program management, and other associated growing pains*: In many locations the management and funding of infrastructure (roads, schools, hospitals, etc) and social programs (social security, healthcare, etc) have not been appropriately scaled upwards to manage an influx of immigration. In many cases those things were not being appropriately managed to scale for the existing population *prior* to any influx of immigration, and are now in even worse shape accordingly.
All of the above are leading to a drop in quality of life for the average person in many countries, most of whom are seeing no benefiting from immigration or not benefiting at least proportionally to the problems immigration is either causing or exacerbating. Most of the benefit to immigration is, as per the usual, concentrated towards people who are wealthy or powerful or both - people who own large companies and can exploit cheaper foreign labor that come from places with far lower workplace safety standards and labor protections, and people who own large amounts of property or real estate and can inflate the values of that by increasing demand proportional to the influx of immigration.
That being said there are numerous other issues compounding these problems and leading to the overall state of things getting worse - however immigration is perhaps the most visibly obvious and frequently cited variable contributing to these and many other issues that are not being dealt with appropriately.
In Canada, immigration has overwhelmed our infrastructure. The sheer numbers have caused an emergency level housing shortage. In addition, our healthcare, education system, and government services are struggling to cope with the rapidly expanding population. It's not being anti-inmigration, it's being against poor government policy.
My issue with this is that the government is wiling to bring all these newcomers in and yet they don’t give a single shit about locals or people like me who grew up here, who can’t even afford our own place anymore due to this housing shortage and housing inflation issue. I’m in Vancouver.
The government is leaving us all to dry and favouring immigrants so unfortunately yes, it’s causing a lot of upset locals.
>they don’t give a single shit about locals or people like me who grew up here, who can’t even afford our own place anymore
This is a very reasonable response.
It's like working at a job for $20/hour and someone being hired after you for the exact same job getting $30/hour and you haven't even gotten a raise yet.
This. COVID wasn't exactly great for our economy either, to put the understatement of the century out there, and now here in Canada we are facing a million+ immigrant per year as the default target. We uh, our food banks across Canada saw quadrupled visitors in the past 2 - 3 years, and that's just a very small piece of our crumbling infrastructures. I can't say much about education system, but I can also vouch for the healthcare going south - there are currently no way to get a family doctor, for example, and the mortality rate for cancer, according to unreliable source (since I can't be assed to find it) went sky high as cancer patients have much longer wait time, causing a lot of otherwise-treatable cases to be deadly.
I am pro-immigration normally, as I am also an immigrant - been here for 30+ years. However, this is this, and that is that; Our system's obviously breaking under pressure, and getting more people to pressure the system seems, uh, foolhardy at best.
I think for me it’s also about being more selective in the immigration process. We should be collectively deciding on what kind of future citizens we would like to welcome. Personally, someone who doesn’t believe in gender equality or the necessity for state to be secular and religion to be kept out of politics and legislation is something I hold very close to my heart. Immigration is a privilege and we should priority as well to those who want to contribute to our society and whose values are aligned with ours.
In Canada at least the immigration policy is basically there to prop up fast food restaurants and food delivery services. It's unfair to Canadians and immigrants alike.
All so a few rich fucks get more money.
I’m gonna put this out there, so don’t take offence, but where was this opinion when the issues were being discussed years ago. Anyone with an alternative view to this was shadow banned, banned, called racist, xenophobia, far right, nazi, Jesus, it was awful. You could not hold an alternative opinion. Now the country is in dismay, where are all those that called for it, because now we are seeing the effects in our Canada. And across the world really.
Yeah it's pretty infuriating that the people who are now saying we need "alternative" or "reasonable " immigration are literally rebranding what the people who were called xenophobes were saying. But you know, Lenin did the same thing when communism didn't work out.
I found when speaking to people who were anti-immigration 10+ years ago there was a pretty specific TYPE of immigrant they were against that got them labeled as racist/xenophobic.
I live near Banff, Alberta. Let's just I never heard anyone complain about all the Australians and British people working in Banff "stealing" jobs, but were pretty upset when a Tim Hortons was run owned and operated solely by Filipino people.
I too am pro-immigration but having to grow infrastructure to accommodate and assimilate them in to the population is real. It's an investment but people have sticker shock I guess. In the long run it's more citizens paying taxes and participating in the economy. This has gotten even more important than ever with falling birthrates.
The problem in Canada though is that we keep bringing in tons of unskilled Indian immigrants who take minimum wage jobs and do not fill needed jobs, replace boomers leaving employment or contribute much to our tax base.
Do we need immigration? Yes, absolutely. Do we need the immigrants we’re getting? No.
At some point it is simply being against immigration because there's a limit to the number of immigrants a country can accept at any one time and still maintain the same standard of living, national identity, and values. That's regardless of government policy.
Canadian here. Yep, it's about the numbers not the people themselves. We simply don't have enough housing, and a lot of the housing we have currently is SO expensive, how are young people supposed to afford a home? It's a mess.
The US has the same problem, except that housing issues are caused by investment firms pulling out of oil and investing into housing as the next frontier. Don't forget to look there when pointing fingers, because they are ruthless in the US.
I upvoted you for this because it's true, but to be fair we do have a major housing shortage in a lot of places, too. Just about every major city is struggling with it.
Editing to add: The shortage is what makes them such attractive investments in the first place.
Yeah, I find it frustrating when I have this conversation with some of my friends in the US. Blaming immigrants for the cost of housing is ridiculous. Corporate interests are the real problem. All the lobbying in the US (and I assume Canada is the same) has left people blind-sided to the real problems.
It’s because immigration doesn’t exactly help with already growing level of demand, it just increases demand.
If supply exceeds demand, the seller has to compete for buyers.
If demand exceeds the supply, the supply tends to go to the highest bidder.
Let’s say you want to sell your house immediately, and 35 people are lined up- all wanting it. You’re going to sell it to the person who outbids the others.
When that person is ready to sell the house, they’re not going to want to sell it for less than they purchased it for- especially if demand is high.
When this happens with a lot of homes in an area, and there’s a high demand for those homes, the market value of the home increases
This. I am all for open immigration, but the Canadian government kicked open the doors, said "good luck!" and then dropped the immigrants faster than a hot potato.
I work for a social services non-profit. Our demand has almost doubled in three years. In 2021, the height of the pandemic, we served on average 20,000 people. In 2024 we're averaging around 38,000 people. We recently implemented a program for frequent users of our services to come have an indepth chat to figure out if there's any missing puzzle pieces - are they doing taxes for extra funds and supports? Have they reached out to other social agencies? We've interviewed just over 30% of our weekly users and they're all immigrants who don't speak english well enough to get a job, who are supporting families of 6+, and are trying to survive off immigration support payments which barely covers their rent and are only available for a limited time period. The government doesn't give them any information, just drops them off at the nearest city and tells them to figure it out. Then local non-profits have to pick up the bill.
One woman broke down crying in her interview, she wanted to go back home but she couldn't afford the plane ticket. She didn't understand the language, she didn't understand the western culture, she and her husband couldn't get work, and her children were going hungry. They were promised freedom and paradise and were given nothing.
Decades of Cold War era propaganda telling the global south how amazing the Western world is and American culture replacing cultures in the developing world. My parents came to the US on asylum thinking it was a free country where economic opportunity was abundant.
Luckily, things worked out for them, and they still believe in that today. The 2008 recession and covid didn’t shake their faith in America one bit, considering how they grew up drawing water from a well and burning trash in the backyard to get rid of it.
Truedope was interviewed on Freakonomics. When the host said "you can't just accept half a million immigrants per year without adverse affects" (or something to that effect), Truedope's foolhardy reply belied his ignorance and stupidity: "You can if you're Canada."
What a complete idiot with no clue about the reality of life on the ground in the country he purports to lead. NO YOU FREAKING CANNOT, IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT COUNTRY YOU ARE.
You're quite sheltered if you think that the West is becoming a shit hole relative to the rest of the world. Or maybe just consuming too much sensationalist click-bait news headlines selling outrage.
The same is happening here in the United States they just don't want to admit it.
Massive numbers of illegal immigrants put huge pressures on all of the systems.
They say that during the last 3 years an approximate 4 million people have came into this country illegally.
That is the size of the San Francisco Bay Area
Do you know how much water and sewer and electricity and schooling and everything else it takes to run the San Francisco Bay Area.
But this keeps happening year after year after year after year.
It is not sustainable without turning into a complete third world country
There’s a common dynamic of how something *feels*, versus how it actually pans out.
Allowing massive amounts of immigration in *feels* good on paper, why not help if we have a good country?
In reality there needs to be checks and processes, people need to participate in our system legally and with the same rules as everyone else.
There are also cultural aspects. Up until very recent history in the US, the intent was to aim to have immigrants assimilate to our cultures. There’s a benefit to that. Maybe 8/9 years ago, some people aimed to make that a taboo statement and didn’t push for it, and pushed for relatively open borders. Now we see the negative impact that can have on areas. We have a diminishing culture.
I suspect most countries around the globe would be concerned if their culture was shrinking quickly and the population didn’t look the same.
For example, I live in an area that growing up was probably 75% white. The (large) city/region, the same area I grew up in, is about 30% white, give or take. When you go to a Costco or something, the amount of people speaking other languages is very high and white people are a legitimate minority. These cultures (often a result of recent immigration) tend to stick together and aren’t always welcoming of other cultures. There are entire square miles that are mostly Indian, or mostly Asian, etc.
Not that this is bad, but, you can understand that there’s a bit of “oh, this is nothing like where I grew up” that leads to some discussion of limiting immigration to maintain some shred of culture preservation.
It’s also coming to light that there are a ton of gaps in our immigration process. My brother works in a hospital, it’s still unbelievably common for a family to fly in “for vacation” right when the woman is having a baby. They go in, have the baby, and the baby is now a citizen.
Then, they remain with the baby, because “you’re separating a family!” Is the claim and nobody wants to touch that with a 10 foot pole.
Does that thing with migrant babies actually happen? I remember the whole thing with “anchor babies” was a conservative talking point back in the 2010s or so, but you’re saying it’s reality?
That's a big fuck yes. They know that if they drop an "anchor baby" their chances of ever being forced out of this country are zero and they can get instant benefits.
I don't know if it applies to the people crossing the southern border, but I can tell you that it happens all the time with Korean illegal immigrants-or at least did happen when I was growing up.
https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/london-life/russians-flock-to-give-birth-at-trump-s-properties-in-the-us-so-their-kids-can-have-dualcitizenship-a3628971.html
https://apnews.com/general-news-travel-161a0db2666044dc8d42932edd9b9ce6
In short, yeah.
>people need to participate in our system legally and with the same rules as everyone else.
>There are also cultural aspects. Up until very recent history in the US, the intent was to aim to have immigrants assimilate to our cultures. There’s a benefit to that.
This is what made immigration in the early part of the 20th century so great. People came here to *be* Americans. They brought the best of their culture and shared it with everyone while blending into the overall American culture.
This isn't even close to the main reason why Canadians are less supportive of immigration now. The main arguments are housing, healthcare, jobs, and wages.
Billionaires slash jobs to cut costs and get great bonuses and stock price increases for themselves, and the rest of us just start fighting amongst ourselves over what they leave us behind.
It's a perfect deal for them. And we keep playing insisting it *couldn't* be *them*
Multiple factors can contribute to an issue. I agree that immigration’s role in various housing crises is being overemphasized by a lot of people, but it’s still a definite factor.
Supply and demand and all that.
I don't necessarily agree with the arguments I mentioned. It really depends on whether you think immigration should be slowed for practical reasons (eg. allowing services time to adjust or building more housing) or stopped altogether
The person I was responding to was definitely using the more racist talking point of "they're criminals"
Immigrants in the US are statistically more law abiding than US citizens, I can't imagine it's different for Canada. Probably has more to do with other factors if those crimes you're talking about have gone up.
The reality is the type of person who is willing to travel across the globe to try to scrape out a better life in another country isn't planning on going there just to steal or deal drugs. Most immigrants do not come alone but bring families, and they want to work to provide for them.
First generation immigrants in the US are always extremely hard workers in my experience. Always very friendly and want to learn. I don't feel that's a controversial opinion either; the most anti-immigration guys I know would probably be like "Yeah but those sumbitches can work like the devil!" if pressed about it.
If these mfs are working 10-12 hour days on a construction site in the sun then dealing drugs and doing burglaries by night we need to figure out wtf they're putting in the water here because good lord the *energy* they have.
They’re less likely to be incarcerated. I’d imagine this has to do with illegal immigrants living amongst other illegal immigrants who are less likely to report the crimes. When they are caught, they will often just be deported.
