This is going to be the last warning shot I’m sure.
The far right rise because they are the only ones talking about immigration.
The left won right now. Two things can happen, either the left listen to millions of people screaming for reduced immigration and we never hear from the far right again. Or the left continue to ignore people and think this is the end of it. It won’t be the end.
For one, EU immigration policy has already hardened significantly and is now being directly catered to Meloni’s far right government. You’ll notice the far right hasn’t stopped bleating about it.
And the reason for that is that immigration simply cannot be curved effectively without literally solving inequality worldwide. That’s why it’s such a convenient scapegoat. Xenophobia doesn’t need to make sense, and since desperate migrants being smuggled by human traffickers are unresponsive to posturing you can just bang that drum indefinitely.
So we can either explain this effectively to people (and also help improve the inequality bit) or we can resign ourselves to a fascist government elected by racist useful idiots.
Immigration is legit just a scapegoat for the right and in reality isn’t that big of an issue. People in France agreed as well, even though NR was only shouting about immigration (literally, it’s unclear what their other policies are apart from the classic right-wing policies of lowering taxes for corporations), and also ranked #1 in polls, immigration came out 8th in the “most important issues” ranking poll.
It’s not 2016 anymore, immigration has decreased significantly since the big flood.
Genuine question, is immigration really an issue or just something right-wing tries to prop up as an issue? Where I live the right-wing also campaigned heavily on immigration issue claiming that immigrants are coming and ruining the country. Year after year the average immigration was less than 1% of the entire population and in the special occasion where it went above 1% was when we took in Ukrainian refugees. But right wing kept propping it up until some people started to believe we actually have an immigration issue.
With that I mind I think we should always question whatever right-wing presents because they’re not above making shit up. If some right wing politician says the sky is blue I would get a second opinion before believing it.
Immigration is always “an issue” regardless of what your political position is*, but only in the sense that the government should have a policy about it. The policy can be to build infrastructure in advance and create opportunities that benefit both immigrant communities and non-immigrants, or it can be to police the borders more like you’re holding back rising sea levels. Not responding in any way leads to instability and “crisis” (or more often, the opposition manufacturers the feeling of crisis).
I think you might’ve missed my point. Policy can be taken as “always as issue” in the same as taxation is “always an issue”, because people will always have opinions on how to do things. But my question was more along the lines of there being an actual problem with the current policy or did people just start complaining about immigration because the right wing complains about immigration.
My experience was that people didn’t really mind immigration until the right wing started complaining how the current policy is bad and we’re letting freeloaders and other questionable individuals in.
Denying entry for people in need can’t be the answer. Honestly, it’s unfair that we were lucky enough to be born into a stable country. It’s unfair that other people have to live under dictators looking only for their personal interest. It’s unfair that people have to live under the consequences of global power struggles and it’s also unfair that Western countries exploit other nations and then don’t lend assistance when everything turns to shit.
How can you justify sending away these people that are fleeing from warzones or due to global warming. They are losing family and their homes and yet, they spent their life worrying while we can go to restaurants, cafes, play in parks, go hiking, swimming or biking without ever having to worry.
Leaning into the immigration policy of the right cannot be the answer, there has to be another solution.
There are many ways to address immigration. And not all of them consist on not letting people in.
You can take in consideration what the average person thinks about immigrants and fix that:
Immigrants are stealing our jobs.
Immigrants are criminals.
I’m gonna try and think outside the box instead of the normal “it’s poverty that makes them criminals! They need better social support” which is probably true, but won’t convince the far right voters to vote for you.
The first one is the easiest to solve of the two. Since in most western countries, immigrants coming to work is actually good for the economy, since the native population has a declining birth rate and is aging, so they need working people that don’t come from births (immigrants). But you can still:
Enforce that employers pay the minimum wage
Have a higher minimum wage for immigrants, so employers only hire them if they’re actually better than the natives (or there are no natives applying for the job). And while we’re at it, raise the minimum wage for everyone.
Only allow immigrants without a special visa to work in certain sectors (for example those that native people don’t want to do).
