[blfr]

It is constantly shocking to me that no matter how many times and where in the west people vote against immigration (which is what most of these votes boil down to), they can never get it.

It's truly a crown in the gutter moment where you can be completely off-the-wall nuts (vide AfD) and, if you're just willing to campaign on anti-immigration, your ranks will instantly swell. Yet the establishment is somehow completely incapable or unwilling to capitalize/capture this.

[thisisit]

Most of the politics comes down to tribalism. And within this tribalism nothing works better than Us vs Them. Immigration is one of the best "us vs them" debates. It rallies lot of support.

But then often immigration isn't the problem. It is a solution preying on the fear of people that "outsiders" are harming their opportunities, housing, way of life etc. The real problem is that people are not making living wages and wages are not catching up to cost of living.

As politicians pushing anti-immigration come to power they also realize this problem. They'd rather not solve immigration because then they need to face up to the actual living wage crisis issue. It also helps keeping the immigration talking point open so that it can be used in next election.

[znzjzjsj]

> But then often immigration isn't the problem

There has never been a successful multiracial democracy in history. There are many books on this - one was even on Obamas summer reading list awhile back.

> The real problem is that people are not making living wages and wages are not catching up to cost of living

Importing labor devalues native labor. This is outside of the cultural change, etc. These are real problems.

> They'd rather not solve immigration

Because they serve the rich and the rich benefit from immigration at the expense of natives. Immigration is a solved problem. Do it only when needed or when it benefits the people, not a select few.

[frm88]

Importing labor devalues native labor. This is outside of the cultural change, etc. These are real problems.

Some other real problems, please solve without immigration:

https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/bumper-british-strawb...

https://britbrief.co.uk/business/economy/uk-population-decli...

[breakyerself]

Because the establishment knows how integral to the economy immigration is and because it isn't that easy to stop even for an island. Unless you want to shut down tourism and trade.

[alecco]

> Because the establishment

Let me fix that for you: because the establishment is owned by the corporations who want to suppress wages, rise demand, pump gross GDP, and pump real estate.

And because governments running on deficits are slaves to the banking cartel, too.

[kjksf]

Based on what data?

The immigration we're talking about, the one of Africans etc. immigrants flooding west, is destructive to the economies based on pretty much every statistic I've seen.

Those immigrants are on welfare in disproportional numbers compared to native population.

E.g. in US 72% Somalis are on welfare and the same stats are in West Europe.

They cost the state gigantic amount of money.

And per-capita crime stats are so bad that governments are hiding them from public.

This is all documented by government's own statistics and reasonably well reported.

Immigration COULD be a net positive to the economy IF it was managed properly but it isn't and it isn't.

Tourism isn't immigration and I don't see what trade has to do with it.

[breakyerself]

> 72% Somalis are on welfare and the same stats are in West Europe.

This is bullshit. Donald Trump isn't a credible source on statistics about immigration. The highest percentage I can find for food stamps is 54% and a high percentage of food stamps recipients are employed.

https://cis.org/Report/Somali-Immigrants-Minnesota?utm_sourc...

Asylum seekers in the US are a net positive source of revenue. They also create jobs and drive economic growth.

https://aspe.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/documents/28fe4e756...

[ycucucjc]

A mere 54%.

[breakyerself]

54 is lower than 72 and only a fraction of people receiving food benefits receive additional benefits that would qualify them as being on "welfare"

2/3 of natural born US citizens will live in a household that receives food assistance at some point in their lives. 60-75% of Somolis are working. So there's a good percentage there that are working and paying taxes, but need some extra assistance.

I don't see a lot of fake news/statistics going around about white immigrants to the US. Funny how it's all Somolis and Hatians that are stuck being smeared by misinformation. What could that be about.

[davidguetta]

Stopping is a long way from "actively encouraging it and calling racist everybody who disagree" (and actively hide horrific stuff like the rape gangs).