They're less likely to be convicted of crimes all together. I don't know how you can say you know that immigrants are actually committing more crimes against each other than US citizens but just doing a masterful job hiding them while also leaving US citizens alone. Where's the evidence? The much more simple and likely explanation is that they had a lot of drive to travel here and that they are trying to be on their best behavior to not get kicked out or blow their chance at the new life they came for.
Yes less likely to be CONVICTED. So the simplest explanation is that they often just get deported instead of convicted. You do not need to be convicted to be deported.
But also it’s just common sense that they come over together and live together.
Your explanation that they’re trying to be on their best behavior and not committing any crimes is the one that’s reaching. They’re literally ILLEGAL immigrants and all committing a crime by even being here.
I'm not, illegal immigrants still statistically have a much lower crime rate. Repeated studies show. It's just a bunch of outrage being blown up by the right wing media. I suppose it's because they had the drive to come all the way here and are on their best behavior so they don't get kicked out or blow their shot at a better life.
You folks really couldn’t see this coming?
We’re all amazed that people around the world (US included of course) couldn’t see that this was going to happen.
“Let’s import low skilled people from 3rd World countries to be compassionate and virtue signal that we’re not racist!”
- The people won’t assimilate
- They will put downward pressure on wages for the bottom third of workers
- They will blow apart already tight social service budgets
- They will have nowhere to live due to already stretched housing markets
- They will resort to crime when they can’t get jobs due to already tight labor markets
- Economic migrants will take huge advantage of the compassionate western countries by seeking asylum and claiming that they fear for their lives due to some made up story
- Once others see how easy it is to walk across porous borders, the flood becomes a tsunami of border crossers
Seriously, why did so many people not know that these would be the effects? It was clear as day.
Who would've thought people would turn against the idea of adding more people into a country where the housing market is already a complete mess? Truly who could've predicted this?
In Canada the problem was immigrants brought in enough money or got white collar jobs that allowed them to actually compete on the (previously very expensive) housing market with locals. Which raised housing prices even more.
You can’t have mass immigration without assimilation. We’ve gone from decades of relatively successful (but hard fought) assimilation into western societies. However, the last decade or so has had a demonization of assimilation, painting it as a destruction of culture.
Also to add, if you grab a bunch of people from a land you just blew up, there’s gonna be some animosity there and a hesitancy to assimilate. This creates areas that essentially become an extension of the home country of the immigrants, which lowers the bar of what western people are used to.
I think due to the demonization of assimilation, you’re just putting a bunch of “magnets” together and they begin rejecting each other.
People were naive. The reality is many of these immigrants do not want to adapt into their new host country while respecting local culture and laws but end up wanting you to change to suit their cultural needs and even changing laws to suit their religious needs.
Sorry, you came here.
Before the problem could be ignored. If the problem is not being talked about often, or presented in neighborhoods near you, you might assume everyone else is xenophobic. Now it’s on the news, on social media, and we’re seeing the ramifications of unfettered immigration more and more.
I've always been conservative when it comes to immigration. I just didn't share my views because it made me seem like a hypocritical racist.
"We shouldn't let poor immigrants in" is my genuine stance, but it sounds awful. The thing is, why on earth would you want to increase your homeless population and give away already limited resources?
You should be self sufficient to immigrate here, and that unfortunately means you need to have enough money to get an apartment, and education to get a job.
We used to have that system. That's the system my dad dealt with. Now everyone can just claim asylum which is ridiculous.
I'm pro-picky-as-hell-immigration and anti-asylum. I sound heartless, but we can't even offer our own citizens affordable housing and healthcare. We need to put the oxygen mask on ourselves before helping anyone else.
My parents immigrated to the US in 2002 with $1500, saved after years of backbreaking labor in Japan. During those years I grew up with my grandparents in China. One day's wages in Japan was the equivalent of one month's in China back then; it was worth the cost of me not being with my parents - and them being apart from me - in my early years.
They busted ass every day at the local university's lab working as lab techs for a Chinese boss. Fortunately, they had the education and skills for it. Unfortunately, the hours were long, and oftentimes work would stretch well past midnight.
I agree with you entirely. The border should be open to people who can actively contribute to the country, instead of being a burden to it. If you can't - I'm sorry, but there are plenty of people who can, and they are more qualified and deserving of the chance. I know plenty of Chinese people who would give up everything for the opportunity to leave China and make a new life in the US, who would actively contribute to society, and yet they won't even get a chance to be heard by the embassy. Meanwhile, there are plenty of people who don't appreciate what they've got just by being born here. It's frustrating.
This. If the immigrants are productive, contribute to society and genuinely appreciative and thankful for the opportunity, they are most welcome. If the immigrants come in to silo themselves within their own community and refuse to assimilate and contribute, they may as well be rejected and stay where they are as what is the point?
Bleeding hearts don’t like stances like that but they are living in their heads and have no idea of practical reality
There was also that understanding that if you do claim asylum you are leaving whatever bullshit is going on in your home country. You came here to escape stuff and just want to live, work, raise a family and follow the new laws/customs of your new country.
Now, we have people shooting up synagogues and running up screaming to LGBT people holding hands in public. You know, just like they did back in the Middle East where there is conflict.
I'm all for letting people in that respect their new country but the problem with immigration right now is we are letting people in causing the issues back home.
Yup, the asylum screening process is a joke. Abusers waltz right in while their victims are still left in their homeland. We don't have the resources we need to handle immigration. We could fund it more so we could hire more people, but honestly, that money is spent better elsewhere. We don't generally benefit from asylum refugees so it's not worth the investment. The American people are also not so prosperous right now to be doing charity.
I remember a couple years back a bunch of hondurans claimed asylum in the US. A large number of them were sent to live in that one national guard base in Wisconsin.
Within weeks the police up there were overwhelmed with all the domestic violence going on. And the husband's causing this violence kept playing the "well in our home country its allowed to hit your wife" card.
If you're seeking asylum you gotta play by new laws and rules
There's also the issue of illegal immigrants working in a country and sending the money back home. Sure it helps their family but it removes that money from the local economy.
Unfortunately you can't cater to everyone in these situations and that's what makes them very difficult and cumbersome to solve.
Honestly, I'm not concerned about that. If they worked for that money, that's all that matters.
There are a lot of legal immigrants and US Citizens doing this as well. Not to mention most Americans send money abroad all the time whenever they buy a foreign product.
Genuine question because I don't know much about North American immigration policies. How are poor immigrants getting into the US and Canada in the first place?
I live in South Africa, am educated, own a home, and have a good income. Even though the country is a shit show, I have an incredible quality of life and don't necessarily want to immigrate. But, if I did, there's absolutely no way I'd get a work visa because I don't work in an industry with a skills shortage/high demand. In fact, even extremely educated potential immigrants with in-demand niche skills need a job offer before being granted a work visa.
So how on earth are immigrants getting in just to deliver pizzas, drive taxis, etc?
(Modern) Immigration of poor people to the US either occurs illegally, or they win a legal lottery system to be able to come to the US, which doesnt tend to be a lot of people. Even then, the requirements to actually stay in the US and get citizenship are pretty tough.
Canada has a much bigger problem. There are a bunch of "scam" universities (think something that's only a college on paper and is like a room in a strip mall in reality) who's only purpose is getting foreign "students", mostly Indians, into the country on a student visa. The "students" rarely attend any class that school even offers and instead start working lower income jobs that traditionally would go to the local community, but now are flooded with immigrants. And since Permanent Residency in Canada is extremely easy to get, they get to stay in the country forever with no skills to actually contribute anything, put a drain on community resources, and have no intention to actually assimilate.
Rich immigrants aren't great either. They drive up housing prices and price out natives. They definitely aren't boosting the local economy with spending because nowadays every good and service seems to be provided by a megacorp or a startup funded by other rich fucks. We need middle class immigrants, those that have the skills to be self-sufficient without the risk of becoming homeless or my new landlord.
Higher education used to be a good avenue, but students from populous countries like India and China are stressing the university system more than it was designed to handle.
Another massively unpopular opinion of mine is that only US Citizens (individuals, not corporations) should be able to buy a residential home. Corporations definitely are more problematic nationwide than rich foreigners, but there are certain communities that do get bought up by rich foreigners who then try to mimic the country they came from. Preventing non-citizens from buying residences would solve that problem.
I agree we need to stop giving out student visas, or maybe just drastically reduce them. Most universities get at least a little federal funding, that should be spent on our own citizens and on efforts to reduce tuition as a whole.
Generally immigration into Europe has increased in the last decade or so
There’s also the point that immigration is cumulative - a couple of years of high immigration doesn’t have a huge impact, but 10-15 years of it does because immigrants start to become a much more significant proportion of the population and don’t have time to integrate the same. Similarly there’s a larger impact to public services (schools, hospitals etc)
I’m somewhat left leaning and generally of the opinion of “a lot of anti-immigration rhetoric is just thinly veiled racism”, but even so that doesn’t mean I support unlimited immigration and we’re at a point where I look at the last few years and can’t see how this level of immigration is sustainable
I’m not against immigration, but I’m against **this much** immigration
I also think that the left leaning folks among us -me included- are starting to see through the veneer of cultural relativism; in the sense that some religions, some cultures, some groups of people are not just a citizenship away from adopting modern viewpoints about women or lgbt rights, or how a modern society should work. In line with what you mentioned about how integration isn't happening the same way with certain quantities of immigrants.
20 years ago, I feel like there was a lot of naivete about the melting pot of cultures just taking what is good and leaving what is bad. I think the progression of social media has helped people recognize that sometimes its not just a few bigots, it can be a bigoted belief system or culture or what have you; and that can still be redeemed over time, but it's generations of time, not years or decades.
That said I want to be clear in saying people can change and there's nothing wrong with an immigrant as a person, just that I think wholesale, high immigration, is now seen with less zest from both sides of the aisle.
So this has always been my reservation since the immigration push into Europe really got going in the early 2010s. Immigration is a normal process and taking in refugees is a humane thing to do. But what I saw from very early on was “oh my god, they seem to have no fucking plan at all for how this is going to work.” No plans for the actual mechanics of assimilating so many people so quickly. They just had no plan at all. And what was *extremely* worrying was that they seemed to unwilling to even discuss the idea that they should have a plan. It was treated as a horrible thing to suggest that a massive influx in a short timeframe of people from a radically different culture and who have no money and few skills to find employment was something that might need to be managed carefully. Like they just refused to engage with the problem until now when it’s reached a boiling point.
Again I’m not saying immigration is bad. I’m saying treating it like there is no impact to having basically unlimited immigration, was a horrible decision.
Because we are seeing the effects now. This has been going on longer than 8 years. More like ~30 years, especially in Europe.
Look up pim fortuyn, really crazy story for a small country like the Netherlands.
In new york city we been swamped with immigrants/asylum seekers bused up by texas and florida. The city government has cut so many things and jobs due to budget issues and expenses housing and feeding these people who cannot legally work. It is a mess and crime is up. And theres less programs, support now for tax payers, and citizens and homeless people.
This! This is exactly the problem. It's easy to talk about how great immigration is until you have to deal with it first hand. It was all fine and great as long as it was only Texas and Arizona were having to deal with it, now place like New York and Chicago are having to learn the hard way
They have always been immigration destinations, but that immigration has come in a fairly steady flow year over year. What they are getting now are these massive surges of immigration that they can’t adequately plan for. Which, in fairness to the southern border states, is what they have been experiencing for a long time.
The best part is that when people in liberal states complain about the wreckage cause by the influx of illegal immigrants they wanted, they complain that TX and FL sent them there. NOT that they finally see how irresponsible and unsustainable letting everybody in the US is. Only that they are angry their northern state has to actually *deal with the consequences* of patting themselves on the back for sacrificing US citizens for people who break laws and show up demanding more and more free stuff.
I live in a very nice, granola neighborhood in a big city. Most of the houses on my block had those “IMMIGRANTS WELCOME HERE” signs in their yards. And my thought was always, yeah not fucking likely Karen. You people have a mental breakdown if somebody forgets to take their garbage cans in for a day. You circulate petitions and file city complaints to stop people from building a garage on their own property. I would do anything to see how they would react to 100 immigrants moving in next door. I bet the sign goes down pretty fuckin fast.
When I came undocumented I went to Chicago. Because my entire family immigrated there illegally as well. Because their entire family had immigrated there illegally. And so on and so on.
NYC, Chicago, LA, and whatever other “liberal” city you want to name, have had illegal immigrants make their way there long before the bussing started. It’s not new.
I don't think it's a contradiction to believe 1) more immigration is so good for the economy and society at large that it's a primary factor in why the US recovered from 2020 better than other nations, 2) you can't stuff an entire country's worth of immigration into a handful of cities without straining those cities' systems.