I know 2/3 of those treat immigrants as “lower” people, but it’s still better than illegal immigration or don’t letting them in.
For the second one, the main problem is that 1st generation immigrants are not the issue, but their children are. Because their children were born in that country so most of the time they’re citizens and you can’t just deport them like 1st generation. The only way I can think of to fix this is don’t give them citizenship until they’ve passed an actually hard exam that shows they’ve integrated into the culture, and have a clean record. They would be “2nd class citizens” at that point. 2nd class and normal citizens are legally the exact same, with only one difference. If a 2nd class has children after having committed a crime, their children are also 2nd class. If they have a clean record, it is assumed that they have integrated in the local culture and their children are born as normal citizens.
These ideas probably have a thousand things i didn’t consider, but I believe they’re better than not letting immigrants in.
I appreciate that you put some thought into this but woooooof you have terrible ideas. It’s like you looked at the “it’s poverty that makes them criminals! They need better social support” and then specifically did everything you could to form systems that solve it in a different way even though you were correct the first time, they need better social support.
There was no reason to shy from the truth. Immigration is good with social support. Also should be better social support for non-immigrants in poverty too. You don’t need to worry about “convincing far right voters” because the far right doesn’t come to power if you have a fair, transparent, and low-inequality economy and government programs that serve everyone well.
It’s because immigrants carry the symptoms of poor people, people don’t like having homeless in the streets but openly saying “we’re a party that’s against poor people” doesn’t get votes like being against immigrants does.
This, and also the far right sells the idea that the nation is actually great and rich but the immigrants cause all the poverty and the poverty will go away if the immigrants are expelled
its a media problem, always has been. Web media is going through the same chaos that broadcast media did at the turn of the 20th century: those willing to use the new media to lie and defraud people will do so until enough people die that the powers that be crack down’
Immigration can be a problem. One thing you might notice is the far right when they do gain power they never “solve” immigration, they consolidate power and hand power to oligarchs. Oligarchs on the other hand always benefit from immigration. So what they do is create an “immigrant class” and treat both immigrant and non-immigrant groups worse.
This is going to be the last warning shot I’m sure.
The far right rise because they are the only ones talking about immigration.
The left won right now. Two things can happen, either the left listen to millions of people screaming for reduced immigration and we never hear from the far right again. Or the left continue to ignore people and think this is the end of it. It won’t be the end.
For one, EU immigration policy has already hardened significantly and is now being directly catered to Meloni’s far right government. You’ll notice the far right hasn’t stopped bleating about it.
And the reason for that is that immigration simply cannot be curved effectively without literally solving inequality worldwide. That’s why it’s such a convenient scapegoat. Xenophobia doesn’t need to make sense, and since desperate migrants being smuggled by human traffickers are unresponsive to posturing you can just bang that drum indefinitely.
So we can either explain this effectively to people (and also help improve the inequality bit) or we can resign ourselves to a fascist government elected by racist useful idiots.
Immigration is legit just a scapegoat for the right and in reality isn’t that big of an issue. People in France agreed as well, even though NR was only shouting about immigration (literally, it’s unclear what their other policies are apart from the classic right-wing policies of lowering taxes for corporations), and also ranked #1 in polls, immigration came out 8th in the “most important issues” ranking poll.
It’s not 2016 anymore, immigration has decreased significantly since the big flood.
Genuine question, is immigration really an issue or just something right-wing tries to prop up as an issue? Where I live the right-wing also campaigned heavily on immigration issue claiming that immigrants are coming and ruining the country. Year after year the average immigration was less than 1% of the entire population and in the special occasion where it went above 1% was when we took in Ukrainian refugees. But right wing kept propping it up until some people started to believe we actually have an immigration issue.
With that I mind I think we should always question whatever right-wing presents because they’re not above making shit up. If some right wing politician says the sky is blue I would get a second opinion before believing it.