[ZeroGravitas]

If the guy who was once second in line to the throne is in a rape gang, and that's been covered up for years, maybe it's not an immigrant thing.

[davidguetta]

The coverup in both cases is a crimes

[threatofrain]

I think the problem is creating an effective anti-immigration movement which does not have racial feelings running through the movement. It might just be impossible to do. When you wish to corral the votes you may have to accept the feelings of those who help you win.

[davidguetta]

Its really not hard to say "people coming from terrible countries without filtering drag us down on average".

Its statistically reasonable and not racist

[JCattheATM]

The real problem is the uneducated masses who buy the propaganda that immigration is the issue they should care about the most.

[spwa4]

The real problem is that for >10 years the a green-left coalition was in power, at least in most of Europe and immigration was greatly encouraged because it would provide clear economic benefits for everyone.

There's many stories, but let's call this the average story: "Immigration brings growth, growth advances everyone".

Well, it doesn't, at least not at the moment. Oops.

Now we can argue why, of course, but a certain amount of backlash was to be expected. It was clear for 20 years or more exactly what would happen when "the alternative" to the prevailing "left+green" coalitions gains power. To an extent I don't understand how anybody can claim to be surprised.

Also, in a democracy I would think that arguing that "the uneducated masses" are wrong is a quick path to irrelevancy. That, by the way, is exactly how we want the system to work. The system needs to work well for the uneducated masses. Figure it out, or accept that the other guys are going to win the election.

[JCattheATM]

> Well, it doesn't, at least not at the moment. Oops.

No, it still does.

> but a certain amount of backlash was to be expected.

Ultimately by lower class people who tend to be racist, though. Mostly it's just that they don't like seeing new languages and foods popup.

> in a democracy I would think that arguing that "the uneducated masses" are wrong is a quick path to irrelevancy.

Maybe, but the uneducated masses shouldn't be making these decisions, which is why democracy is the real problem here.

[spwa4]

> Maybe, but the uneducated masses shouldn't be making these decisions, which is why democracy is the real problem here.

Do you seriously think progressives will come out on top, or even have much of a say at all, in a non-democratic system? I mean, really?

... which suggests that if you can't lift up and convince "lower class" people, racist or otherwise, you should just get out of the way. Because if that's the case the only outcomes are bad, and worse.

[JCattheATM]

> Do you seriously think progressives will come out on top, or even have much of a say at all, in a non-democratic system? I mean, really?

I think a superior system to the one we have now is one where progressive values are embedded in from the start. Objectively, they are superior positions that can be backed up by data.

> which suggests that if you can't lift up and convince "lower class" people, racist or otherwise, you should just get out of the way

These people routinely vote against their own interests. They shouldn't have a say.

[spwa4]

If you think so then just vote in your favorite "data-driven" dictator. I'm sure it will all end well.

[smspillaz]

But they do meaningfully try to address this.

Almost every country in the west is tightening it's system. In the UK claiming ILR will take a significantly longer period of lawful residence, and a shorter time will require you to meet a high income threshold. It is nearly impossible to get PR in Canada now unless you are fluent in both English and French and have a PhD or several years of canadian work experience. The bar has also gone up in Australia too.

The reason why this doesn't seem to move the needle on the anti-immigration vote is because the folks on that side can always just move the goalposts and be the "true" anti-immigrant party. I believe these days Reform UK wants cancel all ILRs and start actively deporting long term residents who don't meet an ever raising bar. Its madness.

[kjksf]

The only meaningful action would be to stop well fare for immigrants. You don't work, you don't have money.

Madness is for UK government to tax UK citizens to pay for housing and food of immigrants.

Incentives drive behavior. If you're African and see you can live for free in England, of course you'll try to get that deal. And in age of social media, they know.

Denmark did that and saw dramatic drop in number of people trying to immigrate there.

What you desperately try to paint as racism is just immune response from UK citizens.