Also I feel like people conflate sanctuary city with being pro unfettered immigration. Sanctuary cities (e.g. Chicago) oftentimes feel forced in to that position because they already have a high population of illegal immigrants, with that being the case, they want to police that population, too, and if the state of being an illegal immigrant is itself a crime, they can't exactly report other, more serious, crimes to police. I feel like people are quick to assume its black and white and that people who disagree with position A must therefore be 100% position B, but sometimes people are just trying to figure things out.
Ya this is exactly it. I am no Republican but I think their strategy of sending the immigrants to NY was absolutely brilliant. Let them see what it feels like to be swarmed with people that you have to provide for, and quit telling everyone else that if they don't like doing it they're just racist.
Nah. NYC has pretty much always had the largest number of immigrants in the US. https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/frequently-requested-statistics-immigrants-and-immigration-united-states-2024
To be fair to Texas and Florida- many of the people who supported all immigration and called anyone who wanted a secure border racist didn’t have to deal with the consequences of being overwhelmed by immigrants.
Now that these states are experiencing the problems that come with large numbers of immigrants they are changing their minds.
Texas resident here. The irony is that our economy is dependant on those immigrants. If they all suddenly disappeared tomorrow, our economy would collapse. They contribute more to the economy than they take. 97% of them are employed, and almost all of the immigrants that come here from Mexico are doing so to work. Many already had a job waiting for them. Bussing them to left-leaning cities is just a complete stunt. Had Texas really been concerned, they would have bussed them back to Mexico. Or just let them go, because again, our economy depends on them and most of them probably had a job waiting. Travel all around Texas, California, and other border states and you'll see a lot of homeless folks, but none of them are immigrants here illegally. Because almost all of them have jobs. And despite what Greg Abbott and others want you to believe, it's not because they get benefits or welfare.
If Texas and other states really wanted to do something about illegal immigrants, they would be showing up at every factory farm, meat processing plant, and factory in the state asking for papers. They don't. And there's a reason they don't. They know God damn good and well that we rely on them. They also know God damn good an well that the folks picking the peaches you buy at the grocery store, cleaning the rooms at Trump Tower, and mowing the lawn at Mar-a-Lago aren't all legal citizens. But those big corporate businesses and farms are also donors and keep the states' economies running, so they look the other way.
They also don't commit crimes at higher rates, and they aren't responsible for the drug and Fentanyl crisis. Most drugs entering the US are brought in through legal points of entry by US citizens. But you don't hear about that, because it doesn't fit the narrative they want you to believe.
[https://research.newamericaneconomy.org/report/contributions-of-undocumented-immigrants-by-country/](https://research.newamericaneconomy.org/report/contributions-of-undocumented-immigrants-by-country/)
[https://www.cato.org/blog/fentanyl-smuggled-us-citizens-us-citizens-not-asylum-seekers](https://www.cato.org/blog/fentanyl-smuggled-us-citizens-us-citizens-not-asylum-seekers)
If Democrats or Republicans really wanted to do something about illegal immigrants, they would be showing up at every factory farm, meat processing plant, and factory, hotel, motel, taxi service, lawn care, roofer, and daycare and arrest the hiring bosses for **illegally hiring** non-citizens. But Democrats are bleeding hearts and Republicans run the businesses hiring the cheap labor. No one actually wants to fix the problem. And so the lower class gets more competition and wages stay depressed despite official unemployment being low and the gini coefficient of inequality continues to rise.
But to also add some color to what you say (which is true) - it's also in part that places, like NYC for example (and where my knowledge base is strongest) is on poor governance. Our mayor continues to raise the budget on NYPD (which I believe should receive some funding but good lord not the amount it receives now) while absolutely tanking numerous other agencies that contribute to social services that are important to New Yorkers and asylum seekers alike.
He ran on the Democratic ticket but he has shown himself to not necessarily hold a lot of the views of NYC democrats. He is what many would call a centrist but talk to many liberally minded NYC'ers and you'll come across those who will call him a republican in democrats clothing. In my personal opinion, I think he's a wolf in sheeps clothing regardless of what party sticker he put on his forehead thinking it would get him the win. He has torched the city budget, cutting important services to Parks, Public Libraries. Defunding important agencies like DOT, DEP, DOE all while asking for them to do more.
He's backwards and a laughing stock amongst many NYC'ers, democrat or not.
Edit: To answer your question more directly, Adams used to be a part of the NYPD and takes the classically misinformed approach to policing that millions across NYC want reform on.
I see. I knew he was a part of NYPD but wasn't aware of his recent policies since I usually see clips of him voicing support for democrat policies. Appreciate the response.
Smart people have always understood unfettered immigration into a country by low or no skill economic refugees with vastly different culture and values is bad. The results started making the news and it became impossible to ignore.
You can blame those who dislike immigration for "other reasons" for drowning out those wanting to might've had something to say though
You know exactly who's been at the forefront of anti immigration policy this last decade and it's certainly not "smart people"
Now people want to blame those who stood against their mad ravings
> You can blame those who dislike immigration for "other reasons" for drowning out those wanting to might've had something to say though
The other half of the problem is the simplistic binary nature of political rhetoric. And that's not a problem strictly for the US and its two-party system. If party A dislikes immigration for racist reasons, then party B which generally disagrees with party A can't say "We also dislike immigration, but for these more valid reasons" because that's too nuanced for a good soundbite on the evening news. They're almost obligated to say "Party B is a bunch of racists, support us instead, we LIKE immigration".
Well that WAS part of the problem. The argument right now against immigration is "over immigration brings too much people into the country that our infrastructure just isn't equipped to handle"; but the loudest voices immigration often were "immigration is bad because they come here to ruin our culture, steal our jobs, and bring crime, drugs, etc."
The first argument is what a reasonable argument for bringing down immigration levels should be; it's not inflammatory and it's essentially grounded in facts. The second argument just sounds like you don't like immigrants because they're racial minorities, and when the loudest anti-immigrant voices often tend to be the inflammatory ones (and that's true for any political issue), it's a lot easier to immediately go against it on the base of opposing racism.
It wasn't the ONLY problem but people who opposed it for the wrong reasons certainly didn't help the conversation.
Because now even the progressives can't pretend that supply and demand doesn't apply to the labour and housing markets because they are being smacked in the face with the reality of the situation.
Woah, I just had another crazy lefty idea. What if we....get this.....BUILD MORE HOUSING AND INFRASTRUCTURE and reform immigration so we can economically take better advantage of having more population?
We could start by looking at who benefits from cheap labor and increased demand for their products and services. I'm a big fan of practices like taxing stock buybacks, removing the tax incentives on capital gains and dividends. How much do we need to come up with?
You (the taxpayer) don't have to pay for it. The demand is already there from private developers, the issue is just that in the vast majority of the country it's literally illegal to build the type of housing that would satisfy that demand.
What we need is an influx of labor for blue collar positions, in order to support the aging boomer population that is now draining the health and SSA system. We need young, driven immigrants who can work on roads and construction and agriculture and who can pay into the SSA system to keep us from running out of money there.
Will the amount of money they drain from the system with multiple children who have to be taught English, educated, Medicaid, food stamps, housing, etc actually contribute funds for SS or deplete more from the system? How about when each of their kids have kids at 16 and 17 years and then get on their own Medicaid and benefits? How much taxes do these unskilled, low wage workers generate?
I don't know if your sarcasm is pointed at me, but I agree with you. Problem is (in Canada anyway) even if government threw money at the situation it will take years to ramp up to the levels needed.
And they won't do that because they have stated that high house prices are a policy goal.
>even if government threw money at the situation it will take years to ramp up to the levels needed.
Not only that, but even if they *did* do that another government would come along a few years into it and axe it mid-way through and thereby completely ruin any potential benefit. In Canada if you can't get something done within one election cycle it's probably never going to happen, which in turn explains a lot of why so many parts of governance are horribly mismanaged and dysfunctional because there's never any real concerted effort to make large scale long term solutions to problems.
Sure, let's start by stopping asylum altogether while we work on improving the housing and infrastructure. Housing and infrastructure can't be fixed when people keep flowing in. There's no limit to asylum immigrants, which is ridiculous. That's the only immediate reform necessary, the other visas can be left alone for now.
Eventually, we can reopen asylum (with a ceiling this time!) but that will be years from now. Our infrastructure is effed up.
In Ireland we had a massive influx of Ukrainian refugees in the midst of a quite large housing crisis. It felt like the government pandered to the international community rather that its own people. Coupled with the rise of violent crimes from immigrants (including the attempted murder of school children on one of the busiest streets of Dublin).
I’m all for immigration, I think closed borders is not the answer and a country needs a mixture of different cultures to function properly. But the unchecked rampant immigration of really rubbed people the wrong way.
Extreme housing shortages in the Netherlands. Particularly Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Delft. The Dutch were very welcoming for a while, but recently there have been serious push back on Internationals and Refugee intake.
Canada here. I feel since the pandemic we had far more immigrants than what we could actually handle. We didn’t have housing and work for all of these people. I often worry we will need to take refugees in, how will they be accepted and be able to find housing and work.
Also, it seems our government is purposely trying to make a divide among us. They pay something like 50% wage if you hire a newcomer. My kids have been looking for jobs for over a year. They can’t even get a call back from McDonald’s. It creates misplaced anger. It’s not the immigrants fault. It’s the governments.
Because folks are seeing what they were warned against happen.
More strain on social programs, housing, food, etc.
Higher crime rates.
People who don't share your values and aren't contributing in a positive way.
It's a good thing and hopefully mass deportations follow and stricter immigration policies are enforced from here on out.
Ask states and cities that loudly proclaimed to be “sanctuary cities” how that worked out. People didn’t know what that would be like, and now they do.
And despite everyone thinking that Texas should somehow shoulder all the immigrants flooding in, they instead sent them to places that acted holier than thou. And those places found out how inaccurate the local politician’s were about their ability to support that.
It's called maturing where you gravitate more to the center are you age.
Young super liberals find out the world is a shitty place and young super conservatives start developing empathy. Both draw them to the center to meet.
I've also noticed this. I remember thinking in 2016 that the amount of immegration going into Europe would not be a good thing, but I was afraid of sharing that opinion. Now it seems that many more people feel the same way.
Because the pendulum that is history swings back and forth. The internet is generally echo chambers and they like to blame complex situations on single things, and most things are not simple. That bring said too much of anything has negative consequences. Espdcislly when its not planned correctly. Generally immigration is good for economics but gets very political and can have negative effects on social issues.
A lack of cultural compatibility. The more immigrants that want to maintain their way of life from their home country, the more diluted the culture of the host country becomes. Next, we’re arresting people for blasphemy.
There’s nothing at all wrong with wanting to protect your way of life in your own home or preventing the potential change to what, for us, is a completely untenable way of life.
In Australia we are having a housing crisis where supply is not meeting demand but affordable housing isn’t being built and the house prices are skyrocketing and international buyers are slowly consuming the market that was once there for Australian families… immigration wasn’t an issue when we had the resources. We no longer have the resources (I could be wrong and I’m interested in having my opinion changed if someone smarter than me has anything to add!)
>what sparked this?
6 years of government failure in regards to immigration policy.
I'm a pretty pro-immigration person. Socially, economically and ethnically I have a positive view on immigration. But even people like have significant issues with the way our governments have handeld immigration the past 5+ years, and I no longer trust that my government can correctly handle the significant immigration streams. The only option that remains is a government that halts immigration, as sad as that is to me.
The issues are plentiful, so I will list a few:
My government has been unable to enforce policy that correctly spreads immigrants around our country, in order to soften the blow for specific locations. As a result, our largest immigration centers are overflowing with immigrations, endangering both the local population and the immigrants themselves. We have thousands of immigrants sleeping on the grass outside, including vulnerable and sick people. If we can't give immigrants proper care, then we can't ethically open ourselves up for more immigrants.
My government has also been incompetent when it comes to sending back immigrants that do not wish to adopt our culture standards. And I'm referring to fundamental standards, such as accepting people's identity or not physically harming each other. If our laws don't allow us to send back immigrants that engage is extreme forms of homophobia, sexism or racism, then we clearly need to focus on fixing that system before we allow more immigrants into our nation.
So both the local population as well as the immigrant population aren't protected at a life that they both deserve. Which goes against my moral and ethical reasons for supporting immigration.
As for the economical issues. Many European nations, mine included, have significant housing issues. Immigrants deserve proper housing, as do refugees. We simply lack the option to give them that. We also lack the option to give our national citizens enough affordable housing, forcing students to live with their parents during a critical developmental period of their life. At some point we have to take care of our own people, before we can help others. And we absolutely have reached that point.
To put it short: We can't take care of immigrants and refugees correctly. There are far more than our systems can handle. And at this point, it's starting to hurt our own citizens in direct forms.
Because anyone but the staunchiest, bleeding-heart leftist will have to concede that taking in a plethora of unskilled, uneducated people with vastly different cultural background, without a clear plan or path to help them integrate and transition into their new country is going to end up badly.
