

I don’t think immigration is bad, but if the “problem” of fertility below replacement is caused by the other problem of people who might otherwise want kids not being able to have them because of economic constraints, focusing on solving the first problem by importing competitive and ambitious skilled professionals seems at least kind of questionable.





The reason I’m thinking of it is I recently read this lemmy thread. The article itself is probably AI and not that convincing but I think people are making some good points about the pressures imposed by expense of housing and how those affect the desirability and difficulty of having children.
Of course a prerequisite for that to matter is that not having children is more of a real choice than it is for people with no resources in a state of poverty. But it isn’t necessarily the case that the difficulty of raising children decreases with country-wide affluence, because wealth inequality is a thing, required resources (like housing space) might become more expensive relative to income despite overall increase in income, and other factors like an increasingly atomized career focused society where community can’t be relied on as much to help raise children and the expectations placed on parents are higher, maybe requiring high daycare expenses.
I agree in principle with the logic here, but if those capable workers are being placed in competition with a population that is financially struggling, and those taxes are not being used to give those people more breathing room, that productivity isn’t helping and is being employed on the wrong side of a class struggle.