Race- Privilege, Relations, Racism, etc.

Which means, unfortunately, that if the anti-immigrant faction gains the upper hand, it can become a self fulfilling prophesy.

The “immigrants take jobs and drive down wages” thing tends to run into two issues, one immigrants tend to take jobs that the antive population don’t want, two immigrants tend to take low skill jobs that already only pay the legal minimum, so the wages can’t drop any lower anyway.

Also the same issue that Thomas Malthus famously overlooked for food production/consumption - job supply is elastic. More people means more job creation.

Yep, in the end as immigrants tend to be working age and pay their taxes they’re generally very good for the economy, the only issues occurs if either a particular geographical area or employment sector has more people than jobs already.

America is basically the poster child for that. One of the principle reasons we became an economic superpower is how effective we are at integrating people from all over the world into our economy.

Mind you, it was also because the USA had also a lot of territory to expand with practically no deterrent and the USA is not the economic juggernaut it used to be in the Cold War and early 90s.

Returning to the matter of inmigration, I will let time help me draw my conclusions on the matter, I truly hope it is as beneficial in the long run as you guys say.

edited 19th Apr '18 5:44:55 PM by raziel365

I would like to point out that the Americam West was settled in large part by immigrants.

I don’t think that clashes with what I have said, that the inmigrants had a place to go without causing friction with the population of the eastern coast is part of the reason why the conquest of the West was done.

Plenty of immigrants also stayed on the east coast, it’s where lots of the Irish settled. Issues did happen, but they were eventually dealt with and the group integrated.

"Without clashing"

Obligatory reminder that Chinese railroad workers working on the Transcontinental Railroad didn't have a very easy time of it. There was "clashing" of sorts. And by "clashing" I mean there was a fucking massacre at one point.

There are always clashes, but that doesnt negate the economic effect. I'm sure that our possession of large territories was helpful (to the United States), but that isn't really the entire foundation of our expanding economy. Historically, the US isnt the only nation that has experienced this effect, it is in fact more the rule than the exception, and not every nation that has experiened economic expansion due to immigration had unsettled territories to expand into. For example, the effect of immigration on the UK economy.

A more scholarly treatment of the same subject.

edited 19th Apr '18 7:11:48 PM by DeMarquis

Hell, it could be strongly argued that immigrants were what ended American slavery. A steady stream of European immigrants to the northern states prevented the business owners there from seeing slavery as a cost-effective measure, as simply hiring 100 destitute Irish workers on the most meager of wages removed the personal liability for the injuries or costs of replacement needed to sustain the same number of unpaid slaves.

When the Civil War broke out, the huge numbers of immigrants in the North also provided the massive advantage in manpower that the Confederates would ultimately find as a Game-Breaker. By the end of war, there were even entire units with officers who could not speak English and had to get by using interpreters in usually French or German.

edited 19th Apr '18 7:16:36 PM by FluffyMcChicken

That sound so badass honestly.

edited 19th Apr '18 7:21:29 PM by KazuyaProta

Bottom line: immigration is good for a nation in the long run. Hell, it's arguably vital to its survival. But like all change, it's not easy. And there will always be reactionaries.

Granted, as the son of a pair of immigrants to the USA I might be a tad biased about this.

edited 19th Apr '18 7:31:01 PM by M84

Nah, is fine that you share your own experiences about that. I think that inmigration should be made a lot easier in general to help the inmigrants to live better.

I dont think that anyone argued that it is gonna be easy (until we turn it easy), and we know that there always be some assholes (I kinda miss Communism, now all assholes are Right Wing :v)

Also, dont forget the best part of inmigration, the food.

(Hey, I am peruvian, our food is kinda sacred for us, and almost all of them are products of inmigration)

edited 19th Apr '18 7:40:37 PM by KazuyaProta

If there has to be a case when immigration is actually and unquestionably bad, it's when the immigrants in question actually have little to no intention on respecting and identifying as a member of the society in which they emigrated to, and instead see themselves as colonists with a Manifest Destiny to expand their mother country and to forcibly "spread" their culture and ideals abroad instead of respecting and coexisting with others.

Case in point more than any other group of people, the current Xi Jinping-era waves of nationalistic Chinese immigrants who openly discriminate and make life miserable for Taiwanese and other ethnic Han expatriates for daring to stray from the Motherland.

Ah, our weird token evil Leftist colonialism. I kinda missed it.

Well, to be honest, that's less immigration and more invasion. The difference being whether the influx is a state-sponsored strategy or not.

Your use of the term "invasion" is fine, but damn that it didnt remind me to the racists from my capital calling "invaders" to all the andeans trying to ran away from poverty and terrorism (a group where my own father could be included into them).

Eh, dont worry about what you said, is just that...ugh, Peruvian racism.

edited 19th Apr '18 8:30:15 PM by KazuyaProta

@ M84

I don't see that as a bad thing, the USA has always claimed to be the nation of inmigrants after all.

Granted, there are places that are culturally more inclined to accept inmigration than others but I it can't be denied that some dynamism must be kept in a country to prevent its stagnation culturally speaking.

@ Kazuya

I think the best thing of Peru is that everyone, from all classes and all origins, can be united at the dining table; Peru: if you can bring a good plate to the country, you'll be welcome here in short term.

@ Fluffy

Yeees, that's kind of one of the reasons inmigration could be not all sunshine, that said, I have to be grateful that the people that are coming here are venezuelans who have all a score to settle with the Chavez/Maduro regime and are latin brothers and sisters so if anything they can help us in preventing any leftist extremist (*cough* Mendoza *cough*) from screwing up the nation.

If anything, we should be grateful that our inmigrants are part of our cultural horizon and not from a place that could have a big cultural clash with us were they to arrive.

It doesn't really help that "invasion" is a term used for illegal settlements of people, though I feel sorry for your dad, that shit with Sendero was fucked up and I can't blame him from coming here.

edited 19th Apr '18 8:36:05 PM by raziel365

Hey, Mendoza can be absurdly naive and a idological purity jerk but calling her "leftist extremist" feels really overdone.

To be fair, she did associate with exterrorists at some point so you can't blame me if I have my suspicions of her.

Edit: Also, if you cannot compromise your ideas, even if by not doing so you are doing harm to your people, you can be called an ideological zealot, which is not so away from extremism I fear.

Fair enough, it's a term out of scale for her.

edited 19th Apr '18 9:07:37 PM by raziel365

Oh yeah, Veronica is dubious, but calling her extremist might be too far.

The difference between immigration and colonialism is that colonialism is a state-sponsored (or corporate-sponsored) move to exploit a region and its people. Immigration is just people moving to a different nation for whatever reason.

This of course means it's stunningly gallingly hypocritical when nations that have engaged in colonialism in the past are whining about immigration as if it's an invasion. See: the UK, the USA, France, Japan, China, etc.

edited 19th Apr '18 9:08:22 PM by M84