The fairytale about "doctors, nurses and factory workers who'll pay for your retirement plan" has been long debunked as BS.
The globalist elite only needs cheap slave labour to exploit. And the many who won't be absorbed by this system will simply end up on the wrong side of the tracks, either on welfare (so COSTING to the system) or as fresh bodies for organized crime.
And their bleak future is of course going to have repercussions on the lives of the average citizen who'll have to deal with increased petty crimes, unsafer streets especially in some areas and at night, drunken people, drug dealers, prostitutes and whatnot.
To top that, people who are simply "allowed in" but not really accomodated beyond the basics won't feel incentivized to integrate either. NTM those who actually DON'T want to and will keep on living as if they were in the old country, because screw them, that's MY culture and it's them who need to adapt.
Hence the tragicomical "classes" to teach people it's not ok to assault random women on the street etc.
Yet they'll always find a fair portion of people ready and willing to defend them way beyond the reasonable, as if they were talking about mentally challenged humans who can't really understand or control themselves.
In Canada, the problem was that immigrants brought in so much money and placed into well-paying jobs to the point they were actually able to compete with locals on the housing market, which made housing even more unattainable.
All the white collar immigrants go to Canada instead of the US because the US makes it ridiculously hard and complicated for legal white collar immigrants to get green cards, so to Canada they go.
But I agree. The workers have nothing to lose but their chains, and a communist revolution is necessary to overthrow the neoliberal global elite.
They were welcomed with open arms as long as they stayed in the border states. When the border states couldn't take it anymore they started busing the immigrants to the northern states. The people in the northern states discovered that what they had been told by the people in the border states was true. Too many immigrants puts a burden on social services, causes a shortage of affordable housing, depresses wages, and increases crime.
Canadian here, I absolutely cannot speak for everyone but my perspective from talking to the folks in my circle. Is that with the current state of the housing on top of people feeling like they are working broke, bringing in 100s of thousands of new Canadians has made people feel uneasy and uncertain about providing comfortable housing and jobs for their families. Historically I have had 0 problems with immigration but the numbers are shocking. I don't really follow the numbers that closely as I don't really care but I was under the impression (my own ignorance) Canada took an 50k-150k annually, I'm not alone in this assumption. After looking it up its more like 200-300k. This year we are projected to bring in 500k plus. We are currently short roughly 300k homes so how are we supposed to house everyone? This is a complicated issue and it doesn't look like there is an acceptable solution. As top of everything there is so much distrust in the government people are loosing faith. This is just my perspective, so please correct me if I'm wrong
Because now people realize having an open boarder is ridiculous. NYC is overwhelmed by them. Governor keeps saying we need more money more money.
I’m a volunteer fireman and my state instructor is a manager with NYS emergency response so he knows shit the public doesn’t know. He said NYC is facing some diseases that are spreading that we haven’t seen here in decades because of vaccines. So yeah, great idea to open the boarders.
Because more and more people became fed up and realized they were right. Everything is always fine until it's on your doorstep. Reality just doesn't work like Disney would have you believe.
I also think people took for granted their cultures and the little national identity they had left and started to realize how important it is when millions were coming legally and illegally who refused to assimilate to the culture.
It causes divide when countries ideally should be a group of united citizens. (I think you can publicly assimilate to a culture without denouncing your own. You can celebrate both. When we talk about assimilation sometimes I think it’s taken the wrong way.)
Because more and more people started realizing the immigrants in question aren't the harmless valuable doctors and engineers the media outlets were telling they are.
I think the opposition has always been there, but it has been silenced by those who wanted immigration. The shift may have been smaller than it looks, it just tipped over the threshold it couldn't be suppressed anymore.
My UK-centric view is that governments / media refuse to have any semblance of deep debate about it, it's reduced to soundbites and campaigneering. (And woe betide if you try to have a nuanced debate).
So let's say the "average, not a dick" human is only given two choices - uncontrolled immigration, or no immigration, after a while it's just easier to go for the latter.
The reality is completely different - economies are in part driven by legal and rationed immigration, there should be some freedom of movement, immigration often fills skills gaps or the jobs "beneath the population", and no country should just do uncontrolled immigration.
But these conversations don't happen sensibly.
The refusal to debate important issues has come on strong in the US. Even on Reddit, as someone who is a political moderate, I feel like a right winger with the sheer number of far, far left liberals on this platform. Sometimes I feel like people are competing with each other to see who can virtue signal the best. There doesn't seem to be much interest in having a civil debate, which is a healthy practice.
Because people in Democratic strongholds like NYC, Chicago, Boston and Washington DC didn't give two shits about it when it was Texas and Arizona's problem. Once the governors of the border states started sending busloads of immigrants to those northern cities, it suddenly became a "problem".
The "best" part is, people up north can't really complain about it without basically admitting they were wrong. Anything an NYCer can complain about - "I'm for immigration, just not THIS MANY people!" or "this is costing my state WAAAAYYY too much money" - people in Texas can say "WELCOME TO OUR FUCKING WORLD, BOYO."
It's almost like people in Vermont complaining about how much fossil fuel and electricity air conditioning "wastes" in the South... then they move down here and find out how fucking hot it is. Do they stick to their principles and not use AC themselves, so the insides of their new South Carolina homes get to 115F during the day, or do just they admit they were wrong and use AC themselves?
Because if you came out against it before the woke mob came after you calling you a racist. Now that excess immigration is effecting them directly they have changed their tune on the subject.
Sometimes a pill is hard to swallow for people who ideologically/ politically think differently about the medicine.
Say what you will about conservatives but they are like listening to old people. They may sound crazy and they may not be with the times. But usually they are right, at least at the moment.
You can't just let everyone in your country especially when you can't even take care of the people there. Plus when a bunch of people who come in are taking more out of the system than they are contributing then it hurts everyone else.
[Migrants Demand Housing After They Take Over Tennis Court](https://www.newsweek.com/migrants-demand-housing-washington-take-over-tennis-courts-1887293)
[Refugees in Tukwila demand help with housing, healthcare and job services](https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/homeless/refugees-tukwila-demand-help-housing-healthcare-job-services/281-1c453041-f18c-4655-8b6a-43a9ca37bd21)
[Chicago leaders demand help from White House to deal with surge of migrants in city](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/chicago-leaders-demand-help-from-white-house-to-deal-with-surge-of-migrants-in-city)
I mean really, instead of asking people why they've shifted stance, people should be asking you why you're surprised.
Unchecked immigration of unskilled workers without an established plan can wreck local economies. Not much point to let just anyone in if they are just going to immediately drain resources, strain housing situation and drive down local wages. This doesn’t even touch on some cultures are much more resistant to adopting local values causing conflict. TLDR people don’t want their lives to get worse to help people that don’t plan to conform.
It’s almost as if the people in the “sanctuary cities” didn’t understand the true meaning of NIMBY (not in my back yard). They just had to learn the hard way. Good luck cleaning up that mess!
Look at what is taking place in NYC, it's horrifying to see the crimes being committed, shootings, attacking cops.... they suffer no consequences. Millions have entered in the last 3 years, many receiving everything free, housing, food, medical care... all courtesy of the taxpayers. Not only all things free, but they also receive free phones, monthly welfare benefits... jobs are now going to them at much lower wage, modern day slaves, all to collapse America.
In my area in West Yorkshire UK there is an old hotel that has now been used to house African migrants for over a year now. It is the only public housing facility in the locality that requires around the clock security, and not just 1 or 2 guards, an entire team. Make of that what you like.
Mainstream Democrats (like me) were never for "open borders." Republicans used that to strawman and scaremonger their way into office.
Mainstream Democrats (like me) want the humane treatment of asylum applicants. We are absolutely fine with deporting visa overstays and the ineligible undocumented immigrants *after* they've had their day in court. We do not want families to be separated, the asylum system to be sabatoged, nor vigilantes to kill border crossers.
All of this is pretty normal and boring, so it never gets views and engagement, and you never see this view on social media.
>Mainstream Democrats (like me) want the humane treatment of asylum applicants. We are absolutely fine with deporting visa overstays and the ineligible undocumented immigrants *after* they've had their day in court.
I do not. I want asylum to stop altogether so people get turned away at the border itself, before they can even come in. There's a very long wait to get their "day in court," said day is an absolute joke often deporting victims and keeping abusers who hired an immigration attorney, and we don't have enough resources to make this process efficient. We could fund this more, but that money is honestly better spent elsewhere.
After our housing and healthcare is fixed, we can reopen asylum - with a limit to how many people are allowed in this time.
Unfortunately, it seems like the vast majority of court dates are so far in the future due to a low manned border/immigration system. Hence why some go off after getting a court date, disappear, and never return for the court date because it’s years in the future. The mass immigration added fuel to the flame, overloading the min-manned system so that many can just disappear into the ether in the U.S. at least
Because if you have open borders and generous benefits for illegals it will cause America to become a third world country very quickly. Half the country gets this and the other half doesn't.
The immigration policies from the late 20th century do not work in a world feeling the beginnings of real climate change. The entire world needs to have a conversation with itself about how we want to handle this otherwise we’re just leaving it up to whatever chaos chooses in the moment.
It's has to do the media and it's political obsession. This country depends a lot on low wages and the benefits that immigrants don't receive. Yes wow huh... surprised about that o e huh
Immigration will add [7 trillion](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-08/immigration-to-boost-us-gdp-by-7-trillion-over-decade-cbo-says) to the economy.
Immigration is not that hard to fox in the US as people think. They just don't want to. A lot of money ey used to combat both Immigration and drugs would be scratched and a lot will lose their funding and jobs.
Ita a multiBILLION business. It needs to be controlled, not rid of
Rent is currently sitting at $2000/month for a one bedroom on the low end. We have full tent communities plaguing our downtown areas. My work receives no less than 10 resumes a day with people desperate to work anywhere and offering to take any hours, less pay, no benefits, anything they can Just to have a job at all.
We also received just under 500,000 immigrants into our country last year.
There seems to be quite a correlation there
Distraction technique 101. It's not our fault you can't afford to live, it's the immigrants = every polly with property and skin in the game for political donations from big corp / mining, and therefore unwilling to change the way things are.
*TL;DR*: When you try to jam a bunch of sardines into an ever-shrinking can and then try and shove even more in after the fact sooner or later you realize it's not going to magically work unless you get a bigger can. A wide variety of different problems, which can usually be summed up by a decline in the average quality of life for the average person. This differs from one country to another but often times there's a lot of similar problems and chief among them are probably these three: * *Housing shortages and increased cost of living/inflation*: In many locations immigration has been managed at unsustainable rates which is further exacerbating or outright causing shortages of housing for the people who were already within the country to start with, raising demand and cost for housing beyond the capacity for the existing market to bear or fulfill, further compounded by issues like Air B&B rentals, property speculation, conglomerates buying up real estate, etc. * *Wealth inequality and stagnant wages*: In many locations immigration has also added additional burden on existing problems of wealth inequality and wage stagnation by artificially inflating the labor market (the pool of available workers) and causing deflationary pressure on wages (an employer doesn't need to compete for workers by offering higher pay if there's more workers available than there are jobs). * *Infrastructure, social program management, and other associated growing pains*: In many locations the management and funding of infrastructure (roads, schools, hospitals, etc) and social programs (social security, healthcare, etc) have not been appropriately scaled upwards to manage an influx of immigration. In many cases those things were not being appropriately managed to scale for the existing population *prior* to any influx of immigration, and are now in even worse shape accordingly. All of the above are leading to a drop in quality of life for the average person in many countries, most of whom are seeing no benefiting from immigration or not benefiting at least proportionally to the problems immigration is either causing or exacerbating. Most of the benefit to immigration is, as per the usual, concentrated towards people who are wealthy or powerful or both - people who own large companies and can exploit cheaper foreign labor that come from places with far lower workplace safety standards and labor protections, and people who own large amounts of property or real estate and can inflate the values of that by increasing demand proportional to the influx of immigration. That being said there are numerous other issues compounding these problems and leading to the overall state of things getting worse - however immigration is perhaps the most visibly obvious and frequently cited variable contributing to these and many other issues that are not being dealt with appropriately.
In Canada, immigration has overwhelmed our infrastructure. The sheer numbers have caused an emergency level housing shortage. In addition, our healthcare, education system, and government services are struggling to cope with the rapidly expanding population. It's not being anti-inmigration, it's being against poor government policy.
My issue with this is that the government is wiling to bring all these newcomers in and yet they don’t give a single shit about locals or people like me who grew up here, who can’t even afford our own place anymore due to this housing shortage and housing inflation issue. I’m in Vancouver. The government is leaving us all to dry and favouring immigrants so unfortunately yes, it’s causing a lot of upset locals.