Immigration is always “an issue” regardless of what your political position is*, but only in the sense that the government should have a policy about it. The policy can be to build infrastructure in advance and create opportunities that benefit both immigrant communities and non-immigrants, or it can be to police the borders more like you’re holding back rising sea levels. Not responding in any way leads to instability and “crisis” (or more often, the opposition manufacturers the feeling of crisis).
*except for anarchism
I think you might’ve missed my point. Policy can be taken as “always as issue” in the same as taxation is “always an issue”, because people will always have opinions on how to do things. But my question was more along the lines of there being an actual problem with the current policy or did people just start complaining about immigration because the right wing complains about immigration.
My experience was that people didn’t really mind immigration until the right wing started complaining how the current policy is bad and we’re letting freeloaders and other questionable individuals in.
Denying entry for people in need can’t be the answer. Honestly, it’s unfair that we were lucky enough to be born into a stable country. It’s unfair that other people have to live under dictators looking only for their personal interest. It’s unfair that people have to live under the consequences of global power struggles and it’s also unfair that Western countries exploit other nations and then don’t lend assistance when everything turns to shit.
How can you justify sending away these people that are fleeing from warzones or due to global warming. They are losing family and their homes and yet, they spent their life worrying while we can go to restaurants, cafes, play in parks, go hiking, swimming or biking without ever having to worry.
Leaning into the immigration policy of the right cannot be the answer, there has to be another solution.
Keep banging on the walls of Fortress Europe!
There are many ways to address immigration. And not all of them consist on not letting people in.
You can take in consideration what the average person thinks about immigrants and fix that:
I’m gonna try and think outside the box instead of the normal “it’s poverty that makes them criminals! They need better social support” which is probably true, but won’t convince the far right voters to vote for you.
The first one is the easiest to solve of the two. Since in most western countries, immigrants coming to work is actually good for the economy, since the native population has a declining birth rate and is aging, so they need working people that don’t come from births (immigrants). But you can still:
I know 2/3 of those treat immigrants as “lower” people, but it’s still better than illegal immigration or don’t letting them in.
For the second one, the main problem is that 1st generation immigrants are not the issue, but their children are. Because their children were born in that country so most of the time they’re citizens and you can’t just deport them like 1st generation. The only way I can think of to fix this is don’t give them citizenship until they’ve passed an actually hard exam that shows they’ve integrated into the culture, and have a clean record. They would be “2nd class citizens” at that point. 2nd class and normal citizens are legally the exact same, with only one difference. If a 2nd class has children after having committed a crime, their children are also 2nd class. If they have a clean record, it is assumed that they have integrated in the local culture and their children are born as normal citizens.
These ideas probably have a thousand things i didn’t consider, but I believe they’re better than not letting immigrants in.
I appreciate that you put some thought into this but woooooof you have terrible ideas. It’s like you looked at the “it’s poverty that makes them criminals! They need better social support” and then specifically did everything you could to form systems that solve it in a different way even though you were correct the first time, they need better social support.
There was no reason to shy from the truth. Immigration is good with social support. Also should be better social support for non-immigrants in poverty too. You don’t need to worry about “convincing far right voters” because the far right doesn’t come to power if you have a fair, transparent, and low-inequality economy and government programs that serve everyone well.
I didn’t say that “poverty makes them criminals” was wrong. I know it is true. Was trying to think what it would get to take an alt right’s vote.
It’s because immigrants carry the symptoms of poor people, people don’t like having homeless in the streets but openly saying “we’re a party that’s against poor people” doesn’t get votes like being against immigrants does.
This, and also the far right sells the idea that the nation is actually great and rich but the immigrants cause all the poverty and the poverty will go away if the immigrants are expelled
its a media problem, always has been. Web media is going through the same chaos that broadcast media did at the turn of the 20th century: those willing to use the new media to lie and defraud people will do so until enough people die that the powers that be crack down’
Immigration can be a problem. One thing you might notice is the far right when they do gain power they never “solve” immigration, they consolidate power and hand power to oligarchs. Oligarchs on the other hand always benefit from immigration. So what they do is create an “immigrant class” and treat both immigrant and non-immigrant groups worse.