They can see their taxes are raising, gov services are getting worse but gov finds the money to pay for housing for 110 thousand immigrants.

They connect the dots and that's why Reform UK would win the elections (if the elections were done today).

Because Labour, which won election recently with good majority, is not, in fact, ignoring voters and not doing anything meaningful.

Reform UK promises drastic changes because that's what majority of UK votes are demanding now.

It's how democracy is supposed to work. The politicians are supposed to be responsive to demands of voters.

[subscribed]

But they are forbidden from working!

LOL, if you need to be so openly racist at least try being consistent.

[archagon]

You proclaim these sentiments to be in the majority, but they are not. The people who proclaim them are just loud.

A common strategy of the far right.

[kjksf]

> According to the most recent polling (Ipsos, 6–10 February 2026), two-thirds (67%) of Britons believe the total number of people coming into the UK is too high

Do you have different data or different definition of majority?

I was taught that 67% is majority + 16% but maybe leftist math is different.

[ForHackernews]

I might take your opinions more seriously if you integrated and learned to write English properly. It's "welfare", for starters. Line breaks go between paragraphs, not after every sentence. If you're going to come here sucking up resources on a Western message board, you have to assimilate.

[a_ba]

care to take your vile racism elsewhere?

[gnufied]

Nicholas Taleb has a great article about this - https://medium.com/@nntaleb/the-world-in-which-we-live-7255a...

[tolerance]

The transition from Nationalism to Globalism and back to Nationalism (rather, a more broad iteration of it) cannot be achieved with micro revolutions like what we see in the US.

[demosito666]

In countries with functional democracy it actually is happening. In Sweden anti-immigration sentiments allowed for right party to gain significant share in the parliament and now immigration rules are changing and immigration rates are lowering. One may argue that this is 20 years too late, but in the past the majority of the population public actually didn’t actively oppose the policies. They do now, the situation is changing. No swexit required.

[varispeed]

This is because of massive unchecked corruption. In the UK this has become multibillion per year industry where connected landlords / agencies get lucrative contracts from Home Office for keeping immigrants in their properties and then you have complete supply chains developed around this where each entity skims money.

There are billboards where offers of guaranteed rents are advertised etc.

[haizhung]

Please. The establishment is dying to capitalize on it, and puts out one ridiculous anti-immigration measure after the next. And all it does is that it simply boosts far right parties even more.

It’s completely obvious to me (and often supported by exit polls) that people who are voting far right aren’t actually against immigration - only on the surface. Once you dig just a little bit deeper, often socioeconomic struggles surface. The working class has been taking a beating since the what, 1980s now? And it’s not like there’s any sort of legislature on the horizon that would fix their predicament.

So people look for a scapegoat. The far right gives them a scapegoat goat, and the enlightened center doesn’t know how to handle it.

[NullCascade]

the anti-immigration right in Denmark was successful because they were data-driven and could show that unskilled non-Western immigration was a net negative even by 3rd generation.

the American and German far-right by contrast seem to be the polar opposite of data-driven. No the lazy 'IQ by country' maps don't count.

[ffsm8]

> the anti-immigration right in Denmark was successful because they were data-driven and could show that unskilled non-Western immigration was a net negative even by 3rd generation.

That is very true however you're misunderstanding why the German (where I'm from) and Americans parties aren't publishing this data. It's not because they're lazy, but because they can't.

And before you're now thinking: "aha! So they're not net negative!" ...well, these statistics aren't available either.

The reality is that the data to create these graphs aren't public, or never created. The likely reason for that being labeled 'nazi' for even considering gathering such data.

I personally suspect that they're net negative, in total but net positive on average (so numerically, most immigrants being positive). At least that would reflect my personal experience with with immigrants. However, you only need a very small percentage of immigrants to game the system in order to make the whole sample size negative because of the insane amount of money a bad actor can drain.