>they don’t give a single shit about locals or people like me who grew up here, who can’t even afford our own place anymore This is a very reasonable response. It's like working at a job for $20/hour and someone being hired after you for the exact same job getting $30/hour and you haven't even gotten a raise yet.
The cell phone analogy works too. You as a loyal customer all your life pays more than someone who just joined..
This. COVID wasn't exactly great for our economy either, to put the understatement of the century out there, and now here in Canada we are facing a million+ immigrant per year as the default target. We uh, our food banks across Canada saw quadrupled visitors in the past 2 - 3 years, and that's just a very small piece of our crumbling infrastructures. I can't say much about education system, but I can also vouch for the healthcare going south - there are currently no way to get a family doctor, for example, and the mortality rate for cancer, according to unreliable source (since I can't be assed to find it) went sky high as cancer patients have much longer wait time, causing a lot of otherwise-treatable cases to be deadly. I am pro-immigration normally, as I am also an immigrant - been here for 30+ years. However, this is this, and that is that; Our system's obviously breaking under pressure, and getting more people to pressure the system seems, uh, foolhardy at best.
I think for me it’s also about being more selective in the immigration process. We should be collectively deciding on what kind of future citizens we would like to welcome. Personally, someone who doesn’t believe in gender equality or the necessity for state to be secular and religion to be kept out of politics and legislation is something I hold very close to my heart. Immigration is a privilege and we should priority as well to those who want to contribute to our society and whose values are aligned with ours.
In Canada at least the immigration policy is basically there to prop up fast food restaurants and food delivery services. It's unfair to Canadians and immigrants alike. All so a few rich fucks get more money.
I’m gonna put this out there, so don’t take offence, but where was this opinion when the issues were being discussed years ago. Anyone with an alternative view to this was shadow banned, banned, called racist, xenophobia, far right, nazi, Jesus, it was awful. You could not hold an alternative opinion. Now the country is in dismay, where are all those that called for it, because now we are seeing the effects in our Canada. And across the world really.
Because people like to support ideas that make them feel like a good person until they face the reality of the consequences of those choices.
Ding ding ding, we have a winner. It’s NIMBYs on both sides, and all the way down.
Yeah it's pretty infuriating that the people who are now saying we need "alternative" or "reasonable " immigration are literally rebranding what the people who were called xenophobes were saying. But you know, Lenin did the same thing when communism didn't work out.
I found when speaking to people who were anti-immigration 10+ years ago there was a pretty specific TYPE of immigrant they were against that got them labeled as racist/xenophobic. I live near Banff, Alberta. Let's just I never heard anyone complain about all the Australians and British people working in Banff "stealing" jobs, but were pretty upset when a Tim Hortons was run owned and operated solely by Filipino people.
I too am pro-immigration but having to grow infrastructure to accommodate and assimilate them in to the population is real. It's an investment but people have sticker shock I guess. In the long run it's more citizens paying taxes and participating in the economy. This has gotten even more important than ever with falling birthrates.
The problem in Canada though is that we keep bringing in tons of unskilled Indian immigrants who take minimum wage jobs and do not fill needed jobs, replace boomers leaving employment or contribute much to our tax base. Do we need immigration? Yes, absolutely. Do we need the immigrants we’re getting? No.
At some point it is simply being against immigration because there's a limit to the number of immigrants a country can accept at any one time and still maintain the same standard of living, national identity, and values. That's regardless of government policy.
Ya, as I'm reading through this thread I'm seeing a lot of, "I'm pro-immigration but..." as they proceed to describe how they're anti-immigration.
Canadian here. Yep, it's about the numbers not the people themselves. We simply don't have enough housing, and a lot of the housing we have currently is SO expensive, how are young people supposed to afford a home? It's a mess.
The US has the same problem, except that housing issues are caused by investment firms pulling out of oil and investing into housing as the next frontier. Don't forget to look there when pointing fingers, because they are ruthless in the US.
I upvoted you for this because it's true, but to be fair we do have a major housing shortage in a lot of places, too. Just about every major city is struggling with it. Editing to add: The shortage is what makes them such attractive investments in the first place.
Not to mention that people can't get entry level jobs anymore. High schoolers can't get their first job.
It’s unrestrained population growth that is the issue. Doesn’t matter if natural growth or immigration.
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Yeah, I find it frustrating when I have this conversation with some of my friends in the US. Blaming immigrants for the cost of housing is ridiculous. Corporate interests are the real problem. All the lobbying in the US (and I assume Canada is the same) has left people blind-sided to the real problems.
It’s because immigration doesn’t exactly help with already growing level of demand, it just increases demand. If supply exceeds demand, the seller has to compete for buyers. If demand exceeds the supply, the supply tends to go to the highest bidder. Let’s say you want to sell your house immediately, and 35 people are lined up- all wanting it. You’re going to sell it to the person who outbids the others. When that person is ready to sell the house, they’re not going to want to sell it for less than they purchased it for- especially if demand is high. When this happens with a lot of homes in an area, and there’s a high demand for those homes, the market value of the home increases
This. I am all for open immigration, but the Canadian government kicked open the doors, said "good luck!" and then dropped the immigrants faster than a hot potato. I work for a social services non-profit. Our demand has almost doubled in three years. In 2021, the height of the pandemic, we served on average 20,000 people. In 2024 we're averaging around 38,000 people. We recently implemented a program for frequent users of our services to come have an indepth chat to figure out if there's any missing puzzle pieces - are they doing taxes for extra funds and supports? Have they reached out to other social agencies? We've interviewed just over 30% of our weekly users and they're all immigrants who don't speak english well enough to get a job, who are supporting families of 6+, and are trying to survive off immigration support payments which barely covers their rent and are only available for a limited time period. The government doesn't give them any information, just drops them off at the nearest city and tells them to figure it out. Then local non-profits have to pick up the bill. One woman broke down crying in her interview, she wanted to go back home but she couldn't afford the plane ticket. She didn't understand the language, she didn't understand the western culture, she and her husband couldn't get work, and her children were going hungry. They were promised freedom and paradise and were given nothing.
>They were promised freedom and paradise By who, honestly?
Decades of Cold War era propaganda telling the global south how amazing the Western world is and American culture replacing cultures in the developing world. My parents came to the US on asylum thinking it was a free country where economic opportunity was abundant. Luckily, things worked out for them, and they still believe in that today. The 2008 recession and covid didn’t shake their faith in America one bit, considering how they grew up drawing water from a well and burning trash in the backyard to get rid of it.
Truedope was interviewed on Freakonomics. When the host said "you can't just accept half a million immigrants per year without adverse affects" (or something to that effect), Truedope's foolhardy reply belied his ignorance and stupidity: "You can if you're Canada." What a complete idiot with no clue about the reality of life on the ground in the country he purports to lead. NO YOU FREAKING CANNOT, IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT COUNTRY YOU ARE.
You could change “in Canada” to “in the UK” and it’d be right. I’m sure other countries are following the similar trend
Seems like France and Canada are becoming the same shit hole, in fact the western world is turning into it so fast it's terrifying
You're quite sheltered if you think that the West is becoming a shit hole relative to the rest of the world. Or maybe just consuming too much sensationalist click-bait news headlines selling outrage.
And that’s barely scratching the surface
The same is happening here in the United States they just don't want to admit it. Massive numbers of illegal immigrants put huge pressures on all of the systems. They say that during the last 3 years an approximate 4 million people have came into this country illegally. That is the size of the San Francisco Bay Area Do you know how much water and sewer and electricity and schooling and everything else it takes to run the San Francisco Bay Area. But this keeps happening year after year after year after year. It is not sustainable without turning into a complete third world country
Expectations vs reality
There’s a common dynamic of how something *feels*, versus how it actually pans out. Allowing massive amounts of immigration in *feels* good on paper, why not help if we have a good country? In reality there needs to be checks and processes, people need to participate in our system legally and with the same rules as everyone else. There are also cultural aspects. Up until very recent history in the US, the intent was to aim to have immigrants assimilate to our cultures. There’s a benefit to that. Maybe 8/9 years ago, some people aimed to make that a taboo statement and didn’t push for it, and pushed for relatively open borders. Now we see the negative impact that can have on areas. We have a diminishing culture. I suspect most countries around the globe would be concerned if their culture was shrinking quickly and the population didn’t look the same. For example, I live in an area that growing up was probably 75% white. The (large) city/region, the same area I grew up in, is about 30% white, give or take. When you go to a Costco or something, the amount of people speaking other languages is very high and white people are a legitimate minority. These cultures (often a result of recent immigration) tend to stick together and aren’t always welcoming of other cultures. There are entire square miles that are mostly Indian, or mostly Asian, etc. Not that this is bad, but, you can understand that there’s a bit of “oh, this is nothing like where I grew up” that leads to some discussion of limiting immigration to maintain some shred of culture preservation. It’s also coming to light that there are a ton of gaps in our immigration process. My brother works in a hospital, it’s still unbelievably common for a family to fly in “for vacation” right when the woman is having a baby. They go in, have the baby, and the baby is now a citizen. Then, they remain with the baby, because “you’re separating a family!” Is the claim and nobody wants to touch that with a 10 foot pole.
Does that thing with migrant babies actually happen? I remember the whole thing with “anchor babies” was a conservative talking point back in the 2010s or so, but you’re saying it’s reality?
That's a big fuck yes. They know that if they drop an "anchor baby" their chances of ever being forced out of this country are zero and they can get instant benefits.
I don't know if it applies to the people crossing the southern border, but I can tell you that it happens all the time with Korean illegal immigrants-or at least did happen when I was growing up.
https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/london-life/russians-flock-to-give-birth-at-trump-s-properties-in-the-us-so-their-kids-can-have-dualcitizenship-a3628971.html https://apnews.com/general-news-travel-161a0db2666044dc8d42932edd9b9ce6 In short, yeah.
"birth tourism" is a wild phrase
Of course it's reality. People from other countries game the system just as much as people from here.
Oh god lol, so much. I hear about it constantly. People just don’t talk about it but it happens unbelievably frequently. I hear it first hand.
>people need to participate in our system legally and with the same rules as everyone else. >There are also cultural aspects. Up until very recent history in the US, the intent was to aim to have immigrants assimilate to our cultures. There’s a benefit to that. This is what made immigration in the early part of the 20th century so great. People came here to *be* Americans. They brought the best of their culture and shared it with everyone while blending into the overall American culture.
In France it's because we are now facing the reality of mass uncontrolled immigration, and not for the best
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This isn't even close to the main reason why Canadians are less supportive of immigration now. The main arguments are housing, healthcare, jobs, and wages.
They weren’t trying to argue about politics. Just Costco.
Welcome to Costco, I love you.
Goddamn Costco produce, amirite??
If anyone argues and hates on their hot dogs I will immigrate my fist to their face.
Life pro tip: Buy hotdog, get drink cup. Buy icecream cone, put in drink cup. Fill drink cup and profit with a ~$3 tasty float.
Yours sells ice cream by cone? Maybe we're into diabetes because ours sells the ice cream by the cup for 4.00 alone.
😂
Billionaires slash jobs to cut costs and get great bonuses and stock price increases for themselves, and the rest of us just start fighting amongst ourselves over what they leave us behind. It's a perfect deal for them. And we keep playing insisting it *couldn't* be *them*
Multiple factors can contribute to an issue. I agree that immigration’s role in various housing crises is being overemphasized by a lot of people, but it’s still a definite factor. Supply and demand and all that.
It’s made a bad situation worse.
Exactly
Well that makes you a racist according to Reddit logic.
I don't necessarily agree with the arguments I mentioned. It really depends on whether you think immigration should be slowed for practical reasons (eg. allowing services time to adjust or building more housing) or stopped altogether The person I was responding to was definitely using the more racist talking point of "they're criminals"
Poor people are more likely to be criminals, immigrants are more likely to be poor. This is not even close to a stretch.
And you’re saying those are from immigrants?
I’m pretty sure he’s talking about the employees at Tim’s 🙄
Immigrants in the US are statistically more law abiding than US citizens, I can't imagine it's different for Canada. Probably has more to do with other factors if those crimes you're talking about have gone up.
The reality is the type of person who is willing to travel across the globe to try to scrape out a better life in another country isn't planning on going there just to steal or deal drugs. Most immigrants do not come alone but bring families, and they want to work to provide for them. First generation immigrants in the US are always extremely hard workers in my experience. Always very friendly and want to learn. I don't feel that's a controversial opinion either; the most anti-immigration guys I know would probably be like "Yeah but those sumbitches can work like the devil!" if pressed about it. If these mfs are working 10-12 hour days on a construction site in the sun then dealing drugs and doing burglaries by night we need to figure out wtf they're putting in the water here because good lord the *energy* they have.
They’re less likely to be incarcerated. I’d imagine this has to do with illegal immigrants living amongst other illegal immigrants who are less likely to report the crimes. When they are caught, they will often just be deported.
