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by ConfSibi
2866 days ago
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There are legitimate and rational reasons for not wanting a large influx of poor immigrants into a developed nation. Using the US as an example, in the 1800's and early-to-mid 1900's, American work was largely labor intensive agricultural and factory based work. Labor was in huge demand, and as a result the middle class was able to thrive. Today that is no longer the case, and a massive rift between rich and poor is developing as the middle class collapses without an economic foundation to support its existence, this being the labor intensive industries that have largely disappeared in modern Western nations. This has been the development path of all developed nations. As modern economies are already struggling with worsening labor conditions for the majority of their people and the resulting stresses on social programs, it makes little sense to open immigration to the impoverished masses. This is a realist perspective. Denying the economic factors at play here will only lead to increased socio economic tension in developed societies at a time when such tension is already at a high water mark in modern history. |
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It perpetuates the falsehood that immigrants stress social programmes. In fact, social programmes in Western countries are stressed by the shifting demographics of their indigenous populations, and require immigrants to prop them up.
Social programmes like state pensions and healthcare were created in an age when Western countries had large working-age populations, and relatively small numbers of older, non-working people. However, the decrease in fertility and increase in life expectancy across the West has flipped this. There are too many older people, and not enough indigenous tax-paying citizens to support them.
Politicians in Western countries saw this problem coming in the 1990s. Since cutting social programmes that affect the elderly is politically impossible, they realised the only solution was to liberalise their immigration policies. Immigrants are statistically younger, healthier, harder-working, and pay more taxes than the average indigenous citizen. As a bonus, many of them return to their home country when they get older, so you don't need to pay for their pensions / healthcare.
Ironically, old people in these countries then decided, or were persuaded, that they disliked immigration. So they started supporting parties with anti-immigrant policies, even though this was totally against their economic self-interest. The result is a political paradox that no Western politician has been able to unravel, although populists have made hay exploiting it.