[ForHackernews]

I assume it's economically catastrophic to cut off the supply of young, low-wage labour and that's why no responsible government will ever do it.

[jgb1984]

Numbers from Denmark and the Netherlands (the only two European countries where it's allowed to gather such statistics) show that non-EU immigration is a net cost to the society (and economy). In the Netherlands a non-western asylumseeker comes to about 800.000 € to 1.300.000 € net cost to the state over the persons lifetime, depending on what you take into account. And that's purely the financial part, we're not even talking about the increase in crime and the ghettoisation of most western European cities. It's a tragedy, for everyone involved (because most 2nd and 3rd generation non-western immigrants still live a life of poverty in Belgium/Netherlands).

[blfr]

This would be a good explanation but most of these immigrants, especially from outside the EU, are not net contributors.

vide https://www.economist.com/sites/default/files/images/print-e...

from https://www.economist.com/europe/2021/12/18/why-have-danes-t...

And I highly doubt other governments don't have similar calculations or aren't aware of them.

[jorvi]

That Economist stat often gets misunderstood. It is "net contribution to public finances" (= how much taxes do they pay), not "net contribution to the economy". This is because they are overly represented in low wage jobs, or indeed on longterm welfare. People in the lowest tax brackets pay very little of it.

I do agree that there needs to be a honest conversation about what (economic) immigrants offer vs. what they cost, but it needs to be done properly.

We will need immigrants because we are below 2.1 in Total Fertility Rate. But, the EU doesn't need to be the comfy life raft of the world as it has been for the past 2-3 decades.

[breakyerself]

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6938108633c7a...

https://www.ft.com/content/10daa0e9-d57b-4ccd-9bdc-87d321283...

[ForHackernews]

...but Brits voted against EU immigrants.

[blfr]

Yeah, what I am saying is that these votes, regardless of their formal content, are usually an expression of general anti-immigrant sentiment.

Like voting for AfD. I doubt many people look at this organization and its leaders to conclude that "ah, here is the talent I would love to have running my country." They're merely the only available option against. Same with brexit.

[breakyerself]

Similar to voting for brexit if they ever get what they're voting for they'll come to regret it.

[kjksf]

UK pays for free housing of 110 thousand immigrants. And that's just one of the many well fare benefits.

But when they face deficit, they raise taxes instead of, crazy idea, not spending billions of money taken from UK citizens to provide free housing and food for foreigners.

UK citizens are rightfully pissed off that their life is getting worse.

That's not the social contract and being pissed off about that is not racism. It's self preservation.

The same happens in Spain, Germany, France, Italy.

That's your big mystery of why AfD or Reform UK are popular: because the parties currently in power are flat out refusing to implement clear desires of their voters.

That's how democracy is supposed to work: AfD and Reform UK and Le Pen are gaining because they are promising to implement the desires of citizens of German, UK or France.

[ForHackernews]

> The same happens in Spain, Germany, France, Italy.

Spain is a bad example to reach for here, they are on track to regularize a huge chunk of unauthorized migrants: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62n6gw1dp9o

[netsharc]

Because Poles and Romanians are "other" enough to be hated... Ironically Britain had then to "import" people from Asia, Africa to e.g. work in the hospitals.

The foreigner-hate is so short-sighted. Your underpaid hospital worker, house cleaner, fruit picker, taxi driver, UberEats delivery is usually foreign, they don't mind working the exploitative conditions because for them the money is much better than home, providing you with affordable fruits, taxis and delivery (until the rent-seeking corporations want even more than 30%...). Get rid of them, and you'll have to pay living wages for your fruits and delivery. Heh, Westerners, still wanting to enjoy the fruits of colonization.

(Yeah the solution shouldn't be to continue allowing the exploitation, probably a better wealth distribution, but hey, why are you looking at my wallet, look at Elon's wallet!)

[kjksf]

First, they didn't have to.

Crazy idea: educate more people, lower barriers to entry, hire people from poorer western countries and not Africa.