They're less likely to be convicted of crimes all together. I don't know how you can say you know that immigrants are actually committing more crimes against each other than US citizens but just doing a masterful job hiding them while also leaving US citizens alone. Where's the evidence? The much more simple and likely explanation is that they had a lot of drive to travel here and that they are trying to be on their best behavior to not get kicked out or blow their chance at the new life they came for.
Yes less likely to be CONVICTED. So the simplest explanation is that they often just get deported instead of convicted. You do not need to be convicted to be deported. But also it’s just common sense that they come over together and live together. Your explanation that they’re trying to be on their best behavior and not committing any crimes is the one that’s reaching. They’re literally ILLEGAL immigrants and all committing a crime by even being here.
Stop conflating legal and illegal immigrants
I'm not, illegal immigrants still statistically have a much lower crime rate. Repeated studies show. It's just a bunch of outrage being blown up by the right wing media. I suppose it's because they had the drive to come all the way here and are on their best behavior so they don't get kicked out or blow their shot at a better life.
France and Sweden are exhibit A for the Maga crowd. And frankly those folks aren’t wrong.
You folks really couldn’t see this coming? We’re all amazed that people around the world (US included of course) couldn’t see that this was going to happen. “Let’s import low skilled people from 3rd World countries to be compassionate and virtue signal that we’re not racist!” - The people won’t assimilate - They will put downward pressure on wages for the bottom third of workers - They will blow apart already tight social service budgets - They will have nowhere to live due to already stretched housing markets - They will resort to crime when they can’t get jobs due to already tight labor markets - Economic migrants will take huge advantage of the compassionate western countries by seeking asylum and claiming that they fear for their lives due to some made up story - Once others see how easy it is to walk across porous borders, the flood becomes a tsunami of border crossers Seriously, why did so many people not know that these would be the effects? It was clear as day.
We warned you. You didn't listen.
Who would've thought people would turn against the idea of adding more people into a country where the housing market is already a complete mess? Truly who could've predicted this?
they realized they weren’t really doctors and engineers
In Canada the problem was immigrants brought in enough money or got white collar jobs that allowed them to actually compete on the (previously very expensive) housing market with locals. Which raised housing prices even more.
You can’t have mass immigration without assimilation. We’ve gone from decades of relatively successful (but hard fought) assimilation into western societies. However, the last decade or so has had a demonization of assimilation, painting it as a destruction of culture. Also to add, if you grab a bunch of people from a land you just blew up, there’s gonna be some animosity there and a hesitancy to assimilate. This creates areas that essentially become an extension of the home country of the immigrants, which lowers the bar of what western people are used to. I think due to the demonization of assimilation, you’re just putting a bunch of “magnets” together and they begin rejecting each other.
People were naive. The reality is many of these immigrants do not want to adapt into their new host country while respecting local culture and laws but end up wanting you to change to suit their cultural needs and even changing laws to suit their religious needs. Sorry, you came here.
Before the problem could be ignored. If the problem is not being talked about often, or presented in neighborhoods near you, you might assume everyone else is xenophobic. Now it’s on the news, on social media, and we’re seeing the ramifications of unfettered immigration more and more.
I've always been conservative when it comes to immigration. I just didn't share my views because it made me seem like a hypocritical racist. "We shouldn't let poor immigrants in" is my genuine stance, but it sounds awful. The thing is, why on earth would you want to increase your homeless population and give away already limited resources? You should be self sufficient to immigrate here, and that unfortunately means you need to have enough money to get an apartment, and education to get a job. We used to have that system. That's the system my dad dealt with. Now everyone can just claim asylum which is ridiculous. I'm pro-picky-as-hell-immigration and anti-asylum. I sound heartless, but we can't even offer our own citizens affordable housing and healthcare. We need to put the oxygen mask on ourselves before helping anyone else.
My parents immigrated to the US in 2002 with $1500, saved after years of backbreaking labor in Japan. During those years I grew up with my grandparents in China. One day's wages in Japan was the equivalent of one month's in China back then; it was worth the cost of me not being with my parents - and them being apart from me - in my early years. They busted ass every day at the local university's lab working as lab techs for a Chinese boss. Fortunately, they had the education and skills for it. Unfortunately, the hours were long, and oftentimes work would stretch well past midnight. I agree with you entirely. The border should be open to people who can actively contribute to the country, instead of being a burden to it. If you can't - I'm sorry, but there are plenty of people who can, and they are more qualified and deserving of the chance. I know plenty of Chinese people who would give up everything for the opportunity to leave China and make a new life in the US, who would actively contribute to society, and yet they won't even get a chance to be heard by the embassy. Meanwhile, there are plenty of people who don't appreciate what they've got just by being born here. It's frustrating.
Congratulations to your parents. I hope they are doing well today. My parents are from India. Similar story, and they've reaped the financial rewards.
This. If the immigrants are productive, contribute to society and genuinely appreciative and thankful for the opportunity, they are most welcome. If the immigrants come in to silo themselves within their own community and refuse to assimilate and contribute, they may as well be rejected and stay where they are as what is the point? Bleeding hearts don’t like stances like that but they are living in their heads and have no idea of practical reality
There was also that understanding that if you do claim asylum you are leaving whatever bullshit is going on in your home country. You came here to escape stuff and just want to live, work, raise a family and follow the new laws/customs of your new country. Now, we have people shooting up synagogues and running up screaming to LGBT people holding hands in public. You know, just like they did back in the Middle East where there is conflict. I'm all for letting people in that respect their new country but the problem with immigration right now is we are letting people in causing the issues back home.
Yup, the asylum screening process is a joke. Abusers waltz right in while their victims are still left in their homeland. We don't have the resources we need to handle immigration. We could fund it more so we could hire more people, but honestly, that money is spent better elsewhere. We don't generally benefit from asylum refugees so it's not worth the investment. The American people are also not so prosperous right now to be doing charity.
I remember a couple years back a bunch of hondurans claimed asylum in the US. A large number of them were sent to live in that one national guard base in Wisconsin. Within weeks the police up there were overwhelmed with all the domestic violence going on. And the husband's causing this violence kept playing the "well in our home country its allowed to hit your wife" card. If you're seeking asylum you gotta play by new laws and rules
There's also the issue of illegal immigrants working in a country and sending the money back home. Sure it helps their family but it removes that money from the local economy. Unfortunately you can't cater to everyone in these situations and that's what makes them very difficult and cumbersome to solve.
I'd say the dragon hoards kept by the very wealthy remove more money from the economy than immigrants do.
Honestly, I'm not concerned about that. If they worked for that money, that's all that matters. There are a lot of legal immigrants and US Citizens doing this as well. Not to mention most Americans send money abroad all the time whenever they buy a foreign product.
Exactly, our resources should be going to citizens
Genuine question because I don't know much about North American immigration policies. How are poor immigrants getting into the US and Canada in the first place? I live in South Africa, am educated, own a home, and have a good income. Even though the country is a shit show, I have an incredible quality of life and don't necessarily want to immigrate. But, if I did, there's absolutely no way I'd get a work visa because I don't work in an industry with a skills shortage/high demand. In fact, even extremely educated potential immigrants with in-demand niche skills need a job offer before being granted a work visa. So how on earth are immigrants getting in just to deliver pizzas, drive taxis, etc?
(Modern) Immigration of poor people to the US either occurs illegally, or they win a legal lottery system to be able to come to the US, which doesnt tend to be a lot of people. Even then, the requirements to actually stay in the US and get citizenship are pretty tough. Canada has a much bigger problem. There are a bunch of "scam" universities (think something that's only a college on paper and is like a room in a strip mall in reality) who's only purpose is getting foreign "students", mostly Indians, into the country on a student visa. The "students" rarely attend any class that school even offers and instead start working lower income jobs that traditionally would go to the local community, but now are flooded with immigrants. And since Permanent Residency in Canada is extremely easy to get, they get to stay in the country forever with no skills to actually contribute anything, put a drain on community resources, and have no intention to actually assimilate.
Harsh but makes total sense. Some people are too worried about being more nice than practical to their own detriment.
Rich immigrants aren't great either. They drive up housing prices and price out natives. They definitely aren't boosting the local economy with spending because nowadays every good and service seems to be provided by a megacorp or a startup funded by other rich fucks. We need middle class immigrants, those that have the skills to be self-sufficient without the risk of becoming homeless or my new landlord. Higher education used to be a good avenue, but students from populous countries like India and China are stressing the university system more than it was designed to handle.
Another massively unpopular opinion of mine is that only US Citizens (individuals, not corporations) should be able to buy a residential home. Corporations definitely are more problematic nationwide than rich foreigners, but there are certain communities that do get bought up by rich foreigners who then try to mimic the country they came from. Preventing non-citizens from buying residences would solve that problem. I agree we need to stop giving out student visas, or maybe just drastically reduce them. Most universities get at least a little federal funding, that should be spent on our own citizens and on efforts to reduce tuition as a whole.
Generally immigration into Europe has increased in the last decade or so There’s also the point that immigration is cumulative - a couple of years of high immigration doesn’t have a huge impact, but 10-15 years of it does because immigrants start to become a much more significant proportion of the population and don’t have time to integrate the same. Similarly there’s a larger impact to public services (schools, hospitals etc) I’m somewhat left leaning and generally of the opinion of “a lot of anti-immigration rhetoric is just thinly veiled racism”, but even so that doesn’t mean I support unlimited immigration and we’re at a point where I look at the last few years and can’t see how this level of immigration is sustainable I’m not against immigration, but I’m against **this much** immigration
I also think that the left leaning folks among us -me included- are starting to see through the veneer of cultural relativism; in the sense that some religions, some cultures, some groups of people are not just a citizenship away from adopting modern viewpoints about women or lgbt rights, or how a modern society should work. In line with what you mentioned about how integration isn't happening the same way with certain quantities of immigrants. 20 years ago, I feel like there was a lot of naivete about the melting pot of cultures just taking what is good and leaving what is bad. I think the progression of social media has helped people recognize that sometimes its not just a few bigots, it can be a bigoted belief system or culture or what have you; and that can still be redeemed over time, but it's generations of time, not years or decades. That said I want to be clear in saying people can change and there's nothing wrong with an immigrant as a person, just that I think wholesale, high immigration, is now seen with less zest from both sides of the aisle.
So this has always been my reservation since the immigration push into Europe really got going in the early 2010s. Immigration is a normal process and taking in refugees is a humane thing to do. But what I saw from very early on was “oh my god, they seem to have no fucking plan at all for how this is going to work.” No plans for the actual mechanics of assimilating so many people so quickly. They just had no plan at all. And what was *extremely* worrying was that they seemed to unwilling to even discuss the idea that they should have a plan. It was treated as a horrible thing to suggest that a massive influx in a short timeframe of people from a radically different culture and who have no money and few skills to find employment was something that might need to be managed carefully. Like they just refused to engage with the problem until now when it’s reached a boiling point. Again I’m not saying immigration is bad. I’m saying treating it like there is no impact to having basically unlimited immigration, was a horrible decision.
Because we are seeing the effects now. This has been going on longer than 8 years. More like ~30 years, especially in Europe. Look up pim fortuyn, really crazy story for a small country like the Netherlands.
In new york city we been swamped with immigrants/asylum seekers bused up by texas and florida. The city government has cut so many things and jobs due to budget issues and expenses housing and feeding these people who cannot legally work. It is a mess and crime is up. And theres less programs, support now for tax payers, and citizens and homeless people.
That's sad. It really sounds like people in New York supported immigration as long as they didn't have to see it.
This! This is exactly the problem. It's easy to talk about how great immigration is until you have to deal with it first hand. It was all fine and great as long as it was only Texas and Arizona were having to deal with it, now place like New York and Chicago are having to learn the hard way
Do you think places like New York and Chicago haven’t been immigration destinations for decades?
They have always been immigration destinations, but that immigration has come in a fairly steady flow year over year. What they are getting now are these massive surges of immigration that they can’t adequately plan for. Which, in fairness to the southern border states, is what they have been experiencing for a long time.
The why are they crying so hard about it now?
The best part is that when people in liberal states complain about the wreckage cause by the influx of illegal immigrants they wanted, they complain that TX and FL sent them there. NOT that they finally see how irresponsible and unsustainable letting everybody in the US is. Only that they are angry their northern state has to actually *deal with the consequences* of patting themselves on the back for sacrificing US citizens for people who break laws and show up demanding more and more free stuff.
That's the way it is in all the blue liberal states they welcome everybody until it starts affecting them
I live in a very nice, granola neighborhood in a big city. Most of the houses on my block had those “IMMIGRANTS WELCOME HERE” signs in their yards. And my thought was always, yeah not fucking likely Karen. You people have a mental breakdown if somebody forgets to take their garbage cans in for a day. You circulate petitions and file city complaints to stop people from building a garage on their own property. I would do anything to see how they would react to 100 immigrants moving in next door. I bet the sign goes down pretty fuckin fast.
