Immigration only really causes economic issues with bullshit employee specific visas like H1Bs - those visas trap immigrants in powerless positions where they’re unable to advocate for fair compensation and drive down overall wages.
Eh, it doesn’t really seem like that tends to happen… economies are weird and if you keep adding people you tend to just get more and more service jobs.
Infrastructure is a large issue. Border towns can become saturated, which will reduce living conditions, and when immigrants move to larger cities, they can often have trouble finding places to live. A lot of this can be because of a communication barrier. Sometimes that is because there are too few to translate, but there can also be educational issues. As much maligned as the US education system is, it is better than some others, and when your culture eschews school for an early start at earning a paycheck, communication in any language becomes a challenge.
Many issues can be overcome, or at least minimized, by compassionate workers, which many that work with immigrants are, but there isn’t enough funding to get compassionate people where they are most needed. Supporting increased budgets at the border isn’t always about putting guns on the border, it can be about improving the infrastructure that helps get people where they need to be in more efficient ways. I’m starting to ramble, though, and I think I’ve given a partial answer to your question.
From an economical standpoint, immigrants bring in more taxes and labor, which can go towards infrastructure and social infrastructure like education and housing
If immigration leads to more unemployment, then that is an economic problem, especially in the hypothetical case where the social benefits system is getting more and more strained by an influx of unemployed people. But generally, I think that you can expect that the immigrants will soon find employment. Besides that, there’s the cultural aspect that @jet mentioned. You could also make the point that the country’s infrastructure is more and more stressed as the population grows, but that is fixable and potentially counteracted by the labour potential of the immigrants themselves (i.e., qualified immigrant work forces can make a large-scale infrastructure overhaul possible that will lead to greater national capacities and a net benefit for the entire population).
Aside from these things, I would argue that most of the other reasons boil down to xenophobia or racism.
but that is fixable and potentially counteracted by the labour potential of the immigrants themselves
That’s how I would deal with immigration in my power fantasies. I’m sure in reality it’s much more complicated than that, but the basic idea of bringing in immigrants and using their labor to build more infrastructure (and paying them a fair wage for it) seems sound. Coupled with pro-housing policies and free education - not necessarily college but trade school and language classes.
Immigration in excess and esspecially in combination with exploititive or unenforced labour laws and mismanagement of other resources and infrastructure, can decrease wages, and cause shortage of key resources. For example, if there is no new housing being built, but there is very high immigration levels, housing prices will rise, and availability will be limited.
Usually because those responsible for regulating housing are heavily invested in it, and like the fact that high immigration is pushing prices up. In the case of more blatantly malicious governments, it can also be used to encourage divisionism, or to weaken the power of the working class. At best, its just because building housing (esspecially in more extreme climates) is slow and expensive. As usual, most things lead back to corrupt governments and capitalism.
Fair point. I say “why not just build houses” as if it’s easy, but it’s really not. If I were King of America I could force simultaneous policy changes (more immigration + more housing) but that’s unlikely to happen in reality.
kbin.life
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