Poland has hospitals staffed 100% by Polish people. What prevents UK from doing the same?

Second, if immigration was only for skilled workers to plug shortages of certain skills, it would not be a problem.

It's a problem because in 2025 estimated 41 thousand unskilled people, mostly young men, landed in UK just via small boats.

Those are not doctors or nurses or engineers or even fruit pickers. They are unemployed and therefore a massive drain on British resources.

UK gov for some unexplained reason decided that they are responsible for housing and feeding them. The money comes from taxing UK citizens.

The housing is zero sum game so it also comes from depriving some UK citizens, driving up the prices.

And those people get sick too so they also take away hospital resources from UK citizens.

And they don't work so you now have mostly young males loitering in neighborhoods.

[bryanlarsen]

I'm sure the UK has way more than 41 thousand shitty jobs with shitty pay that no native really wants. I doubt they're not working because they don't want to.

In Canada the standard complaint is that "immigrants take the jobs" not that "immigrants aren't working". It seems like it's a lot easier to get a job at a Tim Hortons if you speak Hindi like the owners and managers. A job at a restaurant if you speak Levantine Arabic.

And those are just the public tip of the iceberg. Construction crews are mostly foreign. Our roofers were Indian. Our landscapers were Lebanese / Syrian. The people we interacted with spoke great English, but their workers didn't.

The big difference is that Canada had constant immigration. They came over 40 years ago and since they had trouble finding employment became entrepreneurs and restaurants and construction and other blue collar services are the most fertile areas for entrepreneurs. Now they have a huge advantage in hiring low cost labor.

[netsharc]

> UK gov for some unexplained reason decided that they are responsible for housing and feeding them. The money comes from taxing UK citizens.

I see your winginess from your post. You're going to stop reading this because you'll find it disgusting, but hey I'll bother anyway: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/04/dina-nayeri-un...

She wrote: > Civilised people don’t ask for resumes when answering calls from the edge of a grave. It shouldn’t matter what I did after I cleaned myself off and threw away the last of my asylum-seeking clothes. My accomplishments should belong only to me. There should be no question of earning my place, of showing that I was a good bet. My family and I were once humans in danger, and we knocked on the doors of every embassy we came across: the UK, America, Australia, Italy. America answered and so, decades later, I still feel a need to bow down to airport immigration officers simply for saying “Welcome home”.

> But what America did was a basic human obligation. It is the obligation of every person born in a safer room to open the door when someone in danger knocks. It is your duty to answer us, even if we don’t give you sugary success stories.

But heck, "civilised people", I'm beginning to doubt very much that Western Europeans deserve that moniker.

You write:

> Poland has hospitals staffed 100% by Polish people. What prevents UK from doing the same?

Maybe because UK kids don't want the underpaid overwork conditions? Why not pay them better and give more of the taxpayer's money for the NHS, oh some of you will moan about that as well? Maybe the NHS will be forced to spend the money for outsourcing, ensuring the Tory-run outsourcing companies earn those nice bucks - hey why not direct your anger at them?

> And they don't work so you now have mostly young males loitering in neighborhoods.

Yeah, perversely refugees applying for permit aren't allowed to earn income, so again it's the government preventing them to work. Allow them to pick those fruits for some income and you'll moan about the government making the country even more attractive for people to run away from bullets and bombs...

[frm88]

Poland has hospitals staffed 100% by Polish people.

Nope: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016885102...

[Hikikomori]

Seems like Brexit didn't help

[canadiantim]

That’s funny in light of one of our Canadian governments (Alberta) recently calling for a referendum on immigration levels, with the government claiming immigration levels are too high to support the housing, economic and social needs of the sheer quantity of people coming in. Seems like the government is trying to be responsible by making sure the social welfare system can still support people as it was designed

[breakyerself]

Bingo. Just like wanting to leave the EU was self destructive cutting off immigration is as well. The US is in the process of trying to hobble its own economy right now.