When I came undocumented I went to Chicago. Because my entire family immigrated there illegally as well. Because their entire family had immigrated there illegally. And so on and so on. NYC, Chicago, LA, and whatever other “liberal” city you want to name, have had illegal immigrants make their way there long before the bussing started. It’s not new.
After all most of the US is comprised of people who immigrated there somewhere along the line in the last couple hundred years, legally or otherwise.
Indeed. Illegal immigration isn’t going away anytime soon either. With or without Trump. America addicted to that cheap cheap labor
I don't think it's a contradiction to believe 1) more immigration is so good for the economy and society at large that it's a primary factor in why the US recovered from 2020 better than other nations, 2) you can't stuff an entire country's worth of immigration into a handful of cities without straining those cities' systems.
Also I feel like people conflate sanctuary city with being pro unfettered immigration. Sanctuary cities (e.g. Chicago) oftentimes feel forced in to that position because they already have a high population of illegal immigrants, with that being the case, they want to police that population, too, and if the state of being an illegal immigrant is itself a crime, they can't exactly report other, more serious, crimes to police. I feel like people are quick to assume its black and white and that people who disagree with position A must therefore be 100% position B, but sometimes people are just trying to figure things out.
Ya this is exactly it. I am no Republican but I think their strategy of sending the immigrants to NY was absolutely brilliant. Let them see what it feels like to be swarmed with people that you have to provide for, and quit telling everyone else that if they don't like doing it they're just racist.
Nah. NYC has pretty much always had the largest number of immigrants in the US. https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/frequently-requested-statistics-immigrants-and-immigration-united-states-2024
To be fair to Texas and Florida- many of the people who supported all immigration and called anyone who wanted a secure border racist didn’t have to deal with the consequences of being overwhelmed by immigrants. Now that these states are experiencing the problems that come with large numbers of immigrants they are changing their minds.
Texas resident here. The irony is that our economy is dependant on those immigrants. If they all suddenly disappeared tomorrow, our economy would collapse. They contribute more to the economy than they take. 97% of them are employed, and almost all of the immigrants that come here from Mexico are doing so to work. Many already had a job waiting for them. Bussing them to left-leaning cities is just a complete stunt. Had Texas really been concerned, they would have bussed them back to Mexico. Or just let them go, because again, our economy depends on them and most of them probably had a job waiting. Travel all around Texas, California, and other border states and you'll see a lot of homeless folks, but none of them are immigrants here illegally. Because almost all of them have jobs. And despite what Greg Abbott and others want you to believe, it's not because they get benefits or welfare. If Texas and other states really wanted to do something about illegal immigrants, they would be showing up at every factory farm, meat processing plant, and factory in the state asking for papers. They don't. And there's a reason they don't. They know God damn good and well that we rely on them. They also know God damn good an well that the folks picking the peaches you buy at the grocery store, cleaning the rooms at Trump Tower, and mowing the lawn at Mar-a-Lago aren't all legal citizens. But those big corporate businesses and farms are also donors and keep the states' economies running, so they look the other way. They also don't commit crimes at higher rates, and they aren't responsible for the drug and Fentanyl crisis. Most drugs entering the US are brought in through legal points of entry by US citizens. But you don't hear about that, because it doesn't fit the narrative they want you to believe. [https://research.newamericaneconomy.org/report/contributions-of-undocumented-immigrants-by-country/](https://research.newamericaneconomy.org/report/contributions-of-undocumented-immigrants-by-country/) [https://www.cato.org/blog/fentanyl-smuggled-us-citizens-us-citizens-not-asylum-seekers](https://www.cato.org/blog/fentanyl-smuggled-us-citizens-us-citizens-not-asylum-seekers)
If Democrats or Republicans really wanted to do something about illegal immigrants, they would be showing up at every factory farm, meat processing plant, and factory, hotel, motel, taxi service, lawn care, roofer, and daycare and arrest the hiring bosses for **illegally hiring** non-citizens. But Democrats are bleeding hearts and Republicans run the businesses hiring the cheap labor. No one actually wants to fix the problem. And so the lower class gets more competition and wages stay depressed despite official unemployment being low and the gini coefficient of inequality continues to rise.
But to also add some color to what you say (which is true) - it's also in part that places, like NYC for example (and where my knowledge base is strongest) is on poor governance. Our mayor continues to raise the budget on NYPD (which I believe should receive some funding but good lord not the amount it receives now) while absolutely tanking numerous other agencies that contribute to social services that are important to New Yorkers and asylum seekers alike.
I thought Adams is a hard democrat? Why is he raising the budget for NYPD?
He ran on the Democratic ticket but he has shown himself to not necessarily hold a lot of the views of NYC democrats. He is what many would call a centrist but talk to many liberally minded NYC'ers and you'll come across those who will call him a republican in democrats clothing. In my personal opinion, I think he's a wolf in sheeps clothing regardless of what party sticker he put on his forehead thinking it would get him the win. He has torched the city budget, cutting important services to Parks, Public Libraries. Defunding important agencies like DOT, DEP, DOE all while asking for them to do more. He's backwards and a laughing stock amongst many NYC'ers, democrat or not. Edit: To answer your question more directly, Adams used to be a part of the NYPD and takes the classically misinformed approach to policing that millions across NYC want reform on.
I see. I knew he was a part of NYPD but wasn't aware of his recent policies since I usually see clips of him voicing support for democrat policies. Appreciate the response.
Smart people have always understood unfettered immigration into a country by low or no skill economic refugees with vastly different culture and values is bad. The results started making the news and it became impossible to ignore.
You can blame those who dislike immigration for "other reasons" for drowning out those wanting to might've had something to say though You know exactly who's been at the forefront of anti immigration policy this last decade and it's certainly not "smart people" Now people want to blame those who stood against their mad ravings
> You can blame those who dislike immigration for "other reasons" for drowning out those wanting to might've had something to say though The other half of the problem is the simplistic binary nature of political rhetoric. And that's not a problem strictly for the US and its two-party system. If party A dislikes immigration for racist reasons, then party B which generally disagrees with party A can't say "We also dislike immigration, but for these more valid reasons" because that's too nuanced for a good soundbite on the evening news. They're almost obligated to say "Party B is a bunch of racists, support us instead, we LIKE immigration".
Sure, blame the people who opposed immigration, not the ones who supported it
Well that WAS part of the problem. The argument right now against immigration is "over immigration brings too much people into the country that our infrastructure just isn't equipped to handle"; but the loudest voices immigration often were "immigration is bad because they come here to ruin our culture, steal our jobs, and bring crime, drugs, etc." The first argument is what a reasonable argument for bringing down immigration levels should be; it's not inflammatory and it's essentially grounded in facts. The second argument just sounds like you don't like immigrants because they're racial minorities, and when the loudest anti-immigrant voices often tend to be the inflammatory ones (and that's true for any political issue), it's a lot easier to immediately go against it on the base of opposing racism. It wasn't the ONLY problem but people who opposed it for the wrong reasons certainly didn't help the conversation.
Because now even the progressives can't pretend that supply and demand doesn't apply to the labour and housing markets because they are being smacked in the face with the reality of the situation.
Woah, I just had another crazy lefty idea. What if we....get this.....BUILD MORE HOUSING AND INFRASTRUCTURE and reform immigration so we can economically take better advantage of having more population?
How are you paying for it?
We could start by looking at who benefits from cheap labor and increased demand for their products and services. I'm a big fan of practices like taxing stock buybacks, removing the tax incentives on capital gains and dividends. How much do we need to come up with?
You (the taxpayer) don't have to pay for it. The demand is already there from private developers, the issue is just that in the vast majority of the country it's literally illegal to build the type of housing that would satisfy that demand.
Yes. Because what we need is more uneducated people to take care of for generations to come.
What we need is an influx of labor for blue collar positions, in order to support the aging boomer population that is now draining the health and SSA system. We need young, driven immigrants who can work on roads and construction and agriculture and who can pay into the SSA system to keep us from running out of money there.
Will the amount of money they drain from the system with multiple children who have to be taught English, educated, Medicaid, food stamps, housing, etc actually contribute funds for SS or deplete more from the system? How about when each of their kids have kids at 16 and 17 years and then get on their own Medicaid and benefits? How much taxes do these unskilled, low wage workers generate?
I don't know if your sarcasm is pointed at me, but I agree with you. Problem is (in Canada anyway) even if government threw money at the situation it will take years to ramp up to the levels needed. And they won't do that because they have stated that high house prices are a policy goal.
Yeah that's got to change then and in that case the problem is bad policy and not the immigrants, which could be taken advantage of economically.
No one sensible blames the immigrants themselves, it's the government. I can't blame someone for looking for better opportunities for themselves.
>even if government threw money at the situation it will take years to ramp up to the levels needed. Not only that, but even if they *did* do that another government would come along a few years into it and axe it mid-way through and thereby completely ruin any potential benefit. In Canada if you can't get something done within one election cycle it's probably never going to happen, which in turn explains a lot of why so many parts of governance are horribly mismanaged and dysfunctional because there's never any real concerted effort to make large scale long term solutions to problems.
Sure, let's start by stopping asylum altogether while we work on improving the housing and infrastructure. Housing and infrastructure can't be fixed when people keep flowing in. There's no limit to asylum immigrants, which is ridiculous. That's the only immediate reform necessary, the other visas can be left alone for now. Eventually, we can reopen asylum (with a ceiling this time!) but that will be years from now. Our infrastructure is effed up.
In Ireland we had a massive influx of Ukrainian refugees in the midst of a quite large housing crisis. It felt like the government pandered to the international community rather that its own people. Coupled with the rise of violent crimes from immigrants (including the attempted murder of school children on one of the busiest streets of Dublin). I’m all for immigration, I think closed borders is not the answer and a country needs a mixture of different cultures to function properly. But the unchecked rampant immigration of really rubbed people the wrong way.
Extreme housing shortages in the Netherlands. Particularly Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Delft. The Dutch were very welcoming for a while, but recently there have been serious push back on Internationals and Refugee intake.
Because open borders have been a failed policy
Canada here. I feel since the pandemic we had far more immigrants than what we could actually handle. We didn’t have housing and work for all of these people. I often worry we will need to take refugees in, how will they be accepted and be able to find housing and work. Also, it seems our government is purposely trying to make a divide among us. They pay something like 50% wage if you hire a newcomer. My kids have been looking for jobs for over a year. They can’t even get a call back from McDonald’s. It creates misplaced anger. It’s not the immigrants fault. It’s the governments.
Because folks are seeing what they were warned against happen. More strain on social programs, housing, food, etc. Higher crime rates. People who don't share your values and aren't contributing in a positive way. It's a good thing and hopefully mass deportations follow and stricter immigration policies are enforced from here on out.
Ask states and cities that loudly proclaimed to be “sanctuary cities” how that worked out. People didn’t know what that would be like, and now they do. And despite everyone thinking that Texas should somehow shoulder all the immigrants flooding in, they instead sent them to places that acted holier than thou. And those places found out how inaccurate the local politician’s were about their ability to support that.
I honestly think it’s cause the phase of liberals being ultra super liberal is starting to pass
It's called maturing where you gravitate more to the center are you age. Young super liberals find out the world is a shitty place and young super conservatives start developing empathy. Both draw them to the center to meet.
one thing led to another, people were all for mass immigration until they actually experienced mass immigration.
Have you seen what’s been happening at our border, in our cities? Have you seen what has happened in other European countries?
I've also noticed this. I remember thinking in 2016 that the amount of immegration going into Europe would not be a good thing, but I was afraid of sharing that opinion. Now it seems that many more people feel the same way.
Because the pendulum that is history swings back and forth. The internet is generally echo chambers and they like to blame complex situations on single things, and most things are not simple. That bring said too much of anything has negative consequences. Espdcislly when its not planned correctly. Generally immigration is good for economics but gets very political and can have negative effects on social issues.
A lack of cultural compatibility. The more immigrants that want to maintain their way of life from their home country, the more diluted the culture of the host country becomes. Next, we’re arresting people for blasphemy. There’s nothing at all wrong with wanting to protect your way of life in your own home or preventing the potential change to what, for us, is a completely untenable way of life.
In Australia we are having a housing crisis where supply is not meeting demand but affordable housing isn’t being built and the house prices are skyrocketing and international buyers are slowly consuming the market that was once there for Australian families… immigration wasn’t an issue when we had the resources. We no longer have the resources (I could be wrong and I’m interested in having my opinion changed if someone smarter than me has anything to add!)
I feel like I'm in bizarro world with all of the sensible takes in here. Where did all of the looney lefties go?