[kjksf]

Poland has almost zero immigration and is one of the fastest European economies.

Do explain the miracle of Poland. What kind of economics work for Poland but couldn't possibly work for England.

Do explain how 41 thousand unskilled young man landing in UK shores via small boats are good for economy. Majority of them do no work, not even the low skill jobs. They cost UK citizens a lot of money because UK gov took upon themselves to pay for their housing and food.

The same stats are in every country that allowed massive immigration: the immigrants are a massive drain on resources of the country. And those resources are 100% come from taxing labor of citizens.

Currently UK pays for housing 100 thousand immigrants.

It's pretty obvious that if they stopped paying for housing them, they would save a lot of money.

Properly managed immigration could, in theory, be a net positive for countries.

But as it stands now if you combine immigration with well fare, you get a net drain.

[breakyerself]

There's a lot of ukrainians in Poland

[subscribed]

They started arriving well into the trend, and they didn't make such a big difference.

[breakyerself]

Sure thing

[ForHackernews]

Poland was an ramshackle post-communist economy that has grown rapidly (with the help of generous EU handouts) over the past three decades to catch up to the Western side of the Iron Curtain.

If Brits are willing to impoverish themselves to <2,000 USD per capita[0] and then are lucky enough to find a willing benefactor who will pay to rebuild their crumbling infrastructure for ideological reasons, I'm sure the UK could experience similar growth.

[0] https://www.macrotrends.net/datasets/global-metrics/countrie...

[subscribed]

They do not work because they're forbidden by law. It's a criminal offence to give work to any of these unregulated migrants. They're also housed by the UK government because it's a criminal offence to rent or sell them a property. Also they are often housed in the criminally unsafe (yes, that's also a thing) conditions and sometimes fed the mouldy food.

Imagine complaining about that (audible eyeroll).

So you want the UK to stop feeding and housing them but I guess keeping the laws forbidding them from working and renting? Why don't you and your mates don't do something about that already? Oh I know, last time they tried some ended up in prison for trying to kill the immigrants.

Mugrants arriving by boats because increasingly unhinged and rightwing governments paid off by dark money linked to Kremlin (we remember the suppressed intelligence report on Russian interference in voting) cut the country from the EU and closed down ALL the legal routes of immigration. Arriving "illegally" is the only way for them to claim for asylum.

And the funny thing is, the vast majority of these applying for asylum get their claims approved because they genuinely qualify, it's that UK is not offering any legal routes to anyone except Ukrainians (white Christians, I bet that had no impact) and a very few Afghans (these pesky translators, working for our troops risking their life now have a gall to ask for help once we let the Taliban back).

Did you see the graph showing illegal migration numbers before and after the Brexit vote? I bet you wouldn't like that. Because previous UK could just hand them back to the French.

All in all this is a self inflicted wound on all levels.

With the additional cherry on top of the utter lie in your last sentence. Immigration is not a net drain. Immigrant taxpayers are a net GAIN, and a very significant one, while the British citizens are a net LOSS to the treasury.

If we deported all the Brits the country would be much better off

[anonymars]

The image I have in both cases is the working class shooting itself in the stomach to hit the elites standing behind them

[tirant]

If that’s indeed the case, how do you explain the lack of catastrophe in Japans economy ?

Japans big catastrophe happened in 1990 with the bubble bursting, but that was years before the peak in working age population. Since then, the economy has not improved much but also has remained somehow stable.

[Larrikin]

All the jobs in Japan are hard work and low wage. If you're relatively poor and moving from south east Asia, it may make sense to immigrate to Japan. If you're a developer you typically will make half or less than half the salary, for longer hours on some old stack.

When discussing where to live my wife realized that she would potentially triple her salary as a nurse with 10+ years of experience.

Tourists like Japan because it is clean, safe and relatively cheap, but given the option it really does not make sense to work there.