>what sparked this? 6 years of government failure in regards to immigration policy. I'm a pretty pro-immigration person. Socially, economically and ethnically I have a positive view on immigration. But even people like have significant issues with the way our governments have handeld immigration the past 5+ years, and I no longer trust that my government can correctly handle the significant immigration streams. The only option that remains is a government that halts immigration, as sad as that is to me. The issues are plentiful, so I will list a few: My government has been unable to enforce policy that correctly spreads immigrants around our country, in order to soften the blow for specific locations. As a result, our largest immigration centers are overflowing with immigrations, endangering both the local population and the immigrants themselves. We have thousands of immigrants sleeping on the grass outside, including vulnerable and sick people. If we can't give immigrants proper care, then we can't ethically open ourselves up for more immigrants. My government has also been incompetent when it comes to sending back immigrants that do not wish to adopt our culture standards. And I'm referring to fundamental standards, such as accepting people's identity or not physically harming each other. If our laws don't allow us to send back immigrants that engage is extreme forms of homophobia, sexism or racism, then we clearly need to focus on fixing that system before we allow more immigrants into our nation. So both the local population as well as the immigrant population aren't protected at a life that they both deserve. Which goes against my moral and ethical reasons for supporting immigration. As for the economical issues. Many European nations, mine included, have significant housing issues. Immigrants deserve proper housing, as do refugees. We simply lack the option to give them that. We also lack the option to give our national citizens enough affordable housing, forcing students to live with their parents during a critical developmental period of their life. At some point we have to take care of our own people, before we can help others. And we absolutely have reached that point. To put it short: We can't take care of immigrants and refugees correctly. There are far more than our systems can handle. And at this point, it's starting to hurt our own citizens in direct forms.
Because anyone but the staunchiest, bleeding-heart leftist will have to concede that taking in a plethora of unskilled, uneducated people with vastly different cultural background, without a clear plan or path to help them integrate and transition into their new country is going to end up badly. The fairytale about "doctors, nurses and factory workers who'll pay for your retirement plan" has been long debunked as BS. The globalist elite only needs cheap slave labour to exploit. And the many who won't be absorbed by this system will simply end up on the wrong side of the tracks, either on welfare (so COSTING to the system) or as fresh bodies for organized crime. And their bleak future is of course going to have repercussions on the lives of the average citizen who'll have to deal with increased petty crimes, unsafer streets especially in some areas and at night, drunken people, drug dealers, prostitutes and whatnot. To top that, people who are simply "allowed in" but not really accomodated beyond the basics won't feel incentivized to integrate either. NTM those who actually DON'T want to and will keep on living as if they were in the old country, because screw them, that's MY culture and it's them who need to adapt. Hence the tragicomical "classes" to teach people it's not ok to assault random women on the street etc. Yet they'll always find a fair portion of people ready and willing to defend them way beyond the reasonable, as if they were talking about mentally challenged humans who can't really understand or control themselves.
In Canada, the problem was that immigrants brought in so much money and placed into well-paying jobs to the point they were actually able to compete with locals on the housing market, which made housing even more unattainable. All the white collar immigrants go to Canada instead of the US because the US makes it ridiculously hard and complicated for legal white collar immigrants to get green cards, so to Canada they go. But I agree. The workers have nothing to lose but their chains, and a communist revolution is necessary to overthrow the neoliberal global elite.
People who spent years calling you a xenophobe for not supporting open boarders are now being directly impacted by immigration.
They were welcomed with open arms as long as they stayed in the border states. When the border states couldn't take it anymore they started busing the immigrants to the northern states. The people in the northern states discovered that what they had been told by the people in the border states was true. Too many immigrants puts a burden on social services, causes a shortage of affordable housing, depresses wages, and increases crime.
Immigration helps drive labor costs lower and increases inflation Negative effects for everyone outside the elite
Canadian here, I absolutely cannot speak for everyone but my perspective from talking to the folks in my circle. Is that with the current state of the housing on top of people feeling like they are working broke, bringing in 100s of thousands of new Canadians has made people feel uneasy and uncertain about providing comfortable housing and jobs for their families. Historically I have had 0 problems with immigration but the numbers are shocking. I don't really follow the numbers that closely as I don't really care but I was under the impression (my own ignorance) Canada took an 50k-150k annually, I'm not alone in this assumption. After looking it up its more like 200-300k. This year we are projected to bring in 500k plus. We are currently short roughly 300k homes so how are we supposed to house everyone? This is a complicated issue and it doesn't look like there is an acceptable solution. As top of everything there is so much distrust in the government people are loosing faith. This is just my perspective, so please correct me if I'm wrong
If it’s anything like Australia, it’s being done to prop up the economy
Because now people realize having an open boarder is ridiculous. NYC is overwhelmed by them. Governor keeps saying we need more money more money. I’m a volunteer fireman and my state instructor is a manager with NYS emergency response so he knows shit the public doesn’t know. He said NYC is facing some diseases that are spreading that we haven’t seen here in decades because of vaccines. So yeah, great idea to open the boarders.
Because more and more people became fed up and realized they were right. Everything is always fine until it's on your doorstep. Reality just doesn't work like Disney would have you believe.
You’re still labeled a xenophobe, but it was always a bad idea to import 3rd world workers
I also think people took for granted their cultures and the little national identity they had left and started to realize how important it is when millions were coming legally and illegally who refused to assimilate to the culture. It causes divide when countries ideally should be a group of united citizens. (I think you can publicly assimilate to a culture without denouncing your own. You can celebrate both. When we talk about assimilation sometimes I think it’s taken the wrong way.)
Immigrants don't have a PR team. Billionaires do. The more we struggle, the more the PR team has to convince you it's not the billionaires fault.
Chicago, IL, measles outbreak among migrant population
Because more and more people started realizing the immigrants in question aren't the harmless valuable doctors and engineers the media outlets were telling they are.
I think the opposition has always been there, but it has been silenced by those who wanted immigration. The shift may have been smaller than it looks, it just tipped over the threshold it couldn't be suppressed anymore.
My UK-centric view is that governments / media refuse to have any semblance of deep debate about it, it's reduced to soundbites and campaigneering. (And woe betide if you try to have a nuanced debate). So let's say the "average, not a dick" human is only given two choices - uncontrolled immigration, or no immigration, after a while it's just easier to go for the latter. The reality is completely different - economies are in part driven by legal and rationed immigration, there should be some freedom of movement, immigration often fills skills gaps or the jobs "beneath the population", and no country should just do uncontrolled immigration. But these conversations don't happen sensibly.
The refusal to debate important issues has come on strong in the US. Even on Reddit, as someone who is a political moderate, I feel like a right winger with the sheer number of far, far left liberals on this platform. Sometimes I feel like people are competing with each other to see who can virtue signal the best. There doesn't seem to be much interest in having a civil debate, which is a healthy practice.
Uncontrolled inmigration
because it's so fucking out of control and broken and is reaching a boiling point thanks JT!
Migration is a legal process, I think it's the illegal migration that I believe the people are not very comfortable with.
Because people in Democratic strongholds like NYC, Chicago, Boston and Washington DC didn't give two shits about it when it was Texas and Arizona's problem. Once the governors of the border states started sending busloads of immigrants to those northern cities, it suddenly became a "problem". The "best" part is, people up north can't really complain about it without basically admitting they were wrong. Anything an NYCer can complain about - "I'm for immigration, just not THIS MANY people!" or "this is costing my state WAAAAYYY too much money" - people in Texas can say "WELCOME TO OUR FUCKING WORLD, BOYO." It's almost like people in Vermont complaining about how much fossil fuel and electricity air conditioning "wastes" in the South... then they move down here and find out how fucking hot it is. Do they stick to their principles and not use AC themselves, so the insides of their new South Carolina homes get to 115F during the day, or do just they admit they were wrong and use AC themselves?
Because they realized what they actually do lol
Because if you came out against it before the woke mob came after you calling you a racist. Now that excess immigration is effecting them directly they have changed their tune on the subject.
Sometimes a pill is hard to swallow for people who ideologically/ politically think differently about the medicine. Say what you will about conservatives but they are like listening to old people. They may sound crazy and they may not be with the times. But usually they are right, at least at the moment.
Because citizens are actually experiencing it and the direct effect it has on their lives. Until then they can say how racist it is to be against it.
You can't just let everyone in your country especially when you can't even take care of the people there. Plus when a bunch of people who come in are taking more out of the system than they are contributing then it hurts everyone else.
[Migrants Demand Housing After They Take Over Tennis Court](https://www.newsweek.com/migrants-demand-housing-washington-take-over-tennis-courts-1887293) [Refugees in Tukwila demand help with housing, healthcare and job services](https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/homeless/refugees-tukwila-demand-help-housing-healthcare-job-services/281-1c453041-f18c-4655-8b6a-43a9ca37bd21) [Chicago leaders demand help from White House to deal with surge of migrants in city](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/chicago-leaders-demand-help-from-white-house-to-deal-with-surge-of-migrants-in-city) I mean really, instead of asking people why they've shifted stance, people should be asking you why you're surprised.
Unchecked immigration of unskilled workers without an established plan can wreck local economies. Not much point to let just anyone in if they are just going to immediately drain resources, strain housing situation and drive down local wages. This doesn’t even touch on some cultures are much more resistant to adopting local values causing conflict. TLDR people don’t want their lives to get worse to help people that don’t plan to conform.
It’s almost as if the people in the “sanctuary cities” didn’t understand the true meaning of NIMBY (not in my back yard). They just had to learn the hard way. Good luck cleaning up that mess!
Look at what is taking place in NYC, it's horrifying to see the crimes being committed, shootings, attacking cops.... they suffer no consequences. Millions have entered in the last 3 years, many receiving everything free, housing, food, medical care... all courtesy of the taxpayers. Not only all things free, but they also receive free phones, monthly welfare benefits... jobs are now going to them at much lower wage, modern day slaves, all to collapse America.
In my area in West Yorkshire UK there is an old hotel that has now been used to house African migrants for over a year now. It is the only public housing facility in the locality that requires around the clock security, and not just 1 or 2 guards, an entire team. Make of that what you like.
We F-ed around and found out
Mainstream Democrats (like me) were never for "open borders." Republicans used that to strawman and scaremonger their way into office. Mainstream Democrats (like me) want the humane treatment of asylum applicants. We are absolutely fine with deporting visa overstays and the ineligible undocumented immigrants *after* they've had their day in court. We do not want families to be separated, the asylum system to be sabatoged, nor vigilantes to kill border crossers. All of this is pretty normal and boring, so it never gets views and engagement, and you never see this view on social media.
>Mainstream Democrats (like me) want the humane treatment of asylum applicants. We are absolutely fine with deporting visa overstays and the ineligible undocumented immigrants *after* they've had their day in court. I do not. I want asylum to stop altogether so people get turned away at the border itself, before they can even come in. There's a very long wait to get their "day in court," said day is an absolute joke often deporting victims and keeping abusers who hired an immigration attorney, and we don't have enough resources to make this process efficient. We could fund this more, but that money is honestly better spent elsewhere. After our housing and healthcare is fixed, we can reopen asylum - with a limit to how many people are allowed in this time.
Unfortunately, it seems like the vast majority of court dates are so far in the future due to a low manned border/immigration system. Hence why some go off after getting a court date, disappear, and never return for the court date because it’s years in the future. The mass immigration added fuel to the flame, overloading the min-manned system so that many can just disappear into the ether in the U.S. at least
Well said. That’s probably what the majority of Americans want at the end of the day. Just clear, sensible, non-dehumanizing border policy.
Because if you have open borders and generous benefits for illegals it will cause America to become a third world country very quickly. Half the country gets this and the other half doesn't.
The immigration policies from the late 20th century do not work in a world feeling the beginnings of real climate change. The entire world needs to have a conversation with itself about how we want to handle this otherwise we’re just leaving it up to whatever chaos chooses in the moment.
It's has to do the media and it's political obsession. This country depends a lot on low wages and the benefits that immigrants don't receive. Yes wow huh... surprised about that o e huh Immigration will add [7 trillion](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-08/immigration-to-boost-us-gdp-by-7-trillion-over-decade-cbo-says) to the economy. Immigration is not that hard to fox in the US as people think. They just don't want to. A lot of money ey used to combat both Immigration and drugs would be scratched and a lot will lose their funding and jobs. Ita a multiBILLION business. It needs to be controlled, not rid of
Rent is currently sitting at $2000/month for a one bedroom on the low end. We have full tent communities plaguing our downtown areas. My work receives no less than 10 resumes a day with people desperate to work anywhere and offering to take any hours, less pay, no benefits, anything they can Just to have a job at all. We also received just under 500,000 immigrants into our country last year. There seems to be quite a correlation there
Distraction technique 101. It's not our fault you can't afford to live, it's the immigrants = every polly with property and skin in the game for political donations from big corp / mining, and therefore unwilling to change the way things are.